‘Edward J. Dent, “Musical Research” and Musicology in Britain’, contribution to a colloquium on the Genealogies of Musicology in Britain, Oxford Music Faculty, 5 November 2024

In early November 2024 I participated in a colloquium at Oxford University organized by Prof. Christian Leitmeir. Exploring the roots of musicology as a discipline in Britain, we looked at late 19th-century music societies and research-active individuals working decades before UK universities accepted music as an academic subject. Entitled ‘Genealogies of Musicology in Britain’, the session embraced Meike Wilfing-Albrecht’s study of music societies in Britain to 1914 and of the Austrian emigré Egon Wellesz in Oxford; my own contribution on Edward J. Dent, a seminal figure who shifted attitudes through his nuanced approach to research and his advocacy; and Leitmeir’s new findings on the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society.

E.J. Dent worked in and through the Musical Association for nearly 50 years, from 1901. He also became the leading English figure in major international societies for contemporary music and for musical research. From his engagement with other Association members and their themes, he developed an emergent kind of British musicology blending archival, historical, literary and interpretative work into a coherent and elegant whole on the page – all reflecting his breadth and commitment to a commonsense application of research in preference to a more systematized form of Musikwissenschaft.

Keen to delineate for Europeans and Americans the peculiar circumstances of music study in Britain, Dent claimed something individual for British research that saw musical performance, the ‘training of the imagination’ and wider cultural understanding as its desired ends. In practical ways, too, he used his considerable personal skills to assist fellow scholars and convert findings into benefit for wider society (notably through opera translation), as well as to lift standards and smoothe international cooperation. He made the road wider for everyone.

Wellesz in Oxford and Dent at Cambridge are only two of the many scholars from different backgrounds who brought distinctive experiences to the growth of musicology in Britain. Both are discussed in the fuller context of my recent book The Royal Musical Association: Creating Scholars, Advancing Research, available here.

'I look forward to reading your book' Stephanie Franklin, Oxford DPhil student

'It's interesting that "musical research" is now coming back into use ... Thanks for your paper'

Prof. Laura Tunbridge