STAFF

Matthew Gouldstone is a singer, director, and consultant on early music performance, specialising in polyphony from Europe pre-1650. He has previously been a research fellow at Katholiek Universiteit (Leuven, Belgium) and a visiting fellow at Harvard University, as well as directing historical musical events at All Souls College, Oxford. In 2022 Matthew began an affiliation with the University of Cambridge (St Catharine’s College) which continues to this day, and he is now found within the university as a Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse. His research focuses on two specific elements: Polyphony from England and the Low Countries (c.1450-1500) and the late Italian polyphonic madrigal (c.1550-1600). In a consultancy capacity he has partnered with institutions including University of Florida, Universität Salzburg, Accademia Filarmonica Verona, and the University of Sheffield (amongst others) on specific projects involving the connection between performance and historical musicology.

Since 2005 Matthew’s work as a performer has taken him across the globe and will most likely be known under the guise of Capilla Flamenca, where he was employed as permanent bass for numerous years. In addition to this, work as an independent freelance artist with ensembles including the Tallis Scholars, Huelgas Ensemble, Cappella Pratensis, La Grande Chapelle, Cinquecento, Vox Luminis (and most other European vocal ensembles of note) has formed the cornerstone of his career. He has directed worldwide and recently founded the research and development lab that is CEMC (Cambridge Early Music Consort) alongside Edward Wickham (The Clerks). This environment allows the finest choral scholars from across the University of Cambridge the opportunity to explore and further their exposure to music pre-1600, and also facilitates the promotion of high-quality performance as a research methodology. In addition, there is continual pedagogic work on the ability to read and sing fluently from source notation - a skill-set that is integral to all of Matthew’s work.

Dr Edward Wickham was appointed Director of Music at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge in 2003 and later became Fellow and Director of Studies in Music. In 2008 he formed the St Catharine’s Girls’ Choir, the first and only college-based choir for girls in the country. He is also the Director of Gramophone Award-winning vocal group The Clerks.

Dr Wickham has been an Affiliate Lecturer at the Faculty of Music in Cambridge since 2006, where he delivers courses on Late Medieval and Renaissance music and its notation. He is Course Director of the MMus in Choral Studies, and chairs a working party on Choral Outreach. His current research interest entails the examination of modes of text understanding and intelligibility within a range of choral repertories.

Educated at Oxford and King’s College, London, where he received his PhD for a study in 15th century sacred music, Dr Wickham has throughout his career maintained a busy schedule both as conductor and academic. Soon after leaving Oxford he established the vocal ensemble The Clerks, with which he has made over two dozen recordings, and received many plaudits including the Gramophone Early Music Award. As director of The Clerks, his recordings and performances of Renaissance repertoire have made a significant contribution to the understanding and appreciation of composers such as Ockeghem, Obrecht and Josquin Des Prez; and their innovative performances from manuscript facsimiles (notably a late-night BBC Proms performance) have done much to illuminate issues of period performance in Renaissance polyphony. He is equally engaged with contemporary music, commissioning new work from composers as diverse as Christopher Fox, Joanna Marsh, Robert Saxton and Stevie Wishart.

Dr Wickham is much in demand as a choral coach, and has given workshops and masterclasses throughout the UK, USA and Europe; he was also for several years a guest conductor at the Tokyo Cantat Festival. He is a committed advocate of choral outreach, and is the founder and Artistic Director of The Oxford and Cambridge Singing School, which runs vacation singing courses for children in London, Cambridge and Oxford. With The Clerks he has run many collaborations with schools, most notably with the Tower Hamlets Music Education Service, resulting in performances at the Spitalfields Festival and in Cambridge.