Professor Richard Rastall
- Position: Emeritus Professor (unpaid)
- Areas of expertise: Minstrels and minstrelsy in late medieval England Music in early drama Domestic chamber music in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods
- Email: G.R.Rastall@leeds.ac.uk
Profile
I read music at Christ's College Cambridge, followed by the MusB in Composition and Musicology; then I took a doctorate at Manchester University. I came to Leeds in 1967 as an Assistant Lecturer, and retired in 2006 as Professor of Historical Musicology.
Among my senior administrative posts, I was Dean of Learning and Teaching for the Faculty of Arts and of Performance, Visual Arts and Communications. Formerly a conductor of the LUUMS Chorus and Chamber Choir, and of the Leeds Guild of Singers, I now play tenor viol in the Manton Consort, which I founded in 1992. As a member of the performance group Trio Literati I perform regularly as both an actor and a pianist. I am also the founding Chairman of the Leeds Baroque Choir and Orchestra. I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the oldest of the learned societies.
My publications include:
The Notation of Western Music. London, J.M Dent, 1983; 2nd edn. 1998, and London, Travis and Emery, 2009.
Music in Early English Religious Drama 2 vols. Cambridge, D. S. Brewer.
I The Heaven Singing (1996), II Minstrels Playing (2002)
(Ed) The Secular Latin Motet in the Renaissance. Lampeter, Edwin Mellen Press, 2010.
(Ed) John Milton the Elder: Complete Works (2 vols). Antico Edition, 2011.
(Ed) Martin Peerson: Complete Works (6 vols). Antico Edition, 2003-2019.
Research interests
Minstrels and minstrelsy in late medieval England
Music in early drama
Domestic chamber music in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods