I am in the final weeks of drafting and revising my DPhil thesis before submission here in Oxford – an exciting but at times gruelling experience! I am very much looking forward to completing this project and moving on to a new job in the autumn.
In late July I presented remotely at the biennial conference of the North American British Music Studies Association in Illinois. I was pleased to learn recently that I was recognised as runner-up for the Nicholas Temperley Student Paper Prize.
The judges made the following kind comments about my presentation, which was entitled ‘Diligence, Discipline, and Time: Training Military Musicians during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’ and was based on material from one of my thesis chapters.
“Eamonn’s paper was an impressive piece of historical research. He consulted memoirs, newspaper write-ups, and extensive archival research to develop and support an argument that essentially turns previous research on its head, challenging the established view of the Georgian military’s instrumental instruction as disorganized and incompetent. He argues cogently that this characterization is far from accurate, and that not only were the military’s efforts efficient and comprehensive, but in several respects they anticipated curricular developments in the civilian music professions.”
1812 and all that 