Matthew Cheung Salisbury

I am Lecturer in Music at University and Worcester Colleges, Oxford and a member of the Faculty of Music in the University of Oxford. I am also the National Liturgy and Worship Adviser of the Church of England and, during the Medieval Convent Drama project, visiting chercheur senior (FNS) in English philology at the Université de Fribourg.

I have broad interests in the liturgy and sacred music of the late Middle Ages. My research explores the texts and plainsong found in the extant sources of the medieval liturgy, with particular emphasis on transmission and reception.

I am currently working on the texts and chants found in the manuscript and printed sources of the Sanctorale (Proper of Saints) according to the liturgical Use of Sarum, the dominant pattern of liturgy, music, and ritual in the south of late medieval England.

I am also editing and analysing newly composed liturgical offices in late medieval English MSS. Of particular interest at present are the four Marian offices (for the Purification, Annunciation, Assumption, and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary) written by the 12th century cleric Ralph Niger (Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 15).

I am also interested in the concurrent revivals of medieval music, liturgy, and architecture in the late nineteenth-century English Church.

See my books:

· (as translator) Medieval Latin Liturgy in English Translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2017);

· The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015);

· Hear My Voice, O God: functional dimensions of Christian worship (Collegeville: MN: Liturgical Press, 2014).

An edition of the music for Lady Mass according to the Use of Sarum is forthcoming from Early English Church Music (Stainer and Bell for the British Academy), as the first volume in the series dedicated to chant. I am currently writing Worship in Medieval England, an invited contribution to MIP’s Past Imperfect series.

Other interests include

· Medievalism and Music & Theology, for which I have co-convened seminars;

· theory, especially theories of the archive and of Austinian performativity;

· the relation between written sources and the performed reality they represent;

· late medieval and modern ecclesiastical history; and

· bibliography, especially in its connexions with the ‘digital humanities’ movement.

Recently I worked with sound artists and the National Trust to produce a sound installation which immerses visitors to the stately home The Vyne in the sounds of the medieval liturgy.

From 2012 to 2014 I helped to lead Fragments: music, movement, and memory in a Borders landscape, in collaboration with Historic Scotland and Red Field Arts. This was an arts project, funded by Creative Scotland, which used a fragment of a twelfth-century musical manuscript to engage with contemporary composers, artists, dancers, and musicians.

I also contributed to the Experience of Worship project at Bangor University. See the Sarum Customary Online, for part of which I was responsible, and the main Project website.

I am a trustee of the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a director of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music.

Prospective students may want to find out more about studying Music at Univ and Oxford more generally.

Post: University College, Oxford, OX1 4BH | Email: matthew.cheung-salisbury at music.ox.ac.uk | Telephone: by email request