Amelie RoperSince graduating from King’s College London with a BMus and MMus in music, I have pursued a career in librarianship specialising in music and rare books. I completed an initial traineeship at the London Library before studying for the MA in Librarianship and Information Studies at University College London. After qualifying, I held posts at the British Library and Royal College of Music, and joined Christ’s College Cambridge as College Librarian in September 2011.
Supervised by Professor Miriam Foot, my UCL MA dissertation examined the trade in music publications at the Frankfurt book fair with particular reference to the catalogues produced by Augsburg bookseller Georg Willer. A continuing interest in sixteenth-century German music publishing, combined with my experience of historical bibliography and cataloguing in my everyday work led me to pursue a PhD part time and distance learning at St Andrew’s in conjunction with Universal Short Title Catalogue project.
My doctoral research focusses on the culture of music printing in sixteenth-century Augsburg. As well as being a lively centre for the book trade, Augsburg was the first place north of the Alps to print mensural music. My thesis will examine the production of different printed music formats over the century (partbooks and choirbooks, pamphlets and songsheets and books about music) together with their relationship to the book trade.
Thesis title
The Culture of Music Printing in Sixteenth-Century Augsburg: Performing, Learning and Trading
Supervised by Professor Andrew Pettegree
Publications
Academic Papers