Alan Maddox is an Associate Investigator (2012-15) at The University of Sydney. He holds an Honours degree in international politics and a PhD in musicology from the University of Sydney. He also trained as a singer, working as a tenor with Opera Australia for several years, and as a freelance performer in Australia and the UK. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he teaches music history and coordinates the undergraduate Musicology specialization. He is a member of the National Committee of the Musicological Society of Australia, an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and consultant musicologist to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. His main research interests are in early modern Italian vocal music, and Australian colonial music. Recent publications include articles on rhetoric in 18th-century opera seria and Italian sacred music, and on music and prison reform in the 19th-century penal colony on Norfolk Island.
Contact
alan.maddox@sydney.edu.au
The University of Sydney Staff Profile
Research
Where passion speaks: The performance of emotion in eighteenth-century Italian vocal music (2015)
Musical affect at the intersection between the sacred and secular realms (2014)
Musical emotion in the sacred sphere (2013)
The performance of affect in early modern opera (2012)
Publications
Articles and Book Chapters
Maddox, A. ‘Performing Emotions’. In Sources for the History of Emotions: A Guide, edited by K. Barclay, S. Crozier-De Rosa and P. N. Stearns, pp. 127–42. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2020.
'Francesco Antonio Calegari’s Passion Recitatives, Padua, 1718'. Barocco padano e musici francescani: L’apporto dei maestri Conventuali. Atti del XIV convengno internazionale sul barocco Padano, Padova, 1–3 July, 2013. Padua: Antiquæ Musicæ Italicæ Studiosi–Como and Centro Studi Antoniani, 2014: 499–513.
'Recitative and the Rhetoric of Speech and Song in Andrea Perrucci’s Dell'arte rappresentativa (1699)'. In A Musicological Gift: Libro Homenaje for Jane Morlet Hardie, edited by Kathleen Nelson and Maricarmen Gómez, pp. 167–184. Lions Bay, Canada: Institute of Medieval Music, 2013.
'The rhetorical Virtues of Delivery and the performance of Italian recitative'. In re-Visions: Proceedings of the New Zealand Musicological Society and the Musicological Society of Australia Joint Conference hosted by the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand between 2nd and 4th December 2010, edited by Marian Poole, pp. 132–40. Dunedin: New Zealand Music Industry Centre, University of Otago, 2013.
'Rhetoric and the Performance of Recitative'. In Singing Emotions: Voices from History, edited by Jane Davidson and Rebekah Prince, pp. 30–34. Perth: Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, 2012.
'On the machinery of moral improvement: music and prison reform in the penal colony on Norfolk Island'. Musicology Australia 34.2. (2012): 185–205.
Review of S. Owens and B. Reul (eds) 'Music at German Courts, 1715–1760: Changing Artistic Priorities'. Musicology Australia 34.1 (December 2012):125–27.
'The performance of affect in recitativo semplice'. Music Performance Research, 5. (March 2012): 49–58.
'Rhetoric as a Guide to Vocal Timbre and Sonority in Italian Recitative'. In Musical Islands: Exploring Connections between Music, Place and Research, edited by Elizabeth Mackinlay, Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Katelyn Barney, pp. 381–403. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
'Singing to the Ear and to the Heart: Performance Practice and the Rhetorical Tradition in Early and Mid Eighteenth-Century Italian Vocal Music'. In Passion, Affekt und Leidenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit, proceedings of 11. Jahrestreffen des Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreises für Barockforschung, 2–5 April 2003, pp. 829-836. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005.
‘"Delle cognizioni richieste per recitar bene in teatro": Some seventeenth and eighteenth-century sources on rhetorical delivery, and their implications for the performance of Italian recitative'. In Music & Locality: towards a local discourse in music. (Proceedings of MSA / NZMS conference, Wellington, NZ, November 2003).
'Music Education in the Late Baroque'. The Studio [Journal of the Music Teachers’ Association of NSW], 9.1 (February 2003).
'Music Education in the Time of Bach'. Music Forum 7.3 (February–March 2001).
Other
Alan Maddox (tenor) and Giuseppe Zangari (guitar), 'Pasticci in Salotto'. Concert in SCM Cocktail Hour Series, 20 August 2013, including first modern performances of three unpublished early 19thC songs for voice and guitar and historically informed performances of other songs from the period.
ERA-approved Non-Traditional Research Output.
Program notes for all subscription concerts by The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, 2001-6.
CD reviews for Early Music and Music Forum on a wide range of repertoire including operas by Vivaldi and Alessandro Scarlatti, 17th-century viol music, oratorios and vocal chamber music, 18th-century instrumental music, 19th-century Australian music, 19th-century opera, and songs by contemporary Australian women composers.
Invited lectures
‘"The humanizing powers of music": musica e "miglioramento morale" in una prigione australiana coloniale'. Scuola di dottorato in Storia e critica dei beni artistici, musicali e dello spettacolo, Università degli Studi di Padova, 4 December 2012.
'Retorica e prassi esecutiva del recitativo teatrale del primo settecento'. Scuola di dottorato in Storia e critica dei beni artistici, musicali e dello spettacolo, Università degli Studi di Padova, 13 November 2012.
The University of Western Australia, Distinguished International Guest Lecture Series. '“A vivid imitation in the theatre": Andrea Perrucci’s treatise on the rhetoric of speech and song (1699)'. 7 August 2012.
'Rhetorical Decorum and the Performance of Emotion in Early Modern Opera'. The Medieval and Early Modern Centre, The University of Sydney, 14 October 2011.
'"To vary the voice … according to what reason and nature seem to require", Or, how (not) to sing recitative'. The Gordon Athol Anderson Memorial Lecture, University of New England, 23 November 2009.
'Captain Maconochie’s Seraphine: music, social control and prison reform in the penal colony on Norfolk Island'. Sydney Conservatorium of Music Public Lecture Series, 3 October 2005.
Public education and talks
Many invited lectures for community organisations including Northside Opera Study Group, The Friends of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Over 300 pre-concert talks for The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Musica Viva.