People
Dr ROGER ALLEN, BA, BMus (Liverpool), MA, DPhil (Oxon), ARCM
Roger Allen is Tutor in Music and Research Fellow at St Peter's College and Lecturer in Music at St Edmund Hall. He read music at the University of Liverpool whilst at the same time studying with Noel Rawsthorne at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. In 1973 he was awarded a Leverhulme scholarship to visit the Bayreuth Festival as part of his developing interest in Wagner research. He graduated BA (1974), B.Mus(1975) and after teaching appointments in Shropshire and Northamptonshire came to Oxford in 1989 as Director of Music at New College School in which capacity he worked closely with the Choristers of New College. His D.Phil thesis, completed in 1999, is an extension of his Wagner-related studies and comprises a critical study of the writings of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. He is active as a graduate supervisor and also as a pianist specialising in chamber music and Leider accompaniment. He regularly gives public recitals with many of Oxford's professional singers and instrumentalists.
Roger's research is primarily Wagner related and he is presently collaborating in a new critical translation of Wagner's essay Beethoven (1870). He is a committee member of the Wagner Society of London and editor of the Society's Journal, Wagner, to which he regularly contributes articles and reviews. He is also interested in analytical issues and is presently focusing on long-term structural and tonal processes in Wagner and Bruckner. His ongoing study of late nineteenth-century performance practice is fostering an interest in the development of critical methodologies for the study of historic recordings as a musicological resource. His undergraduate teaching concentrates on nineteenth-century history, philosophy and aesthetics of music and analysis; he is also currently supervising doctoral students working on a critical studies of Wagner's late essays and German musical works by composers contemporary with Wagner.
Publications
'Furtwängler and England' in Furtwängler-Studien I (Berlin, 1998)
'Organicism: From Cultural Metaphor to Ideological Tool. Some thoughts on the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain'. (Forthcoming).
'Die Weihe des Hauses: Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the early reception of Parsifal.' (Forthcoming)
Wagner Beethoven (1870). A new translation by Brian Hitch and Roger Allen with critical commentary by Roger Allen (Forthcoming).
Related Websites
Contact Details
Dr Roger Allen
St Peter's College
Oxford OX1 2DL
Tel: 01865 278908
Email: roger.allen@music.ox.ac.uk