My article on Vernon Lee (1856-1935) has been published in Volupté: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies. Provocatively entitled ‘Lying Down or Standing Up for Music’, it examines ideas about ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’ in Lee’s final work, Music and its… Read More ›
My essay on Edmund Gosse’s malign influence on Swinburne studies, both biographical and critical, is available in the latest issue of the International Walter Pater Society’s journal. ‘“A Genius for Inaccuracy”: Edmund Gosse and the Case of Swinburne’s Missing Musical… Read More ›
To read my blog post about the battles over Wagner’s music in 1860s Paris, click the image below to go to the website of the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation:
The first two stanzas of A Match by Jeremiah Rhodes, published in 1868. Swinburne’s poem ‘A Match’ from his 1866 collection Poems and Ballads would become one of his most popular lyrics and the poem most often set to music…. Read More ›
Here is a catalogue of songs which were set to the lyrics of Swinburne and published between 1866-1920. It also lists a few important unpublished songs and some musical oddities and odds and ends that I’m not sure how to… Read More ›
Here is an original score for Theophilus Marzials’s popular song ‘Ask Nothing More’ (1883). The words are from Swinburne’s poem ‘The Oblation’ (Songs Before Sunrise, 1871). I played my own recording of this piece at the British Association of Decadence… Read More ›
On the afternoon of 13 March 1878 at a charity concert at the Palazzo Odescalchi in Rome, Mary Wakefield started to sing. In the audience was Anne Crawford, the Baroness von Rabe, who was amazed by her performance. It had… Read More ›
I’m very happy to report that my article, ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads‘, has been published by the Journal of Victorian Culture. The article links to the post below concerning Francis Hueffer, whom the article… Read More ›
The following post is related to my article ‘Swinburne, Wagner, Eliot, and the Musical Legacy of Poems and Ballads’ in the Journal of Victorian Culture. In addition to the piece by Francis Hueffer below, if you want to hear the… Read More ›
When I started this project, I would not have imagined Swinburne’s languid ‘The Garden of Proserpine’ from Poems and Ballads, First Series (1866) ever inspiring popular music, and certainly not the tone of this piece by Charles Paston-Cooper (1867-1941). Weary… Read More ›
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