Staff
Professor Bennett Zon, DPhil (Oxon), MMus (Edin), BMus (Michigan), HIgher Education Teaching Certificate (Hull)
Contact Professor Bennett Zon (email at bennett.zon@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Professor Zon has published The English Plainchant Revival (OUP, 1999); Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (Ashgate, 2000); and Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain (University of Rochester Press, 2007), a monograph funded in part by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This latter examines the influence of anthropological theories of developmentalism, evolution, individualism and cultural inscription on British perceptions of non-Western music in the long nineteenth century.
Professor Zon is General Editor of the Ashgate book series Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain and in 1997 founded the biennial conference on that topic. He is editor of Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 2 (Ashgate, 2002), and co-editor of Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 1 (Ashgate 1999); Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 3; Nineteenth-Century Music Studies: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference (Ashgate, 2002); and the upcoming Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780-1940: Portrayal of the East (Ashgate, 2007). He has contributed to numerous articles to the second edition of New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Dictionary of National Biography, the Grolier Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era, the Dictionary of 19th Century Journalism, and the New Dictionary of Hymnology.
Professor Zon is founder and General Editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and is founding Director of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Music, Durham University. He is also a founding owner of the Nineteenth-Century JISCmail. Zon is also an active composer, with recent commissions including Military Fanfare (for the King's Division Waterloo Band); Gothic Fragment (for the John Turner Ensemble), and Litany of the Sea (for the Hull Philharmonic Orchestra). He is currently working on a piece called Repercussions, for brass band. He has had numerous performances in America, England, and Europe, both live and on radio, and has been recorded by the Gentlemen of St John's College, Cambridge.
Research Interests
- Music theology
- Nineteenth- and twentieth-century historiography and aesthetics with particular interest in music in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain
- Post-Reformation chant and liturgical music
Selected Publications
Books: authored
- Zon, BM. (2007). Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press.
Books: edited
- Clayton, M & Zon, BM (2007). Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s: Portrayal of the East. Ashgate.
- Horton P & Zon BM (2006). Nineteenth-Century Music Studies 3. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Aldershot.
- Dibble J & Zon BM (2002). Nineteenth-Century Music Studies 2. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate.
- Samson J & Zon BM (2002). Nineteenth-Century Music: Selected Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Edited works: contributions
- Zon, Bennett (2010). Du Grand Homme au survivant le plus apte. Renommée, recapitulation et survie: génie wagnérien et concepts victoriens. In Musique et évolution. Deliège, Irène Vitouch, Oliver & Ladinig, Olivia Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga. 335-353.
Essays in edited volumes
- Zon, Bennett (2012). 'Spiritual' Selection: Joseph Goddard and the Music Theology of Evolution. In Music and Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Clarke, Martin V. Ashgate. 215-236.
- Zon, Bennett. (2010). Histories of British music and the Land Without Music: National identity and the idea of the hero. In Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell Sources, Style, Performance, Historiography. Hornby, Emma Hornby. & Maw, David. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. 311-324.
- Zon, Bennett (2010). Victorian Anti-Semitism and the Origin of Gregorian Chant. In Renewal and Resistance: Catholic Church Music from the 1850s to Vatican II. Collins, Paul Oxford: Peter Lang. 99-119.
- Zon, BM (2007). '"Violent passions" and "inhuman excess": Simplicity and the representation of non-Western music in nineteenth-century British travel literature'. In Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s Portrayal of the East. Clayton, M & Zon, BM Aldershot: Ashgate. 209-235.
- Zon, Bennett. (2006). "From 'incomprehensibility' to 'meaning': Transcription and Representation of Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology and Ethnomusicology". In Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Ninteenth-Century British Music. Cowgill, Rachel. & Rushton, Julian. Aldershot: Ashgate. 185-199.
- Zon BM (2006). From 'Very Acute and Plausible' to 'Curiously Misinterpreted': Sir William Jones's 'On the Musical Modes of the Hindus' (1792) and its Reception in Later Musical Treatises. In Romantic Representations of British India. Franklin, Michael London: Routledge. 197-219.
- Zon BM (2002). Creation/Evolution: Metaphoric Syntheses in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Music Historiography in Britain. In Nineteenth-Century Music: Selected Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference. Samson J & Zon BM Aldershot: Ashgate. 314-331.
Monographs
- Zon BM (2000). Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology. Aldershot: Ashgate.
- Zon BM (1999). The English Plainchant Revival. Oxford University Press.
Articles: magazine
- Zon, Bennett (2010). The Evolution of C. Hubert H. Parry’s Evolution of the Art of Music. Victorian Review 35(1): 68-72.
Journal papers: academic
- Zon, B (2009). ‘From great man to fittest survivor: Reputation, recapitulation and survival in Victorian concepts of Wagner’s genius’. Musicae Scientiae 13(2 Supplement): 415-445.
- Zon, B (2009). '"Loathsome London": Ruskin, Morris, and Henry Davey's History of English Music (1895)'. Victorian Literature and Culture 37(2): 359-375.
- Zon, Bennett (2009). C. Hubert H. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music (1893/96). Victorian Review 35(1): 68-72.
- Zon, BM (2006). ''More than the sum of the life of its several parts': Individual differences in the psychology and ethnomusicology of C. S. Myers’. Nineteenth-Century Contexts
- Zon BM (2006). 'Disorienting Race: Humanizing the Musical Savage and the Rise of British Ethnomusicology'. Nineteenth-Century Music Review 3(1): 25-43.
- Zon BM (2005). 'Mahler's Liszt and the Hermeneutics of Chant'. Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 46(3-4): 383-402.