Butler School of Music
David Hunter

Senior Lecturer
Music Librarian, Fine Arts library

Office (Primary):
512-495-4475
DFA DFA 3.214

UT Address:
Butler School of Music

2406 Robert Dedman Dr., stop E3100
Austin, TX 78712

Email:
david.hunter@austin.utexas.edu

David Hunter (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989) is Music Librarian and Curator of the Historical Music Recordings Collection. While Dr. Hunter's duties at the Fine Arts Library currently preclude a regular teaching assignment he has in the past taught the Reference and Research Materials class and a freshman seminar on George Frideric Handel. He continues to serve on Ph.D. and D.M.A committees.

Dr. Hunter has published articles in numerous musicology and historical journals since 1985. His book, Opera and song books published in England, 1703-1726: a descriptive bibliography was published by the Bibliographical Society (London) in 1997. He has also contributed to the major music encyclopedic dictionaries Grove Music Online and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. He edited the volume Music Publishing and Collecting: Essays in Honor of Donald W. Krummel issued in 1994. He has been the Book Review Editor of Notes and has served on the Editorial Board of Libraries & the Cultural Record (published by the University of Texas Press).

Since 1996 Dr. Hunter has been assessing the validity of Handel biographies, testing numerous claims and assumptions. The results of the research have been published in Early Music, Music & Letters, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, the Newsletters of Handel Institute and the American Handel Society, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Theatre Notebook, Musical Times, and two festschriften Encomium Musicae: A Festschrift in Honor of Robert J. Snow, and For the Love of Music: Festschrift in Honor of Theodore Front on His 90th Birthday.

The historical audience is possibly the last frontier of research in musicology. The facile assumptions and comments to be found in the literature can be superseded and a new history of music written "as if audiences mattered." To demonstrate the possibilities Dr. Hunter is exploring the entertainment choices of persons who could have attended Handel's performances during his years in England and Ireland (1711-1759). This long-term research project involves examining archives held at more than 100 sites in the U.K., Ireland, and the U.S.A.

Dr. Hunter is spear-heading a collaborative effort to produce a history of the Butler School of Music in time for the centennial of the School during the 2013-14 academic year.

David Hunter
Senior Lecturer
Music Librarian, Fine Arts library
Office (Primary):
512-495-4475
DFA 3.214

UT Address:
Fine Arts Library (S5437)
Doty Fine Arts
23rd and Trinity
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712