Steven Jeon

• BMus, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada (2016)
• MMus, Royal Holloway, University of London (2017)

I was born in Daegu, South Korea and lived in Canada for ten years and been living in London for five years now. I have received a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Victoria in Cello Performance and Musicology. My undergraduate dissertation was focused on early Britten, supervised by Dr. Joseph Salem and Dr. Elissa Poole (dissertation graded as equivalent to First Class Distinction). The performances (cello and chamber music) were taught by the members of the Lafayette String Quartet. After completion of undergraduate studies at UVic, I have moved to London where I did my Masters degree in Musicology at Royal Holloway, University of London. My Master’s dissertation was on Mahlerian influences in Early Britten’s Orchestral Music, which was supervised by Prof. Julian Johnson. Now, I am currently in the final year of the PhD in musicology here at the University of Birmingham, which my PhD Thesis is supervised by Prof. Matthew Riley and Dr. Paul Rodmell.

The size of the British string quartet repertoire between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of World War 2 is somewhat surprising. Based on my search, at least 452 works were written between these periods. Many of them did not enter the standard string quartet repertory. There are some well-known string quartets by famous British composers like Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. Most British string quartets were not published and some of them were published after their death. In addition, most British musical studies have focused mainly on choral works, operas and orchestral works by scholars. Studies on the twentieth century British chamber music is still limited. My PhD thesis is to examine and document the little-known repertory as completely and accurate as possible in the context of musical institutions. There are two objectives for this thesis. One objective is to document the works in a thematic catalogue and the second one is to discuss British strings concerning music analysis, manuscript studies (including my archival works) and briefly string quartet concert history at public concert venues and musical institutions.

Memberships

• Royal Musical Association
• International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres

Conference Papers

• Nice little tune!” Preparing a thematic catalogue of British string quartets of the early twentieth century’, IAML Congress 2022, Prague, Czech Republic, 24-29 July 2022