David Vickers

Current and Future Research

Dr David Vickers’ research interests focus principally on the career and music of Handel and his contemporaries in Germany, Italy, France and Britain. Current and future projects relate to reconstructing different compositional and performing versions of baroque operas and oratorio-style works, investigating the careers of early eighteenth-century singers (such as Senesino, John Beard and Giulia Frasi), aspects of historical performance practice, and the history, reception, and future of historically-informed performances on period instruments within the classical recording industry.

Research Areas

• Editing Handel’s opera Partenope for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (Bärenreiter)
• ‘“Despised and rejected”: Handel making a scene’ – an evaluation of finished music rejected (cut or replaced) before performance
• Eighteenth-century sources of embellishment in Handel arias [collating evidence of manuscript and other musical sources from the early eighteenth century of arias that contain embellished voice parts]
• The London repertoire of soprano Giulia Frasi (fl.1742–74), rediscovering music by Gluck, Galuppi, Ciampi, Terradellas, Arne, J.C. Smith, Stanley, Hayes, etc.
• The repertoire of the castrato Senesino in London (fl.1720–36), exploring music by Bononcini, Ariosti, Porpora, Veracini, etc.
• ‘Mozart the interloper’ – a fusion of scholarly research and creative programming reassessing Mozart’s music (such as many of the so-called ‘concert arias’) created for insertion into works by other composers, and his treatment of scores by forbears and contemporaries

Undergraduate Teaching

• Historical and Contextual Studies (Renaissance and Baroque strands)
• Music, Culture & Performance (leader of Baroque strand)
• Performance Studies (from Dowland and Bach to Berlioz and Mahler)
• European baroque sacred music, 1600–1750 (workshop-based elective)
• Music Drama from Monteverdi to Mozart (elective)
• Handel’s Transformations (elective)
• J.S. Bach’s church music (elective)
• Music and Beliefs (contributor to team-taught elective)
• Opera in Paris, 1647–1959 (leader of team-taught elective)

Postgraduate Teaching

• Research Lecture Recital (tutor and examiner)
• Research Repertoire Project (seminar leader and research supervisor)
• Dissertation supervision

Selected Outputs

Written Outputs

David Vickers, ‘Staging Handel’s music dramas’, Handel in Context, edited by Helen Coffey and Annette Landgraf (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

David Vickers, ‘”Sense and Significancy“: perceptions and images of Senesino in London, 1720–1736′, Händel Jahrbuch, 70 (Bärenreiter, 2024): 128–148.

David Vickers, ‘”Their sound is gone out to all Lands”: period-instrument recordings of Messiah, 1980–2020‘, Händel Jahrbuch, 69 (Bärenreiter, 2023): 275–317.

David Vickers, editor, New Perspectives in Handel’s Music: Essays in Honour of Donald Burrows (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022); includes chapter ‘‘Handel’s Bilingual Versions of Esther and Deborah, 1734–1737’.

David Vickers, ‘Giulia Frasi in English music’, Händel Jahrbuch, 65 (Bärenreiter, 2019): 205–232.

David Vickers, ‘“Handel’s revisions to performing versions of Partenope (HWV 27) and Arianna in Creta (HWV 32), 1730–37”’, Händel Jahrbuch, 62 (2016), 217–236.

David Vickers, ””The Musick to be disposed after the Manner of the Coronation Service”: Handel’s use of ceremonial anthems in Esther (HWV 50b) and Deborah (HWV 51), 1732–1757’’, Händel Jahrbuch, 59 (Bärenreiter, 2013): 229–243.

Annette Landgraf and David Vickers, editors, The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009; paperback edition 2013).

David Vickers, editor, The Baroque Composers: Handel (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).

David Vickers, Haydn: His Life & Music, (London: Naxos Books, 2008).

David Vickers, ‘Music for a while: John Dryden & Henry Purcell’, Goldberg, 44 (2007): 42–53

Public Presentations (not including conference papers that were published subsequently)

David Vickers, ‘Italian musicians in eighteenth-century London’. Symposium on Giuseppe Agus, hosted by the Fondazione di Ricerca Giuseppe Siotto, Cagliari, Italy, 21 October 2022.

David Vickers, ‘Handel making a scene: compositional choices in his operas’, Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK, 15 July 2021.

David Vickers, ‘Handel changing his mind: compositional choices in his music dramas’,  Georg Friedrich Händel: Prometheus unchained, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid,  25 October 2019.

David Vickers, ‘Handel and Giulia Frasi in context’,  The Handel Institute conference: Handel and his eighteenth-century performers, London,  23 November 2016.

David Vickers, ‘Reconstructing contexts for liturgical baroque music’. Taverner Consort symposium, Holywell Music Room, Oxford University, UK, 7 April 2013.

David Vickers (chair of panel), ‘Recordings of Purcell, Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn: a survey of the past, an assessment of the present, and speculation about the future’, Royal Musical Association: Purcell, Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn: anniversary reflections, New College / Holywell Music Room, Oxford University, 28 March 2009.

David Vickers, ‘An overview of Handel’s Partenope on the stage (1730–2009)’, Statue, obelischi, serragli di fiere: Händel in scena tra storia e presente, Istituto Musicali Franci, Siena, Italy, 10 October 2009.

David Vickers, ‘Handel’s performing versions of Partenope’. Von Neapel nach Hamburg: die europäischen Reisen der Partenope, symposium, Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria, 24 February 2009.

Professional Activity

• Council member of The Handel Institute
• Member of the Georg Friedrich Händel Gesellschaft
• Lecturer for award-winning cultural tour operator Martin Randall Travel, including artistic and musicological consultancy for unique festival of Monteverdi’s music in Venice (November 2015)
• Performance and musicological consultant for numerous high-impact artistic projects in collaboration with clients including The Academy of Ancient Music, The Dunedin Consort, The English Concert, The King’s Consort, La Nuova Musica, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Sixteen, Göttingen Handel Festival, The Brook Street Band, Christian Curnyn (Early Opera Company), Alan Curtis (Il Complesso Barocco), David Hill (The Bach Choir), Christopher Hogwood, Stephen Layton, Andrew Manze, Nicholas McGegan, Robin Blaze, Max Emanuel Cencic, Danielle de Niese, Mark Padmore, Carolyn Sampson, Lawrence Zazzo, and most major international classical record labels
• Essayist for opera houses (Glyndebourne, ENO, Drottningholm, Buxton, etc.), concert venues (Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Barbican), artists and festivals
• Feature articles for Gramophone, including essays on Purcell’s King Arthur and The Fairy Queen, Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri, Vivaldi’s Stabat mater, Telemann’s Musique de Table, Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Giulio Cesare and Messiah, an overview of liturgical reconstructions, an evaluation of the music and reputation of Schütz, a guide to the music of Rameau, Bach’s first Christmas in Leipzig (1723), and discussions of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and 1610 Vespers, Bach’s John Passion and Mass in B minor, and Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Requiem.
• Author of over 60 booklet essays for a range of high-impact commercial recordings by leading artists and labels (2002–2024), many of them incorporating original research and related to premiere recordings of major works.