Professor Bettina Varwig
BMus (King's Lond), PhD (Harvard)
Official Fellow
Professor of Music History
Biography
I am Professor of Music History at the Faculty of Music, specialising in music of the early modern period. Previously I was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at King’s College London, where I also took my undergraduate degree in 2000. I completed my doctoral studies at Harvard University in 2006, followed by a Fellowship by Examination at Magdalen College, Oxford (2005-8) and a British Academy Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and Girton College (2008-9). I am originally from Germany, but have come to feel very at home in the anglophone circles that have welcomed me over the years.
Research
My research explores the powers of music to affect and transform its participants across Western (early) modernity, focusing on musical affect and expression; the history of the body, the senses and the emotions; and practices of musical listening and performance. The music of J. S. Bach forms a recurring point of reference in my work. I have also worked on issues of reception and historiography, in particular Bach reception in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I am invested in interdisciplinary dialogue of all stripes, enjoying exchange and collaboration with colleagues in history, philosophy, theology, sound studies, history of science and music psychology. I am also passionate about working with performers, using historical insights as a stimulus for creatively transforming these musical repertories in performance today.