Graduate Student, Music
BMus (Hons), MMus, Ph.D candidate
Arts, Culture, and the Enviroment
Thesis Title: The Claviorgan - Its History and Usage
Darryl Martin
John Kitchen
About
Eleanor Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in Organology (Musical Instrument Research) at the University of Edinburgh, where she has been a student since 2003, (having previously completed both a BMus and an MMus). She has been involved in the study of instruments since her undergraduate degree, and although her main area of expertise is in the field of keyboard instrument study, she is also interested in other instruments including those of the plucked string family.
In 2007, she was awarded the inaugural Pamela Weston Scholarship (through the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain) to study the work of the 18th/19th century workshop of the clarinet maker Heinrich Grenser. As a final year undergraduate she was also awarded prizes for her contribution and dedication to the field of Early Music, and was awarded the Frederick Niecks prize for gaining the highest mark in her year for her dissertation (The History and Current Location of the Boddington-Pyne Collection of Instruments).
Although Eleanor has worked in the two EUCHMI museums on a volunteer basis for over three years, she has recently been appointed as a part-time curatorial assistant. Her current duties involve editing papers for a book of conference proceedings from the 2007 Woodwind Colloquium held at the University in honour of the donation of the Sir Nicholas Shackleton collection, at which she also delivered a paper.
As well as Organology, Eleanor is also interested in the history (and performance) of Sacred Choral Music, and undertook a short Masters project on the Reintroduction of the Requiem Mass into the Church of England after the Effects of the Oxford Movement. She is also an active church musician, having sung soprano since the age of five, and is an amateur keyboard player. Recently she has taken up the Bass Viol, and plays regularly with the University of Edinburgh's Beginners Consort under Patsy and Murray Campbell. She particularly dislikes describing herself in the third person.
Previous thesis titles:
A Discussion of the Use of Divided Accidental-Keys in Italian Strung-Keyboard instruments pre-1700 (September 2008)
The Boddington-Pyne Collection: History and Current Location (June 2007)
Contact Information
http://www.eleanorsmith.org.uk
