Researcher biography
I am a musicologist whose research covers the history of compositional techniques from the late Middle Ages to the present day. I have a particular interest in how composers at different times managed the artful blending of two or more distinct melodic lines – a topic known as counterpoint. In my work, I aim to uncover the deep underling principles governing composers’ use of counterpoint across time and place. I am especially interested in the reception of medieval and early modern music in contemporary Australia. I have published on an early source for keyboard accompaniment in the Louise Hanson Dyer collection, and I was co-editor of J.S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance (2018), the first major study of how Bach’s music has enriched Australian cultural life. I have workshopped repertoire from my research with the UQ Chamber Singers, which has resulted in several Australian and world premiere performances drawing from the rich legacy of canonic counterpoint.
Publications
Book
Collins, Denis B. and Bevin, Elway (2007). A briefe and short instruction of the art of musicke by Elway Bevin. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate.
Book Chapters
Stoessel, Jason and Collins, Denis (2022). 'La grandezza del numero sonoro': canonic techniques, combinatorics, and early scientific thought in seventeenth-century Rome. Music and science from Leonardo to Galileo. (pp. 155-186) edited by Rudolf Rasch. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols.
Collins, Denis and Nevile, Jennifer (2019). Music and dance. A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Late Medieval, Reformation and Renaissance Age. (pp. 49-67) edited by Andrew Lynch and Susan Broomhall. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.
Collins, Denis (2019). Emotion and communities of musical expression in the high renaissance. Musica movet: affectus, ludus, corpus. (pp. 91-101) edited by Milena Medić. Belgrade, Serbia: Faculty of Music, University of Arts.
Collins, Denis (2019). Dürer, Music, and Melencolia I. The Persistence of Melancholia in Arts and Culture. (pp. 49-67) edited by Andrea Bubenik . New York, NY United States: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780429468469-4
Collins, Denis (2018). Canon in Baroque Italy: Paolo Agostini's collections of masses, motets and counterpoints from 1627. Music preferred: Essays in musicology, cultural history and analysis in honour of Harry White. (pp. 117-140) edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley. Vienna, Austria: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag.
Collins, Denis and Stoessel, Jason (2018). Music as symbolic image: Christological narratives in the Agnus Dei sections of renaissance masses. Music/image: transpositions, translations, transformations. (pp. 60-71) edited by Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman, Vesna Mikic, Tijana Popovic-Mladjenovic and Ivana Perkovic. Belgrade: Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade.
Collins, Denis, Murphy, Kerry and Owens, Samantha (2018). Appendix 1. J.S. Bach in Australia: studies in Reception and performance. (pp. 218-221) edited by Denis Collins, Kerry Murphy and Samantha Owens. Melbourne, Australia: Lyrebird Press.
Collins, Denis, Murphy, Kerry and Owens, Samantha (2018). Introduction. J.S. Bach in Australia: studies in Reception and performance. (pp. 1-7) edited by Denis Collins, Kerry Murphy and Samantha Owens. Melbourne, Australia: Lyrebird Press.
Collins, Denis (2016). Continuity and discontinuity in contrapuntal techniques ca. 1500. Music: transitions/continuities. (pp. 120-132) edited by Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman, Vesna Mikic, Tijana Popovic Mladenovic and Ivana Perkovic. Belgrade, Serbia: Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade.
Collins, Denis (2014). Creative collaborative thought and puzzle canons in renaissance music. Collaborative creative thought and practice in music. (pp. 111-126) edited by Margaret Barrett. Farnham, Surrey, United Kingdom: Ashgate.
Collins, Denis (2013). Preface. Music Theory and its Methods: Structures, Challenges, Directions . (pp. VII-VIII) edited by Collins, D.. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang. doi: 10.3726/978-3-653-02906-2
Collins, Denis (2013). John Bull's "Art of Canon" and plainsong-based counterpoint in the late renaissance. Music Theory and its Methods: Structures, Challenges, Directions. (pp. 99-127) edited by Denis Collins. Frankfurt Am Main, Germany: Peter Lang.
Collins, Denis (2013). Palestrina's Missa Sacerdotes Domini and analytical approaches to renaissance counterpoint. Histories and Narratives of Music Analysis. (pp. 120-134) edited by Miloš Zatkalik, Milena Medić and Denis Collins. Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Collins, D. B. (2004). Approaches to invertible canonic composition in late sixteenth-century theory and practice.. Music Research: New Directions for a New Century. (pp. 368-375) edited by M. Ewans, R. Halton and J. Phillips. London: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Collins, D. B. (2003). The vocal canons of Fernando Sor. Estudios Sobre Fernando Sor/Sor Studies. (pp. 305-312) edited by Luis Gasser. Madrid, Spain: Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales.
Collins, Denis (1993). Fugue, Canon and Double Counterpoint in Nicola Vicentino's L'antica musica. Music and the Church. (pp. 276-301) edited by Harry White and Gerard Gillen. Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press.
Journal Articles
Collins, Denis (2022). 'Some disturbance to the ear when the voices enter': invertible canons at the octave in motets by Zarlino and Willaert. Journal of the Alamire Foundation, 14 (2), 247-282. doi: 10.1484/J.JAF.5.131812
Collins, Denis (2022). Review of Paul Walker, Fugue in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 53 (1), 130-137. doi: 10.1353/bach.2022.0008
Collins, Denis (2019). Review of Jan Dismas Zelenka, Six Settings of Ave regina coelorum (ZWV 128) edited by Frederic Kieran. Context: Journal of Music Research, 45, 89-91.
Collins, Denis (2019). Zelenka and the combinative impulse: contrapuntal techniques in the Miserere in D Minor, ZWV 56. Musicology Australia, 41 (2), 199-225. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2019.1703488
Stoessel, Jason and Collins, Denis (2019). New light on the mid-fourteenth-century chace: canons hidden in the Tournai manuscript. Music Analysis, 38 (1-2), 155-203. doi: 10.1111/musa.12116
Collins, Denis (2018). Approaching renaissance music using Taneyev's theories of movable counterpoint. Acta Musicologica, 90 (2), 178-201.
Collins, Denis B. (2018). Horizontal-shifting counterpoint and parallel-section constructions in contrapuncti 8 and 11 from J. S. Bach’s Art of Fugue. Music Theory Online, 24 (4) 2. doi: 10.30535/mto.24.4.2
Collins, Denis (2017). Instructions for keyboard accompaniment in Music Manuscript 244 of the University of Melbourne. Musica Disciplina, 60, 173-200.
Collins, Denis (2016). Review of Mark Hijleh, Towards a Global Music Theory: Practical Concepts and Methods for the Analysis of Music across Human Cultures. Musicology Australia, 38 (2), 194-197. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2016.1239244
Collins, Denis (2016). Discomfit them, O Lord, that trust in their own multitude: a new editorial approach to the Tallis-Byrd Cantiones sacrae. Musicology Australia, 38 (2), 172-181. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2016.1239243
Collins, Denis (2016). Review of Mary Louise O'Donnell, Ireland's Harp: The Shaping of Irish Modernity, c.1770-1880.. Australasian Journal of Irish Studies, 16, 133-135.
Collins, Denis (2015). Thomas Schmidt-Beste (ed.), The Motet Around 1500: On the Relationship of Imitation and Text Treatment? (2012); and Albert Clement and Eric Jas (eds), Josquin and the Sublime (2011). Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 10 (14-15), 57-64.
Collins, Denis (2015). Taneyev's theories of moveable counterpoint and the music of J.S. Bach. BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 46 (2), 22-45.
Collins, Denis (2012). Fundamentals of Musical Performance [by] Zdenek Bruderhans. Musicology Australia, 34 (2), 339-340. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2012.738057
Collins, Denis (2012). Musicianship in the 21st Century: Issues, Trends, and Possibilities. Musicology Australia, 34 (2), 335-338. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2012.738056
Collins, Denis B. (2009). William Bathe's tabular method and late Renaissance theories of Canon composition. Music Theory and Analysis, 1, 87-95.
Collins, Denis (2008). William Byrd's motets and canonic writing in England. Context: Journal of Music Research, 1 (33), 45-65.
Collins, Denis (2008). "So you want to write a canon?" An historically-informed new approach for the modern theory class. College Music Symposium, 48, 108-123. doi: 10.2307/25664812
Collins, Denis B. (2007). From Bull to Bach: In search of precedents for the "Complete" version of the Canon by augmentation and contrary motion in J.S. Bach's Musical Offering. BACH: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 38 (2), 39-63.
Collins, Denis (2005). The art of fugue: Bach fugues for keyboard, 1715-1750. Musicology Australia, 28 (1), 143-146. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2005.10415287
Collins, D. B. (2004). Review of Peter Williams, Bach: The Goldberg Variations. Eighteenth-Century Music, 1 (2), 318-319.
Collins, Denis (2003). The transmission of Zarlino's canonic theory in seventeenth-century organ chorale settings. Musicology Australia, 26 (1), 38-64. doi: 10.1080/08145857.2003.10416508
Collins, Denis (2002). Bach's occasional canon BWV 1073 and 'stacked' canonic procedure in the eighteenth century. BACH: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 33 (2), 15-34.
Collins, Denis and Schloss, W. Andrew (2001). An Unusual Effect in the Canon Per Tonos from J. S. Bach's Musical Offering. Music Perception, 19 (2), 141-154. doi: 10.1525/mp.2001.19.2.141
Collins, Denis and Huron, David (1999). Voice leading in cantus firmus-based composition: a comparison between theory and practice in Renaissance and Baroque music using computer-assisted inferential measures. Computers in Music Research, 6 (Spring), 53-95.
Collins, Denis (1999). Bach and approaches to canonic composition in early eighteenth-century theoretical and chamber music sources. BACH: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 30 (2), 27-48.
Collins, Denis (1996). Spiegel-Kontrapunkt in Theorie und Praxis: Vorlaufer fur Contrapunctus 12 und 13 aus Bachs Kunst der Fuge. Bach-Jahrbuch, 82, 77-92.
Collins, Denis (1995). Musical terminology in the canonic works of Bach: an historical context. BACH: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 26 (1/2), 91-101.
Collins, Denis (1995). The Martini-Redi polemic on the solution of a canon by Giovanni Animuccia. Indiana Theory Review, 16 (Spring-Fall), 61-81.
Collins, Denis (1995). Thomas Tomkins's canonic additions to Thomas Morley's 'A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'. Music and Letters, 76 (3), 345-355. doi: 10.1093/ml/76.3.345
Collins, Denis (1994). Canon and music pedagogy 1500-1800. Theoria: Historical Aspects of Music Theory, 8, 53-72.
Collins, Denis (1993). Historical precedents for Bach's Evolutio Canon BWV 1087-10. BACH: The Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, 24 (1), 5-14.
Collins, Denis (1993). Zarlino and Berardi as teachers of canon. Theoria: Historical Aspects of Music Theory, 7, 103-123.
Conference Papers
Stoessel, Jason, Collins, Denis and Bolland, Scott (2020). Using optical music recognition to encode 17th-century music prints: the canonic works of Paolo Agostini (c.1583–1629) as a test case. 7th International Conference on Digital Libraries for Musicology, Montreal, Canada, 16 October 2020. New York, United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3424911.3425517
Schubert, Emery, MacKinnon, Dolly, Collins, Denis and Garrido, Sandra (2017). Panel Discussion:'What’s missing in music and emotion research?'. The 3rd Conference of the Australian Music & Psychology Society (AMPS) including the 5th International Conference on Music and Emotion (ICME)., School of Music, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 7-9 December 2017..
Collins, Denis (2010). Henry Purcell's Three Parts Upon a Ground and the traditions of English counterpoint. Seventh International Conference on Music Theory and Analysis, Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro, May 15-17 2009. Belgrade, Serbia: University of Arts, Belgrade.
Collins, D. (2007). 'Sufficient to quench the thirst of the most insaciate scholler whatsoeuer': George Waterhouse's 1,163 canons on the plainsong Miserere. Canons and Canonic Techniques, 14th-16th Centuries, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, 4-6 October, 2005. Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.
Collins, Denis (2004). Compositional strategies in sixteenth-century three- and four-part canons. International Congress of the Musicological Society of Japan (IMJ 2002): Musicology and Globalisation, Shizuoka, Japan, 2-5 November 2002. Tokyo, Japan: Musicological Society of Japan.
Collins, D. B. and Pavlovic, B. (2002). Metric space as a cognitive-structural model of musical pitch. 7th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Sydney, 17-21 July 2002. Adelaide: Causal Productions.
Reference Entry
Collins, Denis (2013). Counterpoint.