Denise Neary
Denise Neary is currently the Doctoral Studies Coordinator for the Doctor in Music Performance programme at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, having previously been Senior Lecturer in Music, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. At the RIAM Denise is responsible for the guidance and academic supervision of doctoral students and delivering modules in research methods and musicology. She organises the guest lecture series at the RIAM featuring eminent international scholars and musicologists.
Denise has been a council member of the Society for Musicology in Ireland since 2009 and Honorary Treasurer of the Society from 2015 to 2021. She is a member of the RILM National Committee of Ireland and a founding member and member of the steering committee of Performance Research Ireland and, with colleagues in Finland, Lithuania and the UK, the international ‘Doctors in Performance’ festival conference. In 2020 she was appointed as an advisory board member for Irish Musical Studies.
Denise’s research focuses on music in Ireland and Britain from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. In particular, her work has examined music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dublin churches and evaluated cathedral music in England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She is also interested in the development of artistic research in music in Ireland.
Publications
‘The Development of Music Performance as Artistic Research in Ireland’ in Lorraine Byrne Bodley (ed.), Music Preferred: Essays in Musicology, Cultural History and Analysis in Honour of Harry White (Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag, 2018), 293-306
‘Allingham, William’; ‘Artane Band’; ‘Byfield, John’; ‘Chisholm, Audrey’; ‘Gilmore, Patrick Sarsfield’; ‘Hitchcock, Walter’; ‘Kelleher, Deborah’; ‘Leeson, Joseph Frederick’; ‘McKiernan, Arnold’; ‘Murphy, Samuel’; ‘Pearse, Patrick’; ‘Quarry, Michael’; ‘Royal Irish Academy of Music’; ‘Scanlan, William J’; ‘Smith, John’; ‘St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street’; ‘St Peter’s Church, Drogheda’; ‘Vaughan, Jimmy’; ‘Wetenhall, Edward’ in Barra Boydell and Harry White (eds), Encyclopedia of Music in Ireland (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013)
‘Church music in Ireland in the seventeenth century’ in B. Boydell and K. Houston (eds.) Irish Musical Studies x: Music, Ireland and the Seventeenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 168-180
‘A Canterbury Tale: A Musical Foundation in the Eighteenth Century’ in Barra Boydell (ed.), Proceedings of the First Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (2003)
‘Cuvillie, John Baptiste’, and ‘Hollister’ in Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2nd edn, 2001)
‘Organ building in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dublin and its English connection’ in the Journal of the British Institute of Organ Studies xxi (1997), 20-27
‘Music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dublin churches’ in Patrick F. Devine and Harry White (eds), Irish Musical Studies iv: The Maynooth International Musicological Conference 1995 – Selected Proceedings: Part One (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), 103-110
Conference Papers and Invited Lectures
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, Research Forum: ‘Has the music been put back into musicology?’, 2019
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, Postgraduate Research Seminar: 'Why does Artistic Research matter?', 2019
KVNM conference: Musicological Societies as Intermediaries between Society, Musical Life and Academia, Conference in Honour of the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Society for Music History of The Netherlands, Utrecht: ‘Artistic Research in Music in Ireland’, 2018
Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) Sixteenth Annual Conference, CIT Cork School of Music: ‘Music performance research – an international perspective’, 2018
Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) Fifteenth Annual Conference, Queen’s University Belfast: ‘Performing Research, Researching Performance’: an Irish perspective, 2017
Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) Eleventh Annual Conference, NUI Maynooth: Panel Session – ‘What a Performance!: Research at the Royal Irish Academy of Music’, 2013
Joint Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Royal Musical Association, Royal Irish Academy of Music: ‘From “St Ann’s in the Cornfields” to the “Church in the heart of the City” – three centuries of music at St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin’, 2009
Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) Fourth Annual Conference, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick: ‘“The beauty of holiness”: Seventeenth-century Irish parish church music’, 2006
Music and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Ireland, NUI Maynooth: ‘Church music in Ireland in the seventeenth century’, 2005
Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) First Annual Conference, Department of Music, NUI Maynooth: ‘A Canterbury Tale: A Musical Foundation in the Eighteenth Century’, 2003
RMA Irish Conference, Department of Music, Waterford Institute of Technology: ‘James Hawkins: “no way significant as a composer”?’, 1999
Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain at the University of Hull: ‘English Cathedral Music in the early nineteenth century’, 1997
Dublin Historical Society Lecture: ‘Church music in Dublin in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, 1996
RMA Research Students’ Conference, Royal Holloway, University of London: ‘Organ building in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dublin and its English connection’, 1995
Maynooth International Musicological Conference: ‘Music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dublin churches’, 1995
Doctoral dissertations supervised to completion:
Soo-Jung Ann, ‘Interpretation and Performance: A Comparative Study of Artistic Interpretations of Performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Piano Variations and Fugue in E Flat Major, Op. 35’ (2022)
Patrice Keegan, ‘From Ancient to Avant-Garde: The Evolution of the Organ in Ireland and a Performer’s Analysis of five Irish Contemporary Pieces for Solo Organ’ (2022)
Fearghal Ó Conchubhair, ‘The Influence of the Cork International Choral Festival on Choral Singing, Choral Conducting and Choral Composition in Ireland (1954-2021)’ (2022)
Sylvia O’Brien, ‘Implications of Collaboration: The Recreative Artist and Autoethnographic Research in Seóirse Bodley’s Never to Have Lived is Best (1965)’ (2022)
Matthew Mazanek, ‘Implicit Curriculum: Improvisation Pedagogy in Guitar Methods 1760-1860’ (2021)
Kenneth Edge, ‘Reimagining the Saxophone: Preparing Works by Six Irish Composers for Performance – A First History’ (2021)
Redmond O’Toole, ‘Hudleston’s Harmonic Sounds: An Evaluation of Josiah Hudleston’s 1841 Treatise on Guitar Harmonics’ (2020)
Alexander Bernstein, ‘An Investigation of Aaron Copland’s Night Thoughts (1972) through a Performative Analysis’ (2020)
William Lees, ‘Gerald Finzi’s Violin Concerto: A Performer’s Perspective’ (2019)
Mark Keane, ‘Domestic Sacred Music in Jacobean England: John Amner’s Sacred Hymnes … for Voyces and Vyols (1615)’ (2019)
Bernie Sherlock, ‘Contemporary Irish Choral Music and an Outline of its Historical Origins’ (2018)
Imelda Drumm, ‘Roles for Leading Ladies: Investigating the influence of ovarian hormones on performance anxiety and vocal impairment in elite singing’ (2017)
Marie-Charline Foccroulle, ‘Final thoughts? Interpretation of the first movements of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s last three piano sonatas’ (2017)
Tham Horng Kent, ‘Interpretation and performance: an investigation into Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A major D959’ (2016)
Archie Chen, ‘Towards a historically informed performance of Chopin’s op 10 Études’ (2016)
Gavan Ring, ‘Performance considerations for Robert O’Dwyer’s Eithne (1909): a contextual study and edited vocal score’ (2016)
Dimitri Papadimitriou, ‘An exploration of the key characteristics in Beethoven’s piano sonatas and selected instrumental repertoire’ (2013)
Desmond Earley, ‘French basso continuo performance technique: a study of the arpeggiated gesture in the prélude non mesuré c1650-c1720’ (2012)
Orla Flanagan, ‘Music, text and context in Felix Mendelssohn’s choral works for Berlin Cathedral’ (2012)
Annette Cleary, ‘The process of preparing Irish cello sonatas (1968-1996) for performance’ (2010)
Fionnuala Moynihan, ‘Considerations for a modern performance of John Field’s Piano Sonata, Op. 1 No. 1 in E flat major’ (2009)
External examining
2018 External examiner of PhD, Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
2014-2017 External examiner of BMus Honours Degree, Cork School of Music, Cork Institute of Technology