Dr Esther Cavett

Esther Cavett is a Senior Research Fellow in Music at King’s College London and College Lecturer in Music at Somerville, Jesus, and Lincoln Colleges, where she specialises in teaching the analysis of Western classical music from the 18th to 20th Centuries.  Her research interests are in music theory and analysis, widening access to music education, music pedagogy,  and music psychology (especially qualitative interviewing).  She works and performs the piano with various musical charities dedicated to improving access to and broadening appreciation of music. She was a lawyer. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4842-4641  

 

   
2025 (in press) Piano lessons in the office: Playing to be/come alive. Journal of the Society of Musicology in Ireland, 21 (2025). 8000 words.
2024

'“The mind is not limited by the skin”: the expert piano technician’s experience of working on pianos of professional concert performers', Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 149/2, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2024.26

2024

(with Javier Rivas) ‘It’s like you’re an activist’: Sustainable teaching practices in a music outreach project in London. International Journal of Community Music, 17, 383-402 [Special issue on Music Making and Sustainable Futures]. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijcm_00114_1

2024

(with Hilary McQueen) Challenging approaches to music curricula and literacy today. Music Education Research26(1), 3–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2024.2309548

2024

(with Hilary McQueen) ‘Lowering the bar’ or widening access? Reflections on key findings from a music literacy project commissioned by the Society for Music Analysis, Music Education Research,  26/1, 7-20.  https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2024.2306649

2023

A Critical Forum: 'Valuing the surplus: Perspectives on Julian Horton’s Article On the musicological necessity of music analysis, Musical Quarterly, 2020', (with contributions from V. Kofi Agawu, Gurminder K. Bhogal, Esther Cavett, Jonathan Dunsby, Julian Horton, Alexandra Monchick, Ian Pace, Henry Stobart, Simon Zagorski-Thomas, complied and edited, Esther Cavett), Music Analysis, 42, 412-471. https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12221

In press 

‘Supporting the mentee: working at the sharp edge’, in A practical guide for mentoring music teachers, Ed. S. Houni and M.Wolf, Routledge. (6000 words). 

2022 

‘Desire, gratification, and the moment: a music-analytical, psychological, and autobiographical enquiry into the role of repetition in the music of Howard Skempton’, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2022.2035100 

2021 

‘Voices from Southwark: Reflections on a collaborative music teaching project in London in the age of Covid-1’, (co-authored with Javier Rivas, Rhys Sparey, Jonathan Davies, Caroline Gleason-Mercier, Sarah Hughes, & Susannah Knights), International Journal of Community Music 14/2-3, 169-189. 

2019 

Howard Skempton: Conversations and Reflections on Music, Boydell & Brewer, 90,000 words (co-edited with Matthew Head, and with personal contribution of approximately 40,000 words). 

2017 

Review of Edward Klorman Mozart’s Music of Friends: Social interplay in the chamber works (Cambridge UP, 2016), Eighteenth-Century Music, 14/2, 285-290 (co-authored with Matthew Head). 

2015  

‘Celebrating Arnold Whittall’s 80th birthday: Music Analysis Past and Future’.  Colloquium report, Society for Music Analysis Newsletter, 21-27. 

1990  

‘A Conspectus of Mozart's Music' [on Mozart's stylistic development], in The Mozart Compendium, Ed. H.C. Robbins Landon (Thames & Hudson), 206-236. 

1989  

Mozart's Variations Reconsidered (Garland Press). 

1989  

Review article of Ian Bent, Musical Analysis (Macmillan, 1987), Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 115/1, 111-122. 

1988  

'Music Analysis Conferenced in Context', The Musical Times, September, 457-58. 

1988  

Conference report on the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory (Rochester, New York), Music Analysis, 7/2, 239-242. 

1988  

'Schenker's Analysis of the Eroica Finale', Theory and Practice 11, 43-52. 

1988  

'Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets Composing Up and Down Without Rules', Journal of The Royal Musical Association, 113/1, 59-80. 

1988  

'Mozart's Codas', Music Analysis, 7/1, 31-53. 

1987  

Review of Heinrich Koch, Introductory Essay on Composition trans. Nancy Baker (Yale UP, 1983), Music Analysis, 6/1-2, 196-202. 

1985  

Preface to the Eulenberg Edition of Elgar's Variations on an Original Theme Op. 36. 

1983  

'Explaining Meyer', review-article, Music Analysis, 2/2, 209-20. 

 

Music theory and analysis

Widening access to music education

Music pedagogy

Music psychology