Prof Christopher Morris

Biography
Christopher Morris is a musicologist with research interests in opera, film music, music and mediatization, and in critical and interdisciplinary approaches to music and posthumanism. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto (BMus, MA) and the University of Leeds (PhD). He was Archivist of the Canadian Opera Company before joining University College Cork as Lecturer in Music in 1998. Christopher has been Professor of Music at Maynooth since 2013 and Head, Dept. of Music since 2014.
Publications
One strand of Christopher’s research focuses on the role of music in German culture in the early twentieth century. His book Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Culture Meaning from Wagner to Berg (Cambridge University Press, 2002) draws on critical theory, psychoanalysis and scholarship on gender and sexuality to explore the ‘invisible theatre’ of the many extended orchestral passages in post-Wagnerian opera. Modernism and the Cult of Mountains: Music, Opera, Cinema, a title in Ashgate’s Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series, was published in August 2012 (see review here). Investigating the fascination with mountains in Austro-German culture of the early twentieth century, the book shows that music played a critical role in representing and disseminating attitudes to sublime nature, not least because, at its most ideal, music was perceived to be as pure and remote as the Alpine peaks.
Christopher is author of numerous articles, chapters, reviews and review essays on topics in musical modernism, the aesthetics of music, opera after Wagner and film music. His articles have appeared in The Journal of Musicological Research, The Musical Quarterly, The Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 19th-Century Music and TDR: The Drama Review. He co-edited a special issue (‘Sound, Voice, Music’) of the peer-reviewed film studies journal Alphaville.
Christopher’s current research has centred on the impact of contemporary media technology on the production and consumption of opera, including the live broadcast of opera to cinemas. Recent publications have also sought to question some of the cherished assumptions of musicological research, including linear understandings of history, the privileged place of the author/composer, the fetishisation of live performance and the confinement of agency in performance to human participants. Christopher is Associate Editor of The Opera Quarterly.
Publications
One strand of Christopher’s research focuses on the role of music in German culture in the early twentieth century. His book Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Culture Meaning from Wagner to Berg (Cambridge University Press, 2002) draws on critical theory, psychoanalysis and scholarship on gender and sexuality to explore the ‘invisible theatre’ of the many extended orchestral passages in post-Wagnerian opera. Modernism and the Cult of Mountains: Music, Opera, Cinema, a title in Ashgate’s Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series, was published in August 2012 (see review here). Investigating the fascination with mountains in Austro-German culture of the early twentieth century, the book shows that music played a critical role in representing and disseminating attitudes to sublime nature, not least because, at its most ideal, music was perceived to be as pure and remote as the Alpine peaks.
Christopher is author of numerous articles, chapters, reviews and review essays on topics in musical modernism, the aesthetics of music, opera after Wagner and film music. His articles have appeared in The Journal of Musicological Research, The Musical Quarterly, The Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 19th-Century Music and TDR: The Drama Review. He co-edited a special issue (‘Sound, Voice, Music’) of the peer-reviewed film studies journal Alphaville.
Christopher’s current research has centred on the impact of contemporary media technology on the production and consumption of opera, including the live broadcast of opera to cinemas. Recent publications have also sought to question some of the cherished assumptions of musicological research, including linear understandings of history, the privileged place of the author/composer, the fetishisation of live performance and the confinement of agency in performance to human participants. Christopher is Associate Editor of The Opera Quarterly.
Research Interests
- music and screen media (film, video, television)
- opera (contemporary staging practices, mediatization of opera)
- music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (especially Austro-German modernism)
- aesthetics, cultural theory, music and politics
- music and posthumanism
Book
Book Chapter
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2021 | Christopher Morris; Antonio Cascelli (2021) 'Re-envisaging Music: Listening in the Visual Age' In: Introduction. Lucca : Libreria Musicale Italiana. | |
2017 | Christopher Morris (2017) 'Back from the Dead: Kubrick, Music and the Auteur' In: Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear. New York : Routledge. [Link] | |
2018 | Morris, Christopher (2018) 'The Deadness of Live Opera' In: Performing Arts in Transition: Moving between Media. Oxford and New York : Routledge. [Link] | |
2016 | Christopher Morris and Alessandra Campana (2016) 'Puccini’s Things: Media and Materials in Il trittico' In: Puccini and His World. Princeton : Princeton University Press. | |
2015 | Christopher Morris (2015) 'Die Operette und die Moderne' In: Bettina Brandl-Risi, Clemens Risi(Eds.). Kunst der Oberfläche - Operette zwischen Bravour und Banalität. Berlin : Henschel Verlag. | |
2012 | Christopher Morris (2012) ''Too Much Music': The Media of Opera' In: Nicholas Till (Eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. | |
2008 | Christopher Morris (2008) 'From Revolution to Mystic Mountains: Edmund Meisel and the Politics of Film' In: Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell(Eds.). Composing for the Screen in Germany and the USSR: Cultural Politics and Propaganda. Bloomington : Indiana University Press. | |
2006 | Christopher Morris (2006) 'Opera' In: John M. Merriman and Jay Winter(Eds.). Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe Since 1914. New York : Scribner. | |
2005 | Christopher Morris (2005) 'Richard Wagner: Opera and Music Drama' In: Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing(Eds.). German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1830-1899. Rochester : Camden House. |
Peer Reviewed Journal
Year | Publication | |
---|---|---|
2019 | Morris, Christopher (2019) 'Casting Metal: Opera Studies after Humanism'. Opera Quarterly, 35 (1):21-39. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2015 | Morris C. (2015) 'The Mute Stones Sing: Rigoletto Live from Mantua'. TDR/The Drama Review, 59 (4):51-66. [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
2014 | Christopher Morris (2014) 'Figaro Dances, Opera Dances: Response to Rebecca Schneider'. Opera Quarterly, 30 . [Full-Text] | |
2011 | Christopher Morris (2011) 'Wagnervideo'. Opera Quarterly, 26 :235-255. [Full-Text] | |
2010 | Christopher Morris (2010) 'Digital Diva: Opera on Video'. Opera Quarterly, 26 :96-119. [Full-Text] | |
2003 | Christopher Morris (2003) 'Review Essay:'Songs of the Living Dead''. Nineteenth Century Music, 27 :74-93. [Full-Text] | |
2002 | Christopher Morris (2002) ''Alienated From His Own Being': Nietzsche, Bayreuth and the Problem of Identity'. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 127 :85-116. [Full-Text] | |
2001 | Christopher Morris (2001) ''Sympathy with Death': Narcissism and Nostalgia in the Post-Wagnerian Orchestra'. Musical Quarterly, 85 :85-116. [Full-Text] | |
1996 | Christopher Morris (1996) 'What the Conductor Saw: Sex, Fantasy, and the Orchestra in Strauss's Feuersnot'. Journal of Musicological Research, 16 :83-109. |
Book Review
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