Earlier this season, Arthur Scoleri successfully defended their musicology master’s thesis, “‘Thus He is Mine’: Reconciling Queerness and English Musical Tradition in Britten’s Canticle I.”

Through close readings of the canticle and Britten’s realization of Purcell’s “Lord, What is Man,” Arthur showed how “the contemplation inspired by Britten’s text (and text-painting) does not merely ‘out’ the composer, but instead poses moral questions to the listener.” By integrating Britten scholarship within reparative methods advocated by scholars like Eve Sedgwick and Will Cheng, Arthur deploys musical analysis to reflect on Britten’s queerness “without overshadowing the other, often more pressing, complexities there.”

In working on the thesis, Arthur visited the Britten-Pears Library at Aldeburgh and shared early research at the North American British Music Studies Association in 2018.