Impact case study database

Sutton’s research has catalysed and supported four new musical works, a new musical play and a CD. These works fostered artists’ professional development, leading directly to further performances and commissions for the musicians and composers involved. Through 8 research-led concerts, 11 public talks, an exhibition, and broadcasts for UK, Australian and Russian TV and radio that were presented by Sutton, or in which she was interviewed or her work cited, Sutton’s research has enriched cultural life and interpreted literary heritage for users in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. These events showcasing music’s role in Woolf’s life and afterlives were directed by Sutton and pianist Lana Bode who together established the ongoing Virginia Woolf & Music project in 2015 after Bode read Sutton’s monograph [R1] and proposed a collaboration; AHRC funding enabled the commissions, events and premieres of new music inspired by Woolf. Over 78,000 people have attended the project’s events or used its resources; journalism and broadcasts informed by Sutton’s research have reached international audiences of at least 1,000,000. Beneficiaries, some of whom were also at times collaborators, include: composers, musicians and dramatists; the reading, listening and exhibition-going public; and school children.

1) Sutton’s research informs legacy of new musical and dramatic works

In total, four new compositions inspired by Woolf’s writing have been commissioned and/or premiered as a direct result of Sutton’s research. These are: a song ( A London Street in Winter) and a string quartet ( Memory is the Seamstress) by eminent British composer Jeremy Thurlow; the song cycle Woolf Letters by British composer Richard Barnard; and a song cycle The Lonely Mind by Dutch composer Jan-Willem van Herpen (all premiered 2016). Thurlow’s song has been reprised once in the UK (in 2018), his quartet three times in the UK (between 2017 and 2020) and van Herpen’s in the Netherlands (in 2018). These works, in turn, catalysed further compositions, including a choral setting by Thurlow of text from Woolf’s The Waves (premiered in 2018, Tokyo). In 2016, the Alvor Ensemble commissioned Barnard to develop ideas and musical material from his Woolf song cycle for a new instrumental work, Our Great Grief and Joy (4 UK performances between 2016 and 2020). Then, in 2020, they commissioned another new instrumental work to “ partner” Our Great Grief and Joy; Barnard described this as “ a really crucial medium-sized commission” in the context of the Covid-19 lockdown [S1, p.8]. AHRC funding also enabled the project to premiere String Quartet No. 3, the last work by distinguished American composer Elliott Schwartz (d. 2016).

Sutton’s research also inspired a new one-woman play about Woolf’s life: Virginia Woolf, Killing the Angel (ongoing UK-wide theatre and festival tour from 2020; 5 performances to date, including at the 2020 Bloomsbury Festival, others postponed due to Covid-19). The play combines Woolf’s words with music by contemporary female composers whose work is now rarely performed. The writer/performer Lucy Stevens writes of Sutton’s book, “ its mere existence persuaded Elizabeth Marcus [the musical director] that Virginia Woolf (not being a singer) was a potential subject that we could portray with words and music” [S2]. Moreover, some of Stevens’s decisions about the selection of music and texts for the play were the “ direct result” of Sutton’s research [R1]. For instance, Sutton’s discussion of the historic expectation that men and women should play different repertoire – a bias Woolf had challenged in her first novel through allusions to Beethoven’s last piano sonata (Opus 111, in C minor) – led Stevens to include an extract from this sonata early in the play. Similarly, Stevens’s interweaving of lines from the concert scene in Woolf’s novel The Waves with musical phrases from Offenbach’s ‘Barcarolle’ drew directly on Sutton’s analysis of the novel [S2]. The convenor of the Opera All Party Parliamentary Group described the play as “a stunning piece of research […] unearthing some little-known details of VW's life”.

2) Sutton's research inspires interdisciplinary creative practice and enriches cultural life

Between 2016 and 2020, Sutton and Bode directed an exhibition, 8 research-led concerts and 11 talks, many live-streamed and available long-term free on the project website. Highlights include: a concert and exhibition for StAnza poetry festival (in St Andrews, 2016) placed by the box office, visible to the approximately 16,500 people (public attendees) who visited the festival [S3]; performances at some of London’s most prestigious concert venues including St-Martin-in-the-Fields (twice in 2018) and St James’s Piccadilly (in 2018); and a concert and talk at the Paul Mellon Centre (in 2019) for the Bedford Square Festival, the first time a musical performance had been included in the Festival. Sutton’s research [R5] also enriched cultural life for children in Scotland. The connections among pacifism, music for children, Woolf and other Bloomsbury members informed a children’s concert, marionette workshops and curriculum-based worksheets. These resources, developed and delivered in collaboration with teachers and available free on the project website, were featured as good practice in interdisciplinary teaching at a Highland Teachers’ Inset Day (in 2017) and the University of Malta (in 2018). As of 31 December 2020, over 1,600 people (predominantly, Scottish school children; also, Scottish adults) have participated in project workshops on this topic and others based on Sutton’s research [S4].

One example illustrates the project’s influence on artists’ creative and professional development. Bode and mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons initially collaborated performing Dominick Argento’s 1974 song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf for the project in 2016; as Fontanals-Simmons attests, this led them to develop a sustained collaboration focused on women’s representation in song. They: reached the semi-final of the 2017 Wigmore Hall International Song Competition; were awarded a year-long performance residency at Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh; followed by another year-long residency at the Britten-Pears Foundation, funded by the British Council. In 2019, they released their debut album, I and Silence: Women’s Voices in American Song (Delphian records, Gramophone’s ‘Label of the Year’, 2014). The CD, which includes their performance of Argento’s Woolf cycle, has been widely acclaimed: a ‘remarkable exploration’ ( Sunday Times) displaying ‘searing musical intelligence’ ( Classical Source); a ‘hugely ambitious debut solo album’ ( Gramophone); 5 stars BBC Music; Presto Editor’s Choice (2019). CD sales (retail price: GBP14.99) and streams exceed 10,000 since 30 August 2019 [S5]. At Delphian’s invitation, Bode is creating a follow-up CD of newly-commissioned music by women composers, a welcome development given it is estimated only 13% of new classical music is written by women.

3) Sutton’s work interprets literary heritage in the UK and internationally

Virginia Woolf is often seen as a ‘difficult’ novelist yet considerable interest has been generated internationally by the sustained engagement of the public with Sutton’s work. Virginia Woolf and Classical Music [R1] was the subject of a 2014 feature programme ‘Woolf and Wagner’ for ABC’s Radio National (Australia) (weekly audience of more than 631,000 people (listeners)); feature available on demand on ABC’s and the producer’s website (additional 3,700 people (listeners) on the latter through 31 December 2020). Sutton was interviewed at length for the hour-long feature, timed to reflect on the first-ever production of Wagner’s Ring cycle by Opera Australia (the principal national opera company) in November and December 2013 on the bicentenary of Wagner’s birth and the accompanying Melbourne Ring Festival (an accessible “ predominantly free and low-cost” festival of more than 30 performances, films, events and exhibitions described by Melbourne’s Minister for Tourism as “ a major international event for the city […] expected to generate more than $12 million [AUD12,000,000] in economic benefits for the state”). The programme discussed Sutton’s research on music’s role in Woolf’s creative practice, the references to music in her novels, and the Woolfs’ responses to British nationalist and Nazi appropriations of music during the First and Second World Wars. Noting the importance of Sutton’s archival work on Leonard Woolf’s diaries, which had enabled Sutton to reconstruct the “ fascinating list” of Woolf’s attendance at performances of music and her listening to recorded and broadcast music, the producer observed we now have “ the soundtrack to the coming-into-being of some of the twentieth century’s great novels” [S6]. As part of the 2014 year of Anglo-Russian relations, Sutton was invited by the British Council to give public lectures presenting her wider research on word-music studies: the first at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art (broadcast on Moscow 24 TV and YouTube (additional 3,000 views on the latter to date)) and the second, focusing specifically on Woolf, at the Moscow Conservatoire. Sutton’s research has also contributed to journalism and broadcasting by others, demonstrating growing recognition of the importance of music to Woolf’s life and work. Classical-music.com (website of BBC Music, worldwide the best-selling music magazine, circulation over 37,500) published a feature ‘The Musical Life of Virginia Woolf’ (in 2019) informed by Sutton’s research, and the presenter of the Sony Gold Award-winning BBC Radio 3 music programme Late Junction consulted Sutton’s monograph for her BBC Radio 4 feature ‘Pursuit of Beauty: Virginia Woolf: Impossible Music’ with actor Tamsin Greig and new music by composer Nina Perry (broadcast twice in 2018 and available on demand; weekly audience for Radio 4 factual programmes, including ‘factual arts’, was 8,200,000 people (adults) in 2018-19) [S7].

One subject that has attracted particular interest is Sutton’s research on music and mental illness. In her monograph, Sutton had explored connections among music, mental illness and post-war trauma in Woolf’s writing, proposing for example that the double narrative structure of Mrs Dalloway may be modelled on the double form of musical fugue (fugue was also a contemporary synonym for shell shock) [R1]. This research informed sold-out concerts and talks with Bode and Fontanals-Simmons in 2016 and 2018. Their CD catalysed discussion of music and mental health: a two-page feature in the trade magazine for professional musicians, Classical Music (2019), discussed the representations of “ grief”’ and “ depression” in the song settings of texts by Woolf, Emily Dickinson and Sara Teasdale, the author commending the “ wisdom” of the programming and describing the CD as “ a disc [that] stays with you long after the music itself finishes” [S8]. On World Mental Health day (10 October 2019), Fontanals-Simmons was an invited speaker at Classical Music magazine’s launch of the ‘Harmony in Mind’ campaign that advocates mental health provision for professional musicians. Bode and Fontanals-Simmons opened the 2020 Devon Song Festival with this repertoire and reprised it, in conjunction with public lectures on ‘mental health, well-being and music’, at the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival.