Prof Christopher Morris
Biography
Christopher Morris is a musicologist with research interests in opera, film music, music and mediatization, and in critical and interdisciplinary approaches to music and posthumanism. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto (BMus, MA) and the University of Leeds (PhD). He was Archivist of the Canadian Opera Company before joining University College Cork as Lecturer in Music in 1998. Christopher has been Professor of Music at Maynooth since 2013 and was Head, Dept. of Music from 2014 to 2019.
Publications
One strand of Christopher’s research focuses on the role of music in German culture in the early twentieth century. His book Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Culture Meaning from Wagner to Berg (Cambridge University Press, 2002) draws on critical theory, psychoanalysis and scholarship on gender and sexuality to explore the ‘invisible theatre’ of the many extended orchestral passages in post-Wagnerian opera. Modernism and the Cult of Mountains: Music, Opera, Cinema, a title in Ashgate’s Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series, was published in August 2012 (see review here). Investigating the fascination with mountains in Austro-German culture of the early twentieth century, the book shows that music played a critical role in representing and disseminating attitudes to sublime nature, not least because, at its most ideal, music was perceived to be as pure and remote as the Alpine peaks. Christopher's most recent monograph is Screening the Operatic Stage: Television and Beyond (University of Chicago Press, 2024), a critical investigation of the conventions of the live broadcast of staged opera from their origins in television to today's live cinema relays and live and on-demand streaming.
Christopher is author of numerous articles, chapters, reviews and review essays on topics in musical modernism, the aesthetics of music, film music and opera's screen cultures. His articles and chapters have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
Christopher is Co-Editor of The Opera Quarterly.
Research Interests
- music and screen media (film, video, television)
- opera (contemporary staging practices, mediatization of opera)
- music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (especially Austro-German modernism)
- aesthetics, cultural theory, music and politics
- music and posthumanism
Book
Book Chapter
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Christopher Morris; Antonio Cascelli (2021) 'Re-envisaging Music: Listening in the Visual Age' In: Introduction. Lucca : Libreria Musicale Italiana. | |
| 2017 | Christopher Morris (2017) 'Back from the Dead: Kubrick, Music and the Auteur' In: Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear. New York : Routledge. [Link] | |
| 2018 | Morris, Christopher (2018) 'The Deadness of Live Opera' In: Performing Arts in Transition: Moving between Media. Oxford and New York : Routledge. [Link] | |
| 2016 | Christopher Morris and Alessandra Campana (2016) 'Puccini’s Things: Media and Materials in Il trittico' In: Puccini and His World. Princeton : Princeton University Press. | |
| 2015 | Christopher Morris (2015) 'Die Operette und die Moderne' In: Bettina Brandl-Risi, Clemens Risi(Eds.). Kunst der Oberfläche - Operette zwischen Bravour und Banalität. Berlin : Henschel Verlag. | |
| 2012 | Christopher Morris (2012) ''Too Much Music': The Media of Opera' In: Nicholas Till (Eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. | |
| 2008 | Christopher Morris (2008) 'From Revolution to Mystic Mountains: Edmund Meisel and the Politics of Film' In: Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell(Eds.). Composing for the Screen in Germany and the USSR: Cultural Politics and Propaganda. Bloomington : Indiana University Press. | |
| 2006 | Christopher Morris (2006) 'Opera' In: John M. Merriman and Jay Winter(Eds.). Encyclopedia of Modern Europe: Europe Since 1914. New York : Scribner. | |
| 2005 | Christopher Morris (2005) 'Richard Wagner: Opera and Music Drama' In: Clayton Koelb and Eric Downing(Eds.). German Literature of the Nineteenth Century, 1830-1899. Rochester : Camden House. |
Peer Reviewed Journal
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Morris, Christopher (2019) 'Casting Metal: Opera Studies after Humanism'. Opera Quarterly, 35 (1):21-39. [Link] [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2015 | Morris C. (2015) 'The Mute Stones Sing: Rigoletto Live from Mantua'. TDR/The Drama Review, 59 (4):51-66. [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2014 | Christopher Morris (2014) 'Figaro Dances, Opera Dances: Response to Rebecca Schneider'. Opera Quarterly, 30 . [Full-Text] | |
| 2011 | Christopher Morris (2011) 'Wagnervideo'. Opera Quarterly, 26 :235-255. [Full-Text] | |
| 2010 | Christopher Morris (2010) 'Digital Diva: Opera on Video'. Opera Quarterly, 26 :96-119. [Full-Text] | |
| 2003 | Christopher Morris (2003) 'Review Essay:'Songs of the Living Dead''. Nineteenth Century Music, 27 :74-93. [Full-Text] | |
| 2002 | Christopher Morris (2002) ''Alienated From His Own Being': Nietzsche, Bayreuth and the Problem of Identity'. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 127 :85-116. [Full-Text] | |
| 2001 | Christopher Morris (2001) ''Sympathy with Death': Narcissism and Nostalgia in the Post-Wagnerian Orchestra'. Musical Quarterly, 85 :85-116. [Full-Text] | |
| 1996 | Christopher Morris (1996) 'What the Conductor Saw: Sex, Fantasy, and the Orchestra in Strauss's Feuersnot'. Journal of Musicological Research, 16 :83-109. |