Dr Wiebke Thormahlen

Doctoral Supervisor

Area Leader in History & Reader in Music

Wiebke Thormählen joined the Royal College of Music in September 2013 as Area Leader in History.

Her research, previously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and The Austrian Academic Exchange Service, explores the formulation of music as a language of emotions and its particular role in educational theories and policies since the eighteenth century. Having worked on aesthetic and educational ideals in Viennese salons of the late 18th century during her PhD, she now focusses on Britain in the late Georgian period, exploring music in domestic settings with a particular focus on arrangements of large-scale works, and domestic devotional music. Her interest in music as a social activity extends outwards from the domestic to the development and meaning of amateur choral societies in England.

She has contributed articles and reviews to the Journal of Musicology, Eighteenth-Century Music, Early Music, Notes, Acta Mozartiana and Neues Musikwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch and is currently working on a book exploring the meaning of different forms of “musical engagements” in early 19th-century London.

Wiebke is a Co-Investigator on Music, Home and Heritage, Sounding the Domestic in Georgian Britain, a three year AHRC-funded research project with the University of Southampton, and the National Trust.

Selected publications

Thormählen W (2022), Music and emotions, in K Barclay and PN Stearns (eds.), The Routledge History of Emotions in the Modern World (pp. 345-359), Routledge [DOI].

Thormählen W, Brooks JL, & Stephens M (eds.) (2021), Sound Heritage: Making Music Matter in Historic Houses, Routledge [DOI]. Includes chapters: Thormählen W and Brooks JL, Introduction: making music matter in historic houses, and Thormählen W, Telling stories, sounding faith: exhibiting religion in historic house museums.

Thormählen W (2020), Feel-good tunes: music aesthetics, performance and well-being in the Eighteenth Century, in J Kennaway and R Knoeff (eds.), Lifestyle and Medicine in the Enlightenment: The Six Non-Naturals in the Long Eighteenth Century (pp. 243-63), Routledge [DOI].

Thormählen W (2019), From dissent to community: the Sacred Harmonic Society and amateur choral singing in London, in S Rutherford and R Parker (eds.), London Voices 1820-1840: Vocal Performers, Practice, Histories (pp. 159-78), University of Chicago Press [ISBN 9780226670188].

Gouk P, Kennaway J, Prins J, & Thormählen W (eds.) (2018), The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-being, Routledge [DOI]. Includes chapters: Thormählen W, Gouk P, Kennaway J, & Prins J, Introduction: historical and contemporary perspectives on music, mind and well-being (pp.1–16) and Thormählen W, Framing emotional responses to music: music-making and social well-being in early nineteenth-century England (pp. 93-106).

Thormählen W (2014), Lamenting at the piano: domestic music-making and well-being in eighteenth-century Britain, in W Sandberger (ed.), Göttinger Händelbeiträge: The Power of Musick: Music and Politics in Georgian Britain (pp. 144-160), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht [ISBN 9783647278322].

Thormählen W (2014), Physical distortion, emotion and subjectivity: musical virtuosity and body anxiety, in J Kennaway (ed.), Music and the Nerves, 1700 – 1900 (pp. 191-215), Palgrave Macmillan [DOI].

Thormählen W (2010), Playing with art: musical arrangements as educational tools in van Swieten's Vienna, Journal of Musicology, 27 (3), 342-76 [DOI]. On RCM Research Online.

Find out more about Music, Home and Heritage Visit website

Faculties / departments: Research, Academic staff