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Professor Richard Rastall

Professor Richard Rastall

  • Position: Emeritus Professor of Music
  • 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.

Publications

  • 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