Staff profile

Bennett Zon is Professor of Music, founder and Director of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and the international research consortium the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies International. He is also a co-founder and Director of the International Network for Music Theology, as well as founder and President of the International Nineteenth-Century Studies Association. He is founder and General Editor of the Cambridge journal Nineteenth-Century Music Review and the Routledge Book series Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, as well as co-founder and co-owner of Nineteenth-Century JISCmail. He is also an Editor of the Yale Journal of Music and Religion, the Congregational Music Studies book series (Routledge), Nineteenth-Century Contexts and the Hellenic Journal of Music, Education and Culture.

Zon researches the relationship of music, religion and science in the long nineteenth-century. He has published four monographs, including The English Plainchant Revival (Oxford University Press, 1999), Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (Ashgate, 2000), Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain (University of Rochester Press, 2007) and Evolution and Victorian Musical Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His edited books include Victorian Culture and the Origin of Disciplines (edited with Bernard Lightman, Routledge, 2020), Evolution and Victorian Culture (edited with Bernard Lightman, Cambridge University Press, 2014), Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley: Musical Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Ashgate, 2012), Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s: Portrayal of the East (edited with Martin Clayton Ashgate, 2007) and three volumes of Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies (Ashgate, 2002-2003). He has published in numerous journals, amongst them Logos, Journal of the History of Ideas, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Victorian Review, Victorian Literature and Culture, Musicae Scientiae, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Current Musicology, Music and Liturgy, Early Music, Recusant History and Royal Stuart Papers; and he has contributed many articles to Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Dictionary of National Biography, Grolier Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era, Dictionary of 19th Century Journalism and the New Dictionary of Hymnology.

• Post-Reformation chant
• Music theology
• The relationship of music, religion and science in long nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture
• Anglican and Catholic liturgical music and musical cultures

Authored book

• Zon, Bennett (2017). Evolution and Victorian Musical Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zon, BM. (2007). Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press.

Chapter in book

• Zon, Bennett (2021). Music Theology as the Mouthpiece of Science: Proving it through Congregational Music Studies. In Studying Congregational Music: Key Issues, Methods, and Theoretical Perspectives. Mall, Andrew Engelhardt, Jeffers & Ingalls, Monique M. Routledge.
• Zon, Bennett (2020). Science and Religion. In The Oxford Handbook of Music and Intellectual Culture in the Nineteenth Century. Watt, Paul Collins, Sarah & Allis, Michael Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Zon, Bennett (2020). Liberalism and Victorian Musical Sympathy. In Music and Victorian Liberalism. Collins, Sarah Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 180-200.
• Zon,Bennett (2019). All Arts Aspire to the Condition of Musicology: Victorian Musicology as Interdiscipline. In Victorian Culture and the Origin of Disciplines. Lightman, Bernard & Zon, Bennett CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group. 283-307.
• Zon, Bennett (2018). Spencer, Sympathy and the Oxford School of Music Criticism. In British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought, 1850-1950. Dibble, Jeremy & Horton, Julian Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer.
• Zon, Bennett (2017). Evolution. In The Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth-Century Christian Theology. Whistler, Daniel Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Zon, Bennett (2017). Music. In Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought. Rasmussen, Joel, Wolfe, Judith & Zachhuber, Johannes Corby: Oxford University Press. 459-470.
• Zon, Bennett (2014). Carl Engel and the Non-Darwinian Revolution. In Music of the Most Ancient Nations Commented Reprint. Berlin: Ekho. 1: xxv-xxxii.
• Lightman, Bernard & Zon, Bennett (2014). 'Introduction'. In Evolution and Victorian Culture. Lightman, Bernard & Zon, Bennett Cambridge University Press. 1-16.
• Zon, Bennett (2014). The ‘non-Darwinian’ revolution and the Great Chain of Musical Being. In Evolution and Victorian Culture. Lightman, Bernard & Zon, Bennett Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 196-226.
• Zon, Bennett (2013). The music of non-Western nations and the evolution of British ethnomusicology. In Cambridge History of World Music. Bohlman, Philip V. Cambridge University Press. 298-318.
• Zon, Bennett (2012). Recapitulation and the musical education of Victorian children: The Child’s Pianoforte Book (1882) by H. Keatley Moore. In Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley. Zon, Bennett Ashgate. 299-321.
• Zon, Bennett (2012). 'Spiritual' Selection: Joseph Goddard and the Music Theology of Evolution. In Music and Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Clarke, Martin V. Ashgate. 215-236.
• Zon, Bennett (2012). Orientalism and the Natural Theology of Indian Music. In Mochizuki, Tetuso & Maeda, Shiho Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Sapporo. 13: 29-41.
• Zon, Bennett (2010). Victorian Anti-Semitism and the Origin of Gregorian Chant. In Renewal and Resistance: Catholic Church Music from the 1850s to Vatican II. Collins, Paul Oxford: Peter Lang. 99-119.
• Zon, Bennett. (2010). Histories of British music and the Land Without Music: National Identity and the Idea of the Hero. In Essays on the History of English Music in Honour of John Caldwell Sources, Style, Performance, Historiography. Hornby, Emma Hornby. & Maw, David. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. 311-324.
• Zon, Bennett (2010). Du Grand Homme au survivant le plus apte. Renommée, recapitulation et survie: génie wagnérien et concepts victoriens. In Musique et évolution. Deliège, Irène Vitouch, Oliver & Ladinig, Olivia Wavre, Belgium: Mardaga. 335-353.
• Zon, BM (2007). '"Violent passions" and "inhuman excess": Simplicity and the representation of non-Western music in nineteenth-century British travel literature'. In Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s Portrayal of the East. Clayton, M & Zon, BM Aldershot: Ashgate. 209-235.
• Zon BM (2006). From ‘very acute and plausible’ to ‘curiously misinterpreted’ Sir William Jones’s ‘On the Musical Modes of the Hindus’ (1792) and its reception in later musical treatises. In Romantic Representations of British India. Franklin, Michael London: Routledge. 197-219.
• Zon, Bennett. (2006). "From 'incomprehensibility' to 'meaning': Transcription and Representation of Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology and Ethnomusicology". In Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Ninteenth-Century British Music. Cowgill, Rachel. & Rushton, Julian. Aldershot: Ashgate. 185-199.
• Zon BM (2002). Creation/Evolution: Metaphoric Syntheses in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Music Historiography in Britain. In Nineteenth-Century Music: Selected Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference. Samson J & Zon BM Aldershot: Ashgate. 314-331.

Edited book

• Lightman,Bernard & Zon,Bennett (2019). Victorian Culture and the Origin of Disciplines. The Nineteenth-Century. Routledge.
• Lightman, Bernard & Zon, Bennett (2014). Evolution and Victorian Culture. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zon, Bennett (2012). Music and Performance Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Temperley. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Ashgate.
• Clayton, M & Zon, BM (2007). Music and Orientalism in the British Empire, 1780s–1940s: Portrayal of the East. Ashgate.
• Horton P & Zon BM (2006). Nineteenth-Century Music Studies 3. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Aldershot.
• Dibble J & Zon BM (2002). Nineteenth-Century Music Studies 2. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Samson J & Zon BM (2002). Nineteenth-Century Music: Selected Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference. Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Journal Article

• Zon, Bennett (2016). Anthropology, Theology, and the Simplicity of Benedict XVI's Chant. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 19(1): 15-40.
• Zon, Bennett (2014). Science, theology and the simplicity of chant: Victorian musicology at war. Journal of the History of Ideas 75(3): 439-469.
• Zon, Bennett (2013). Nineteenth-Century Britain and Musical Representations of Asia. Comparative Studies on Regional Powers 13: 47-57.
• Zon, Bennett (2011). Bedazzled by breakthrough: Music theology and the problem of composing music in words. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 136(2): 429-435.
• Zon, Bennett (2010). The Evolution of C. Hubert H. Parry’s Evolution of the Art of Music. Victorian Review 35(1): 68-72.
• Zon, B. (2009). From Great Man to Fittest Survivor: Reputation, Recapitulation and Survival in Victorian Concepts of Wagner’s Genius. Musicae Scientiae 13(2 Supplement): 415-445.
• Zon, B (2009). "Loathsome London": Ruskin, Morris, and Henry Davey's History of English Music (1895). Victorian Literature and Culture 37(2): 359-375.
• Zon, Bennett (2009). C. Hubert H. Parry, The Evolution of the Art of Music (1893/96). Victorian Review 35(1): 68-72.
• Zon BM (2006). 'Disorienting Race: Humanizing the Musical Savage and the Rise of British Ethnomusicology'. Nineteenth-Century Music Review 3(1): 25-43.
• Zon, BM (2006). ''More than the sum of the life of its several parts': Individual differences in the psychology and ethnomusicology of C. S. Myers’. Nineteenth-Century Contexts
• Zon BM (2005). 'Mahler's Liszt and the Hermeneutics of Chant'. Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 46(3-4): 383-402.

Monograph

• Zon BM (2000). Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology. Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Zon BM (1999). The English Plainchant Revival. Oxford University Press.