Dr Katherine Butler

Associate Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

Katherine Butler is a music historian with particular interests in the musical culture of England, c.1550-1800.

Katherine studied at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford and then took her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London. After teaching for the Open University and working on the Early Music Online digitisation project (www.earlymusiconline.org), she returned to Oxford in 2011 to take up a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. She remained in Oxford as a researcher for the AHRC-funded Tudor Partbooks project (http://www.tudorpartbooks.ac.uk/) before moving to the University of Leeds to manage an OfS-funded project across five institutions, focused on improving progression to postgraduate taught study among BAME students and those from areas with low rates of participation in higher education (https://psstoolkit.leeds.ac.uk/).

Katherine joined Northumbria University as a senior lecturer in January 2019. In 2025-26 she held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship

She is currently an Associate Professor and Outreach and Recruitment Co-Ordinator for Humanities and Social Sciences. She is also an editor for the journal Music & Letters, on the editorial board for Sonance: Journal of Early Modern Studies, and a trustee for the charity North Tyneside Music Opporunities for Young People.

Email Katherine

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research focuses on the musical culture of England c.1550-1800 and encompasses a wide range of themes including court music, civic pageantry, ballads and popular song, social and community music-making, gender, death songs and elegies, music or health and wellbeing, music philosophy, music in mythology and literature, manuscript studies, and early music printing.

My first book explored the political uses of music at the court of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603). I reconstructed the significance of musical performances ranging from grand court pageantry to intimate music-making in the royal household to understand both the importance of music in Elizabeth’s royal image and how performances might be manipulated by courtiers and the nobility for their own ends. An off-shoot of this project also considered how cheaply printed and orally circulated songs for celebrating the Queen’s Accession Day shaped her image among the broader populace, and the extent to which these were official propaganda, opportunistic commercial exploitation, or genuine expressions of affection.

My second major project used myths and stories as windows onto musical thought in early modern England. Particularly fascinating was the how the increasing influence of empirical and experimental philosophy altered the reception of traditional stories about the powers of music, which opened up my interests in music’s place in early modern science and medicine.

Working on the Tudor Partbooks project provided an opportunity to develop skills in the digitisation reconstruction of damaged manuscripts and to pursue my interests in manuscript culture and early music printing. My extensive study of the only complete manuscript source of Protestant service music from the early years of the Elizabeth I’s reign (the ‘Hamond’ partbooks), shed light on liturgical practices and the training of boy choristers in this second phase of the Reformation, as well as music-making in Protestant households.

My current research is revealing the diverse social functions of rounds and catches - simple polyphonic songs like 'London's Burning' or 'Row Your Board' that straddled oral and literate culture - c.1550-1650. I'm fascinated by how such ubquitous recreational singing could be both community-building and anti-social, humorous or playful as well as devotional or spiritual, while spanning class and educational boundaries. I am also experimenting with reviving social catch-singing through Pop Up Community Catch Clubs and programmes fo schools and youth groups.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Music in Elizabethan Court Politics, Butler, K. Jan 2015
Music, Myth, and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, Butler, K., Bassler, S. Mar 2019
The Heroic in Music, Kutschke, B., Butler, K. Apr 2022
From Liturgy and the Education of Choirboys to Protestant Domestic Music-Making: The History of the ‘Hamond’ Partbooks (GB-Lbl: Add MSS 30480-4), Butler, K. 2019, In: RMA Research Chronicle
Divine Harmony, Demonic Afflictions, and Bodily Humours: Two Tales of Musical Healing in Early Modern England, Butler, K. 10 May 2021, Perfect Harmony and Melting Strains, Berlin, De Gruyter
Changing Attitudes Towards Classical Mythology and their Impact on Notions of the Powers of Music in Early Modern England, Butler, K. 2016, In: Music and Letters
Printed Borders for Sixteenth-Century Music or Music Paper and the Early Career of Music Printer Thomas East, Butler, K. 1 Jun 2018, In: Library
In Praise of Music: Motets, Inscriptions and Musical Philosophy in Robert Dow’s Partbooks, Butler, K. 1 Feb 2017, In: Early Music
Death Songs & Elegies: Singing about Death in Elizabethan England, Butler, K. 1 May 2015, In: Early Music
Myth, Science, and the Power of Music in the Early Decades of the Royal Society, Butler, K. Jan 2015, In: Journal of the History of Ideas

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: North American British Music Studies Association Online Symposium 2027
Invited talk: Dowland’s Dolour: Music, Melancholy, and Self-Fashioning in Elizabethan England 2026
Oral presentation: Rediscovering Scottish Catch-Singing Cultures in the Late Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 2026
Invited talk: Is Tudor Catch-Singing the Wellbeing Trend We've Forgotten? 2026
Oral presentation: Annotations and the Printed Catch Book: Orality and Print in Early Seventeenth-Century Catch-Singing 2026
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: A Night in Shakespeare’s World 2026
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Music in Your Hands 2026
Oral presentation: Songs and Singing Cats in the Seventeenth Century 2025
Membership of network: Royal Historical Society (External organisation) 2025
Organising a conference, workshop, ...: Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference 2025

PGR Supervision

Rudolf Balázs ‘Move now with measured sound’: Measure and Intermediality in the Creative Practice of Thomas Campion (1567 - 1620) Start Date: 01/10/2025
Harry Sullivan The Post-Reformation English Organ: Practice-led Research on its Changing Repertoire and Use, 1525-1649 Start Date: 05/02/2026 End Date: 16/04/2026
Sebastian Jørgensen ‘Pri re la,’ Melodia, and Repercussio: Conceptual Changes in Modal Theory in Music Treatises from German-Speaking Lands, 1500-1550 Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 22/02/2026
Abigail Harrison An intersectional understanding of the barriers faced by 'non-traditional' PhD students, within Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities across the universities of the North East of England, from application to completion. Start Date: 01/07/2024 End Date: 17/10/2025
Abigail Harrison An intersectional understanding of the barriers faced by 'non-traditional' PhD students, within Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities across the universities of the North East of England, from application to completion. Start Date: 01/07/2024
Sebastian Jørgensen ‘Pri re la,’ Melodia, and Repercussio: Conceptual Changes in Modal Theory in Music Treatises from German-Speaking Lands, 1500-1550 Start Date: 01/10/2022 End Date: 17/10/2025