Professor Richard Wistreich

MA (Cantab), MA (Music), PhD

Research Professor

Richard Wistreich is a scholar, teacher and singer, with wide-ranging research interests and in particular, vocal and ensemble performance in Europe between 1450 and 1800. He has published on many aspects of the cultural history of singing, and travels widely to talk about his work to both music specialists and at interdisciplinary conferences. Richard was the RCM’s Director of Research from 2014-2020. He is currently Chair of the Advisory Board of the Warburg Institute, London University School of Advanced Studies and was until 2022 Honorary Chair of the Society for Renaissance Studies.

Recent publications include The Cambridge History of Sixteenth Century Music and Voicing Text 1500–1700, a special issue of the Huntington Library Quarterly. Current projects include a monograph on the history of the early modern voice and ‘Materialising Musical Instruments’, together with the RCM’s Professor Gabriele Rossi Rognoni, funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.

Richard has also had a long and distinguished career as a singer of both early and contemporary music. He has made concert, radio and television appearances in concerts and opera worldwide, and recorded more than 100 CDs. In 1989 he co-founded the ensemble Red Byrd with John Potter, dedicated to performing both old and new music, often side-by-side in the same concerts.

Selected publications

Fenlon I & Wistreich R (eds.) (2018), The Cambridge History of Sixteenth Century Music, Cambridge University Press [ISBN 9780521195942]. Includes three chapters by R Wistreich: ‘Introduction’, ‘Music and war’, and ‘The lives of musicians.’

Wistreich R (2017), ‘Inclosed in this tabernacle of flesh’: body, soul, and the singing voice, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 8, [LINK].

Richards J & Wistreich R (2016), The anatomy of the Renaissance voice, in A Whitehead & A Woods (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities (pp. 276-293), Edinburgh University Press [ISBN 9781474400046].

Wistreich R (2015), High, middle and low: singing Monteverdi, in D Fabris & M K Murata (eds.) Passaggio in Italia: Music on the Grand tour in the Seventeenth Century, Brepols [ISBN 978-2-503-53568-5].

Wistreich R (2013), Using the music: musical materials and expert singers’ practices in Monteverdi’s time, Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis, Amadeus [ISBN 978-3-905786-16-3].

Wistreich R (2011), Music books and sociability, Il Saggiatore Musicale, 18, 230-246.

Wistreich R (ed.) (2011), The Baroque Composers: Monteverdi, Ashgate [ISBN 9780754629023].

Wistreich R (2007), Warrior, Courtier, Singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance, Routledge (reprint 2016) [ISBN 9780754654148].

Faculties / departments: Research