John Morehen
Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Arts
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Biography
Professor John Morehen (b.Gloucester, 1941) was educated at The Crypt Grammar School, Gloucester (1953-56), and at Clifton College, Bristol (1956-60, Governor since 1993). On leaving Clifton he was awarded a scholarship at The Royal School of Church Music, Addington Palace (1960/61). He went up to New College, Oxford, in 1961 as holder of the 'Margaret Bridges Organ Scholarship', graduating with First Class Honours in 1964. From 1964-67 he pursued doctoral research at King's College, Cambridge, serving concurrently as assistant to Martindale Sidwell at the RAF Church of St. Clement Danes, Strand, and at Hampstead Parish Church. His research was briefly interrupted in 1966 when he spent a semester at The College of Church Musicians at the National Episcopal Cathedral, Washington DC, as holder of the 'Ralph H. Lane Memorial Scholarship'. In 1967/8 he returned to Washington DC as joint-Lecturer at the College of Church Musicians and at American University. He returned to England to become Sub-Organist at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle (1968-72). In 1973 he was appointed Lecturer in Music at The University of Nottingham, becoming Professor of Music in 1989 and the inaugural Head of the School of Humanities from 1998-2001. In 1979, during research leave from Nottingham, he was Adjunct Lecturer at The State University of New York (Binghamton).
As an organ recitalist, lecturer, examiner and adjudicator John Morehen has toured Denmark, Sweden, the USA, Canada and Australia. He has made over 100 radio and television broadcasts in the UK and abroad. He was Organist to the United Grand Lodge of England in 1983-4 and 1992-94, and Organist to Supreme Grand Chapter from 1994-96. In 1991 John Morehen was appointed a JP for Nottinghamshire. In the City of London, of which he is a Freeman, he is a Liveryman (and member of the Court of Assistants) of the Worshipful Company of Musicians; he also represents the Musicians' Company on the Court of the City University. He has served as: Adviser to The Leverhulme Trust and to The Humanities Research Board (now The Arts and Humanities Research Council); President of the East Midlands Choirs Charitable Trust (1993-2000); Subject Assessor for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (1994/5); UK representative at the European Pilot Project for Evaluating Quality in Higher Education (Brussels, 1995); Panel Member, Humanities Research Board (1994-97); Member of the Advisory Committee of Arts and Humanities Data Service (Performing Arts) (1995-2003); Adviser to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (1996-2000); Member, Incorporated Society of Musicians Executive (1989-97), and Warden of the ISM's Education Section (1995/6). He was appointed Director of Studies for the Fellowship programme of the Guild of Church Musicians in September 2002, and is a member of the Guild's Council and Academic Board. He has served as External Examiner at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level at fifteen UK universities, and was External Examiner to the University of Malta from 2001-2006; he is also an examiner for The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. John Morehen is a Past President of The Incorporated Society of Musicians, the UK's professional association for musicians and music teachers. John and his wife Marie (a graduate of The New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, and American University, Washington DC) have two children - Simon (32) and Catherine (30) - and two grandchildren. John's main recreations are collecting antiques (especially English domestic silver), genealogy, enjoying country life, and nostalgia. He is a member of The Athenaeum Club.
Expertise Summary
John Morehen is an authority on music of the 16th and 17th centuries. He has been involved in several prestigious editorial projects, including Early English Church Music (Assistant Editor, 1972-80; General Editor, 1980-95; editor of vols 19, 38 & 41), The English Madrigalists (editor of vols 37, 40 & 41), The Byrd Edition (editor of volume 14), Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance (editor of vols 122 & 127), and Musica Britannica, (member of the Editorial Committee since 2003, and co-editor of Thomas Ravenscroft's Pammelia, Deuteromelia and Melismata) (forthcoming). He is the editor of English Choral Practice, 1400-1650 (CUP, 1995), which deals with performance-related issues connected with English choral foundations. He has written widely on 16th- and 17th-century music, and has contributed extensively to (2001) and The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). John Morehen's latest writings, published in vols 11 and 12 of The Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, are concerned with music printing practices in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and, in particular, with the work of Edward Allde and Thomas Snodham. His ongoing research centres on the music prints of John Windet. His most recently-published article - on the pronunciation of the word 'Alleluia' in 16th- and 17th-century church music - appeared in the John Donne Journal (vol.25) in September 2006. John Morehen has given presentations on computer applications in musicology at conferences held in Nottingham (1979), Orsay (1981), Paris (1984), The Hague (1986), Toronto (1989), and Washington DC (1993). He is an Editorial Advisor to the journal Computing in Musicology.