Stephen Banfield

Stephen David Banfield(born 1951) is a musicologist, music historian and retired academic. He wasElgar Professor of Musicat theUniversity of Birminghamfrom 1992 to 2003, and thenStanley Hugh Badock Professor of Musicat theUniversity of Bristolfrom 2003 to his retirement at the end of 2012; he has since been anemeritusprofessor at Bristol.

Biography

Banfield was educated atClare College, Cambridge,St John's College, Oxford,andHarvard Universitywhere he was aFrank Knox Fellow.HisDPhilwas awarded by theUniversity of Oxfordin 1979 for histhesis"Solo song in England from 1900 to 1940: Critical studies of the late flowering of a romantic genre".

In 1978, he was appointed to alectureshipatKeele University,where he was later promoted to senior lecturer in 1988. He remained there until his appointment at Birmingham in 1992. He was head of the school of performance at Birmingham between 1992 and 1997, and Birmingham's department of music from 1996 to 1998; he was also head of the School of Arts at Bristol in 2006 and from 2010 to 2012.While at Bristol he foundedCHOMBEC,the Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth, to encourage and provide a focal point for research into the history of music in the British Empire, in Britain, and within the West Country.Some of the fruits of this activity emerged in 2018 with the publication of hisMusic in the West Country(2018), described as "the first regional history of music in England".

Banfield's comprehensive, two volume study of early twentieth century English song, first published in 1985, is notable for its incorporation of both literary and musical scholarship alongside a performance perspective.In 1997 Banfield was commissioned by theFinzi Trustto write the first full length biography ofGerald Finzi.For the BBC, Banfield wrote and presented a four part broadcast series on the neglected tradition of British orchestral light music,The Light Brigade,in August 1995.He organized a revival ofGranville Bantock's hour-long orchestral song cycleSapphoat Birmingham in 1996.

His work also includes in-depth studies of the American musical theatre composersJerome KernandStephen Sondheim.While at Birmingham he orchestrated from the existing piano scores Sondheim's first (and then unperformed) musicalSaturday Night,holding a study day presentation of excerpts in 1994, advising theBridewell Theatre's world premiere in 1997, and staging a full production at the University in 1998.

Selected publications

• Sensibility and English Song: Critical Studies of the Early 20th Century(Cambridge University Press,1985).
• Sondheim's Broadway Musicals(University of Michigan Press,1993).
• (Editor)The Blackwell History of Music in Britain,vol. 6 (Blackwell,1995).
• Gerald Finzi: An English Composer(Faber and Faber,1997).
• 'England: art and commercial music' (2001), (10,000 word essay inGrove Music Online)
• 'Albion Attractions',review,The Musical Times,Vol. 143, No. 1881 (Winter, 2002), pp. 66-69 (4 pages)
• Jerome Kern,Yale Broadway Masters (Yale University Press,2006).
• The Sounds of Stonehenge(Archaeopress,2009).
• (Co-edited withNicholas Temperley)Music and the Wesleys(University of Illinois Press,2010).
• Music in the West Country: Social and Cultural History Across an English Region(Boydell,2018).