Samuel Teague

Seventeenth-century English church and court music; Chapel Royal; early modern music printing and publishing; manuscript and archive study; Elizabethan church and court music.

My research focuses on Captain Henry Cooke, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal from the Restoration of the monarchy, in 1660, until his death in 1672. Whilst his pupils, including Pelham Humfrey, John Blow, and Henry Purcell, would surpass him in both ability and fame, Cooke’s tuition restarted the choral chorister tradition that had been lost across the previous two decades during the Civil Wars and Interregnum. 

My thesis aims to fill out the significant gaps in Cooke’s biography and present his surviving compositions in new editions. I also look to analyse his pedagogy through the work of his pupils in order to reassess, amongst other things, the utility of the Western Musical Canon during this period. My aim is to broaden the purview of the canon, away from focussing largely on Purcell, to include the entire English Restoration School, which began with Cooke.

This doctoral research project is supervised by Professor Owen Rees.

Conferences:
Music, Creativity, and Culture in England, 1642-88: Marking the 350th Anniversary of the Death of Captain Henry Cooke, Convenor & Organiser, The Queen’s College, 21 May 2022.

Concerts:
Music for Restored Times, Chapel of The Queen’s College, 21 May 2022.

Presentations:
‘A Seventeenth-Century Whodunnit: Reassessing the Ascription of ‘Sleep, downy sleep’, Music, Creativity, and Culture in England, 1642-88: Marking the 350th Anniversary of the Death of Captain Henry Cooke, Conference Address, The Queen’s College, 21 May 2022.

‘Compositional Infelicity and Idiom in the English Restoration School the Pedagogy and Legacy of Captain Henry Cooke’, Queen’s College Symposium, The Queen’s College, 18 January 2022.

‘Captain Henry Cooke’, Meeting of The Cpt. Henry Cooke Society, HM Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, 4 October 2021.

‘“Captain Cookes New Musique”: Music Manuscripts Containing the Extant Work of Henry Cooke (c.1615/6-72)’, KVNM/RMA International Postgraduate Symposium in Music Research 2021, (Online), 4 July 2021.

‘Piercing Through the Gloomy Silence: Musicians’ Livelihoods in Civil War and Commonwealth England (c.1642-1660)’, BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference 2021, University of Cambridge (Online), 13 January 2021.

Publications:
‘Chapel Royal links in Oxford: The Music of Captain Henry Cooke at Christ Church’, Christ Church Library Newsletter, (Upcoming).

Reports:
‘Music, Creativity, and Culture in England, 1642-88: Marking the 350th Anniversary of the Death of Captain Henry Cooke’, NEMA Newsletter vi/2 (Autumn 2022).

‘Music, Creativity, and Culture in England, 1642-88: Marking the 350th Anniversary of the Death of Captain Henry Cooke’, Ox Musician 12 (2022).
 

Polyphony and Polemic in a Fractured Europe, c.1500-1650.

The Michael James Music Trust