Mervyn Cooke
Professor, Faculty of Arts
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Biography
Mervyn was educated at Dover Grammar School for Boys, the Royal Academy of Music, and King's College, Cambridge, where he held an Open Scholarship and subsequently completed a PhD thesis on Asian influences in the music of Benjamin Britten. He was for six years Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before moving to Nottingham to take up a lectureship in Music in 1993. At the University of Nottingham he has served as both Head of the Department of Music and Vice-Dean (Undergraduate) of the Faculty of Arts.
Expertise Summary
Life and music of Benjamin Britten; film and television music; jazz; twentieth-century opera; traditional music of Japan and Indonesia; Frank Martin; Stephen Sondheim; Astor Piazzolla and tango nuevo; composition; performance (keyboard); conducting
Teaching Summary
At undergraduate and Master's levels, recent teaching has included modules in film music, music on stage and screen, jazz, fusion and crossover styles, composition, dissertation and research… read more
Research Summary
Mervyn's primary research interests are the music of Benjamin Britten, film music, and jazz. He is the author of a handbook on Britten's War Requiem (CUP, 1996) and the monograph Britten and the Far… read more
At undergraduate and Master's levels, recent teaching has included modules in film music, music on stage and screen, jazz, fusion and crossover styles, composition, dissertation and research techniques.
At postgraduate level, PhD and MPhil theses supervised have included projects devoted to Britten, film music, videogame music, jazz, early twentieth-century music, and composition.
Applications for PG research places are warmly welcomed in any of the following subject areas: Benjamin Britten; early twentieth-century music; film music; jazz; and music on stage and screen (including topics relating to film, theatre, radio, television, opera, and ballet, with a special interest in stage and film treatments of Shakespeare's plays).
Current Research
Mervyn's primary research interests are the music of Benjamin Britten, film music, and jazz. He is the author of a handbook on Britten's War Requiem (CUP, 1996) and the monograph Britten and the Far East (The Boydell Press, 1998), and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (CUP, 1999); he also co-edited (with Philip Reed) an Opera Handbook on Billy Budd (CUP, 1993) and worked for The Britten-Pears Foundation as co-editor (with Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed) of the multi-volume edition of Britten's correspondence, of which the sixth and final instalment was published in 2012. As part of Britten's centenary celebrations in 2013, he organised and performed (as pianist) in premiere recordings of two of Britten's unpublished theatre scores from the 1930s, which were released on the CD Britten to America, an NMC disc nominated for a Grammy Award in 2014. He edited The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera (CUP, 2005), to which he contributed a chapter on opera and film. He has authored two illustrated books on the history of jazz for Thames & Hudson -- The Chronicle of Jazz and Jazz (World of Art) -- and co-edited with David Horn The Cambridge Companion to Jazz (2003). His books on jazz and film music have variously been translated into French, German, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Chinese and Korean. He is the author of the New Grove article on film music, and has written book chapters on the film music of Dave Grusin, Duke Ellington, George Fenton, Bernard Herrmann, and John Williams. His substantial A History of Film Music was published by CUP in 2008, and his The Hollywood Film Music Reader by OUP in 2010. His most recent books are The Cambridge Companion to Film Music (co-edited with Fiona Ford; CUP, 2016) and an analytical monograph on the ECM recordings of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny (OUP, 2017). His chapters in other books include studies of music in ocean documentaries, Britten's collaborations with his librettists, and music in the British war film. He is also the co-editor (with Christopher R. Wilson) of The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music, to be published by OUP in 2021.