This project investigates issues that shaped the reception of leading female singers in nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing upon a wealth of hitherto untapped primary sources, it focuses on the construction of Jenny Lind as a cultural icon with its attendant disparities between myth and reality. It analyses the conceptualizing of outstanding women singers within a cultural perspective that embraces musical issues, ranging from performance to the vested interests of the opera business, together with cultural and social factors. It considers how their public image was conditioned by prevailing ideologies of female decorum, including long-established views of the morality of the theatre. The primary output will be a monograph. Further outputs will include articles and papers given at conferences and seminars. My findings illustrate the importance of a broad array of factors (including nationalism and xenophobia, attitudes towards wealth and philanthropy, and religious conviction) in shaping the public reputations of female singers. Mine will be the first published work to place women singers in this wider socio-cultural context. By supplying new approaches and contextual frameworks my project will have a positive impact on nineteenth-century British studies in general, especially for the research community.

A major part of my AHRC Fellowship is the development and manufacture of a prototype redesigned oboe and the creation of a number of new compositions for the instrument. This instrument will be demonstrated in concerts, festivals, research forums and conferences and will become the instrument I use professionally.\nI intend to commission five new works for the redesigned oboe. The chosen composers have already written for the standard oboe and in doing so have demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of the instrument, using contemporary techniques and writing at the limits of what is possible on the instrument. The composers also have significant reputations and their works will attract interest from promoters internationally thus further widening knowledge of the work of the Fellowship. The composers currently under consideration are: Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, Richard Barrett, Edwin Roxburgh and Sam Hayden. A DVD will be made of the work which will serve as both a document of the research and as a promotional tool.\nThis application is for the commission fees for the composers, travel and accommodation costs and funding for the DVD. \nIn addition I intend to create a range of performance related materials for the instrument including developing fingering charts for the altissimo range, compiling lists of multiphonics, microtonal fingerings and other sonic resources as well as exploring the potential of the electronic (hyper-oboe) developments.\nThe composers will work collaboratively with me in exploring the creative and technical potential of the redesigned instrument and as a result will add further knowledge to the lists of fingerings and other sonic resources that I develop. It is expected that the in-depth questioning and creative exploration engendered by the composers will cause me to rethink aspects of the instrument and therefore to seek out further refinements to the key work and possibly even some further redesign work. \nEach composer will write for the instrument in a unique way bringing their own ideas and questions to the research and, even when composers explore similar territory, they will do so from their own perspective and, as a result, will help to widen the knowledge of the instrument. The compositions will vary in their orchestration: oboe and electronics, oboe and piano, oboe and string trio, and oboe and small ensemble which will further add to an understanding of the instrument's capabilities. \nCommissioning composers to write works and be involved in the project has always been a central part of the Fellowship. The aim was to seek out commission fees from a wide variety of sources. However the current financial situation has rendered finding funding much more difficult, many funding bodies are holding back or making decisions only at the last minute, making the planning of a project such as this much more difficult. Having some funding in place for these commissions will attract promoters to the project and open up opportunities for performance that may otherwise not be available. \nThere will be several significant outputs from the research: The five works will all be published, recorded and performed, collaborative activities will all be recorded and an article describing the work will be written and published. The DVD will also be available on the web. \nThe performance partners for each of these works, pianist, string trio etc., are all major performers in their own right and so the performances and recordings will all be of the highest calibre. \nThe works will provide a core repertoire for the redesigned instrument and will be available for other composers to listen to and to study when considering writing for the instrument themselves.\nTwo members of the research department at the Royal Academy of Music (a PhD candidate and a Research Fellow) are also benefiting from this work as areas of the research are informing aspects of their work.

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Japan is described as a 'super-ageing society', with 27% of people aged 65 or over (data: World Bank.) An additional challenge is the incidence of dementia; the World Alzheimer Report 2016 stated that 4.6 million Japanese are living with dementia, rising to 7 million by 2025. This demography is already paralleled in other countries in SE Asia, with populations in the West predicted to move towards the Japanese situation within the next 30 years. With no effective treatment or significant breakthroughs in prevention or cure for the dementias, more attention must be given to the ways in which people can be cared for. We must consider how ingrained public attitudes, dominated by the perception of those with dementia as a burden and unable to participate as citizens can be challenged. As stated in Japan's Orange Plan (2015), we must 'realize a society where one's will shall be respected, and one can live in pleasant and familiar surroundings as long as possible.' There is convincing evidence that demonstrates the importance of the arts for people with dementia and their effectiveness in enhancing wellbeing, health and cognitive function. Our interest is in how the co-creative arts can challenge the commonly held perception that people with dementia are non-creative and dependent. We are defining the co-creative arts as privileging process over product, valuing all contributions equally, and where there is no distinction between the producer and consumer. Co-creativity can promote agency and community and is also a powerful way of working for families and carers. We propose the establishment of an interdisciplinary network to conduct research into the ways in which co-creative work by artists, social scientists, care practitioners, and people living with dementias can help societies re-envision the place of those made vulnerable by their condition and experiences. We will draw on expertise developed in both the UK and Japan. UK research into arts practice for people with dementia is recognised to be relatively advanced. In Japan, the inclusion in society of those with dementia is recognised as an urgent issue with which academics, policy makers and the third sector are all engaging. Our network will be distinguished by its inclusion of people with dementia, who at all stages will inform our activity. The Principle Investigator and Co-Investigator have extensive experience of working closely with people with dementias - a mode of working which colleagues in Japan are enthusiastic to learn from. The network will combine practical work with critical dialogue across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. It will be established through a series of exchanges, sharing practice and approaches first-hand. For instance, as part of their residency at Wellcome (www.createdoutofmind.org), the UK researchers developed a new way of gauging wellbeing and agency with people with dementia, using music and dance. This innovative work will be shaped and refined with our Japanese colleagues. The extent to which these measures and practices can be extrapolated into Japanese culture and society will be explored. UK scholars can learn from Japanese expertise in measuring the impact of arts-based interventions. We will also scope areas where collaborative research can be pursued. It is anticipated that new understandings of the ways in which the arts can help to re-envision more inclusive societies will emerge through these critical dialogues, producing outcomes that will inform and positively impact both policy and practice in dementia care. The findings of the network will be translated into outcomes that can be understood in both countries and have relevance beyond academia. Our findings will be disseminated in articles, online and in the media, paving the way for further collaborative research. Our proposal is an opportunity to influence practice and policy in the care of people living with dementia in ways which will have global significance.

The proposed research project would consist of me composing a series of pieces for organ and different contrasting ensembles, for example; organ and small mixed ensemble, organ and percussion group, organ with a larger group of musicians including singers thereby making a music-theatre piece and so on. Such a project would genuinely break new ground, as hitherto the organ has rarely been used in a chamber-music format and my work would therefore form the beginnings of a whole new genre. Over the course of five years, I would aim to produce 6-8 pieces as well as a smaller number of electronic keyboard and accordion and ensemble, these two instruments being part of the organ 'family' and also not having been much written-for in this way to date.\n\nA good number of pieces needs to be produced in order to explore a range of instrumentation, and to create the substanital beginnings of a new reportoire. Each piece will form a coherent entity and be capable of standing on its own apart from the others. Equally, however, they will all be linked together in a structure which can turn the collection into a single large-scale work. This broader architecture will have its roots in an ancient Christian ritual, which in turn will provide the framework for a secular piece with real contemporary relevance. The Church's 'Canonical Hours' with its division into the separate rites of Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce*, Sext, Nones, Vespers and Compline will provide the formal structure on which I will superimpose a programmatic layer depicting a particular 'slice' of contemporary humanity and its pre-occupations. We live at the beginnning of a new century, in affluent liberated Northern Europe, and in a big city with its mish-mash of cultures, different ethnic and economic groups - with all the many tensions that accompany such a position. Recent events in the world have made clear how very fragile our position is. The separate pieces will each develop the individual themes inherent in the 'Hours' whilst also depicting a series of musical 'dialogues' - at times confrontational - between individuals and groups within different ethnic communities and between people with radically different expectations of what life is about. Some of the parts would have text, others be purely instrumental, instruments themselves taking on 'roles'. The organ (or one of the two 'sister' instruments) is naturally present in all pieces either as protagonist, commentator, or simply as part of the background fabric.\n\nThe organ has, until now, occupied a somewhat fixed, static, role in music - literally, in that the instrument can't be moved around a space in teh same way as a violin can, say, but also because it has tended to exist in its own cultural microcosm within the church. IN my piece it will acquire a new fluidity role and could be seen as being emblematic of ourselves in a time of change. My work will be bold and reflect serious issues facing our society at the present time.\n\nYoung musicians at the Academy would be involved at all stages in the performing of the various parts as they are written, and also in composing works fro similar ensembles. The organ would gain much from the expansion of its traditional role in church music to one where it takes place alongside other instruments in contemporary music-making in the concert hall. \n\n* A version of Terce has already been written.