Dr Tamsin Alexander

Staff details

Position

Senior Lecturer

Department

Music

Email

t.alexander (@gold.ac.uk)

Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups

Centre for Russian Music

Tamsin is a musicologist, specialising in European musical culture in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I’m Director of Studies and Head of the Centre for Russian Music. My research examines intersections of music, politics and technology in the 19th and 20th centuries. I have worked on the international spread of Russian opera, considering how, why and in what shapes this repertoire moved. Most recently, that research has been published in Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music Review and Musiktheorie. I am also interested in representations of industrial noise in music and film of the Soviet Union, and have shared these ideas on BBC Radio 3. Currently, I’m investigating music's sensory histories, with a focus on the ways in which changing lighting technologies shaped musical culture in 19th-century London.

Academic qualifications

Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, PhD 2015
Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, MPhil 2009
BMus (hons), King's College, London 2008

Research interests

Cultural history; sensory history; nineteenth-century musical and audiovisual cultures; opera; transnationalism and cosmopolitanism; music and politics; Soviet Union; Russia; France; Britain; Czech lands; music and technology

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Alexander, Tamsin. 2012. 'An “Extraordinary Engagement”: A Russian Opera Company in Britain, 1888’. In: Anthony Cross, ed. A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture. Open Book Publishers.

Article

Alexander, Tamsin. 2023. Cosmopolitan Connections: Yevgeny Onegin as realist drame lyrique in Nice. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 20(2), pp. 335-357. ISSN 1479-4098

Alexander, Tamsin and Helmers, Rutger. 2023. Tsarist Russia and the Musical World: Introduction. Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 20(2), pp. 253-260. ISSN 1479-4098

Alexander, Tamsin. 2019. Review: Rimsky-Korsakov and his World. Ed. by Marina Frolova-Walker. Music & Letters, 100(4), pp. 733-735. ISSN 0027-4224

Broadcast

Alexander, Tamsin. 2017. Mosolov: Ten Artists that Shook the World.

Show/Exhibition

Alexander, Tamsin; Kondrashina, Evgeniya and Dixon, Gavin. 2018. The Centre for Russian Music: Inside the Collections A Barbican Music Library free exhibition. In: "The Centre for Russian Music: Inside the Collections", Barbican Music Library, London, United Kingdom, 12 January - 27 March 2018.

Thesis

Alexander, Tamsin. 2015. Tales of Cultural Transfer: Russian Opera Abroad, 1866-1906. Doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge

PhD Supervision

I welcome applications for PhD projects relating to 19th/20th-century music and musical culture, Russian music, music of the Soviet Union, and opera. I have supervised topics on the Soviet classical recording industry, Italian opera in 19th-century London, and Rachmaninov's piano music. I am currently working with students on the production history of Prokofiev's Fiery Angel, and on Jewish composers in the Netherlands under the Nazi occupation.