Cheryll Duncan - Royal Northern College of Music

About Cheryll

Professor Cheryll Duncan is a musicologist who specialises in professional music culture in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, with a particular focus on legal records of the period. Her research has investigated matters ranging from e.g. performance contracts, music copyright, organ building and concert administration to musicians’ lifestyles and self-fashioning. Cheryll’s essays have appeared in major journals including Cambridge Opera Journal, Early Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Music & Letters, Opera Journal and Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle. She contributed a chapter to Geminiani Studies (ed. Christopher Hogwood), and biographical entries to Grove Music Online and Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Her monograph on the violinist, composer and concert promoter Felice Giardini was published by Routledge in 2020, and in that year she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of her contribution to historical scholarship.

Research

Current and Future Research

Cheryll is currently writing a short monograph on the eighteenth-century flautist, composer and teacher Lewis Granom, drawing on a recently discovered equity lawsuit which explains the unusual genesis of his flute treatise (1766). Future projects include Giovanni Francesco Crosa and opera in London 1748–50, and a study of the early eighteenth-century singer Jane Barbier.

Research Areas

Baroque music
Professional music in late 17th and 18th century Britain
Opera in London
Musicians and the law
Music publishing and copyright

External Research Roles

Associate Lecturer in Music, Open University Milton Keynes (1997 – 2010)
Further and Higher Education Advisor, Royal National Institute of Blind People (1989 – 1996)
Lecturer in Music, Coventry Centre for the Performing Arts (1979 – 1989)

Teaching

Research Supervision

Current supervision of PhDs:

Anna Wright

Research Outputs

Written Outputs

Cox, John

Duncan, C., 24 Jul 2024, Grove Music Online.

Simpson, John

Duncan, C., Kidson, F., Smith, W. C. & Jones, P. W., 24 Jul 2024, Grove Music Online.

Music for French Kings by Amanda Babington (musette), Claire Babington (cello), David Smith (harpsichord)

Duncan, C., 8 Mar 2023, In: British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Opera and Politics in Queen Anne’s Britain, 1705–1714 by Thomas McGeary

Duncan, C., 2023, In: North American British Music Studies Association Reviews. 10, 1, p. 6-8

The law and the profits: Lewis Granom and the royal licence as a form of music copyright protection

Duncan, C., 2023, In: Music and Letters. 104, 3, p. 374–404

Venanzio Rauzzini and the Birth of a New Style in English Singing: Scandalous Lessons by Brianna E. Robertson-Kirkland

Duncan, C., 10 May 2023, In: Women’s Studies Group 1558–1837.

Duparc, (Anna Maria) Elisabeth Rossa [Lisabetta Du Parc; performing name La Francesina]

Duncan, C., 9 Jun 2022, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Duparc, Elisabeth [‘Francesina’]

Duncan, C., Dean, W. & Allen, R., 28 May 2021, Grove Music Online.

Felice Giardini and Professional Music Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London.

Duncan, C., 15 Oct 2019, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. 136 p.

‘Sounds and Sweet Airs: the forgotten women of Classical music’ by Anna Beer

Duncan, C., 2018, In: Early Modern Women. 13, 1, p. 226–230

Professional Activity

Public Presentations and Performance

Eighteenth-Century Music Symposium

Babington, A. (Speaker / presenter), Duncan, C. (Speaker / presenter), Glatthorn, A. (Speaker / presenter) & Vickers, D. (Speaker / presenter)

13 May 2026