Jeremy Coleman
PhD Student
Email jeremy.coleman@kcl.ac.uk
Music Department
King's College London
Strand Campus
London
WC2R 2LS
Thesis Title
Wagner and Transnationalism
Funding
AHRC Full Scholarship
Supervisor
John Deathridge
Second Supervisor
Roger Parker
Research
Richard Wagner’s German nationalism and his contribution to the construction of German national identity in the nineteenth century are familiar notions to us all, widely entertained as much in popular imagination as in scholarship. A neglected subject in Wagner studies, by contrast, is that of Transnationalism – defined as having interests extending beyond national bounds or frontiers. My doctoral research explores various issues of transnationalism pertaining to Wagner in his own lifetime. Wagner’s transnationalism is manifested on many levels and governed by many different motivations – by turns pragmatic and self-promotional, ideological and idealistic, itinerant and touristic. My two main foci are: the ‘construction’ of foreign (European) countries, particularly Italy, in Wagner’s imagination; and Wagner’s ambition to promote his works abroad and the important role played by Wagner’s publishers in this respect. Conversely I examine case studies in the international reception of Wagner’s works, considering in particular the way in which the dissemination of his works was interpreted by commentators in nationalist or transnationalist terms. While my study is partly a challenge to the prevailing historiographical view of Wagner’s German nationalism, it seeks at the same time to show how Wagner’s German national identity itself was constructed dialectically, out of a tension with the national Other.
Biography
Jeremy graduated with BA Hons in Music from Clare College, Cambridge in 2010. There he held a Cambridge University Instrumental Award Scholarship on Piano from 2007 to 2009, and received an Honorary Scholarship in 2008 and the Royalton Kisch Prize in Academic Music in 2010, both from Clare College. Jeremy continued his studies at Clare College to graduate level, passing the MPhil in Musicology with Distinction in 2011. The subject of his thesis was musica in Medieval England (full title: ‘The Early Transmission and Reception of Boethian Music Theory in Medieval England’). Jeremy was the 2011 Bayreuth Scholar of the Wagner Society of Scotland, in which capacity he attended a week of performances at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in August of that year. He is also a composer and pianist (ABRSM Diploma in Piano Performance, 2007).
Teaching Portfolio
University of Cambridge, Part IB, ‘Wagner’s Ring’, 2011-12.
Publications
Contributions to The Wagner Encyclopaedia (forthcoming 2013), edited by Nicholas Vazsonyi. Entries include: ‘Stage works, incomplete’; ‘Projects’; ‘Lost works’; ‘Breitkopf & Härtel’.
Conferences
Wagner Society of Scotland (at the Edinburgh Society of Musicians): 45-minute paper entitled ‘“So verstand ich erst selbst meinen ‘Wotan’”; Or, A God in the Twilight of the Ring’, 13.11.2011.
Clare Research Symposium (Clare College, Cambridge): fifteen-minute paper on MPhil research topic (see above), 7.3.2011.