Professor Eva Moreda Rodriguez
- Professor of Musicology (Music)
telephone:
01413302613
email:
Eva.MoredaRodriguez@glasgow.ac.uk
School of Culture and Creative, Arts: Subject of Music, 14 University Gardens
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4512-1992Research interests
Research interests
- Early history of recording technologies (incl. their cultural/social history and their use as documents for historical performance practice)
- Music and fascism/totalitarianism, particularly in Spain; music and politics in the first half of the 20th century
- Singing, (art) song, vocal performance practice (particularly in the Middle Ages and at the turn of the 20th century)
- Digital mapping; Digital Musicology
For a more extensive narrative of my research interests, read the following - particularly if you are an aspiring PhD student and want to ascertain whether I would be a good fit for you:
Throughout my career, I have been consistently preoccupied not just with studying the music of the past, but also with understanding the journeys through which different musics from the past have arrived at us, how they color our present understanding of them, and how we can challenge and expand such understandings both in academia and in broader society. Over the course of my career, performance (initially under the form of facilitating performance, then researching historical performance, then moving on to performing myself) has become increasingly important in such endeavours.
For example, much of my earlier work was dedicated to Spanish music of the twentieth century, both under Francoism and in exile, which resulted in two monographs. Engaging with the music of the past meant, in this case, deconstructing political narratives around certain works or repertories, as well as (in some cases) finding and researching musical works from the archive that had not been performed for several decades. This led me to collaborate with a range of performers and institutions such as Instituto Cervantes Londres and Fundacion Juan March, to give such works a second opportunity with audiences.
Rather than focusing solely on neglected works, however, I am also interested in bringing in historicized perspectives -both to academics and the general public- to our understanding of how we engage with music and sound, and particularly the music of the past. For example, my work on early recordings of Spanish zarzuela has strived to provide pioneering view on the performance practice of the genre to explain its huge popularity in early twentieth-century Spain, beyond the study of works and composers. At the same time, though, I do not think that the historical interest of early recordings lies solely on their value as documents for performance practice - much of my work (including my 2021 monograph on the topic) has strived to understand how early recording technologies changed how we listen, and hence how we engage with music.
Working on a relatively circumscribed area (Spain), and one existing in the periphery of what is normally understood as Western art music, I have also been intensely preoccupied by how my findings on Spanish music, and on musical peripheries more broadly, might change the ways in which we look at broader narratives - for example the history of recording technologies, music and exile, music and war. Such preoccupations have reflected themselves mostly in my edited books.
As a historian of music, I am also fascinated by moments of change (which are sometimes so difficult to capture and explain in satisfactory ways to a present-day audience!) - how Spanish composers working in the decades before the Franco regime tried to develop styles that conformed to their understanding of modernity; how performers, audiences and businessmen adapted and tried to make the most of recording technologies. My recent forays into medieval repertoires have also been motivated by this - I have recently published on and recorded pieces from the Aquitanian versus repertoire, which signalled a turning point in understanding singing and music.
Public engagement is a passion of mine, and a key part of my efforts to find new ways to engage with the music on the past: I have written non-academic articles and blogs on most of the topics above, delivered public lectures, led medieval music workshops on a range of topics and performed medieval music myself.
Grants
- British Academy Talent Development Award (2025), 'Multilingual art song: supporting singers to engage with lesser known repertoires' (£9,851).
- AHRC Impact Accelerator Account (2024-25), 'Building audiences for private collections of early recorded sound' (£5,875).
- AHRC Research Network funding (2021-23), 'Rethinking Early Recordings as Sources of Music and Performance History' (£40,960), 2021-23. Visit the web of the project here.
- British Academy-Leverhulme Trust Small Grant (2020), 'Recording zarzuela in Spain, 1896-1958: Performance practice, canon(s) and national identity', 2019-20. (£7,547.57)
- AHRC Leadership Fellowship (2018-19), 'Early recording cultures in Spain (1877-1905). Towards a transnational history', 2018-9 (£175,689).
- Carnegie Trust for the Universities Scotland Research Incentive Grant (2017), 'Making sense of Spanish music historiography: Josep Valls and Simon Tapia Colman', 2017 (£4,445).
- Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland Small Grant (2014), ‘Rodolfo Halffter and the Franco regime - music, exile and collaboration', 2014 (£920).
- Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland Small Grant (2013), ‘Writing the exiles back into the history of Spanish music: Salvador Bacarisse and Roberto Gerhard’, 2013 (£2440).
All of the above are as PI. In the past I also received smaller grants from the Music & Letters Trust Award, The John Robertson Bequest and The Lilly Library at the University of Indiana.
Supervision
I welcome enquiries from students interested in working on topics that fall within my research expertise; please see "Research interests" for a more detailed discussion of my specialisms.
- Early history of recording technologies (incl. their cultural/social history and their use as documents for historical performance practice)
- The music of the Franco regime and of the Spanish Republican exile; music and fascism/totalitarianism
- Singing, (art) song, vocal performance practice, vocality (particularly in the Middle Ages and at the turn of the 20th century)
- Digital mapping; Digital Musicology
- Holdsworth Quinn, Ashley
Choral Culture in Early Twentieth Century Scotland: Music, Geopolitics, Community - Kitzman, Daniel Robert
(un)Sung: An Investigation into the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Opera Singers’ Artistic Identities and Creativity - Li, Wenjing
The Multiple Voices of Contemporary Chinese Mezzo-soprano: From a Handel's Opera Perspective - Pattie, Ruairidh
Private and Public: Lieder in Clara Schumann’s circle
Additional information
I am currently Head of Music.
