Emily Worthington

1 Last updated 12 October 2020.

Emily Worthington joined the University of Huddersfield in 2015 as a Lecturer in Music Performance and a member of the Huddersfield Centre for Performance Research (HuCPeR).. Emily’s postgraduate performance training took place at the Royal College of Music and through the Formation Superieure de l’Abbaye aux Dames de Saintes, where she specialised in playing historical clarinets dating from the 18th- to the early-20th century.  This was followed by a doctorate at the University of York, where, supported by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, she investigated the impact of the emergent recording and broadcasting industries on woodwind playing in early-20th-century London orchestras. An Edison Visiting Fellowship at the British Library in 2014 enabled her to begin a large-scale survey of early wind chamber music recordings, which is the basis of her current research.

Emily is active as a clarinettist specialising in period instruments from the 18th to the 20th century, and has worked with many of leading ensembles in the UK and Europe including The Gabrieli Consort and Players, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestre de Champs-Elysees, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, La Chambre Philharmonique, and Spira Mirabilis. Emily also co-directs Boxwood & Brass, a ‘Harmonie’ or wind ensemble performing Classical and Early-Romantic repertoire on period instruments.

Emily’s research interests are wide ranging, including British and German musical culture in from the late-18th to the mid-20th century, history of sound recording and broadcasting (particularly the early BBC), performance practice 1750-1950, and topics relating to woodwind performance and repertoire. Her recent work has concentrated on the 18th-century clarinettist Franz Tausch, the early recordings of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Wind Quintet, and performance style in the works of Johannes Brahms.

Emily’s research combines practice-based research on period instruments with the use of archival documents and sound recordings to investigate aspects of 18th, 19th and 20th-century performing styles and their modern application.