Samantha Owens
Wellington
Samantha Owens is a freelance music historian based in Karori, Wellington. She has published widely on the performance cultures and practices of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, 1850–1950, as well as on the music history of early modern Europe, 1660–1760. Her monograph, The Well-Travelled Musician: John Sigismond Cousser and Musical Exchange in Baroque Europe (Boydell Press, 2017), was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant (2013–2015).
The editor of numerous scholarly books, Samantha’s published editions of large-scale musical works by J. S. Cousser (Kusser) have been used for performances at Dublin Castle, Kilkenny Castle, Wigmore Hall (London), the Badisches Staatstheater (Karlsruhe), Liederhalle Stuttgart and Rokokotheater Schwetzingen. She also works as a freelance indexer; her index for Music at German Courts, 1715–1760: Changing Artistic Priorities, which she co-edited with Barbara M. Reul and Janice B. Stockigt (Boydell Press, 2011; paperback, 2015), won the 2012 medal of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers.
A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, she is an Honorary Professor of Music at the University of Queensland, and has held visiting fellowships at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany (2004); Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (2007–2008); and, as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow (Bonn), at the Institut für Musik, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (2009–2010) and the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, Germany (2018). In 2025, Samantha was the Lilburn Research Fellow (based at the National Library of New Zealand – Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa), and is currently researching and writing a book on the history of brass bands in Aotearoa New Zealand from c. 1840 to 1920.
Publications on New Zealand & Australian topics:
(For publications on early modern European topics, please see: UQ Experts – Samantha Owens under ‘Works’)
“‘Half German and Half Colonial’: Building Community through Amateur Choral Singing in Wellington’s Liedertafeln, c. 1900,” in Amateur Musicians in the Nineteenth Century: Markets, Practices and Identities, ed. Imogen Morris & Nancy November (Bloomsbury, 2026), pp. 235–52.
“‘His Craft He Plies Under Alien Skies’: Rudolf Mersy’s German Band in New Zealand, 1902–1914,” in Pfälzer Wandermusikanten: Aspekte zur Geschichte und Rezeption, ed. Sabine Klapp, Elaine Neumann, Barbara Schmidt & Tobias Widmaier (Kaiserslautern: Institut für Pfälzische Geschichte und Volkskunde, 2026), pp. 55–74.
“‘A German Martyr’? Gerhard von Keußler’s Contribution to Australia’s Musical Life, 1932–1935.” Musicology Australia (published online 19 March 2026), 1–17
“Absolutely Democratic?: Community, Identity, and Meaning in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Brass Bands, 1840–1920.” Keynote speech for The Value of Music/ology: Joint Conference of the New Zealand Musicological Society and the Musicological Society of Australia (University of Waikato, 29 November 2025).
“Lessons by Correspondence: Nathalie Dolmetsch, Mona Castle and the Viola da Gamba in 1940s New Zealand.” Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 52 (2021–2024): 10–33.
“The Working Man’s Symphony Orchestra? Researching New Zealand Brass Bands, 1840–1920,” Connecting to Collections: National Library of New Zealand talk (20 May 2025).
J. S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance, co-edited with Denis Collins and Kerry Murphy. Melbourne: Lyrebird Press, 2018.
“‘A Gothic Cathedral in Music’: The Reception of Australian Performances of Bach’s B-Minor Mass in the 1920s.” In J. S. Bach in Australia: Studies in Reception and Performance, ed. Denis Collins, Samantha Owens & Kerry Murphy. Lyrebird Press, Melbourne, 2018. 101–116.
“‘Unmistakeable Sauerkrauts’: Local Perceptions of Itinerant German Musicians in New Zealand, 1850–1920.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 15/1 (2018): 37–49.
“‘The Above Mentioned Aliens’: Rudolf Mersy’s German Band in New Zealand, 1913–1919.” Musicology Australia 39/1 (2017): 1–14.
Searches for Tradition: Essays on New Zealand Music, Past & Present, co-edited with Michael Brown. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017.
“London, Leipzig or Local? – German Musical Influence and the Establishment of a New Zealand Conservatorium of Music, 1906–8.” In Searches for Tradition: Essays on New Zealand Music, Past & Present, ed. Michael Brown & Samantha Owens. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2017. 46–58.
“‘The Greatest Choral Work That Has Ever Been Written’: Wellington Performances of J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, 1899–1945.” Understanding Bach 9 (2014): 75–86.
with Janice B. Stockigt, “Haydn’s Creation ‘Shamelessly Mangled’ in Melbourne: Joseph Summers and a Musical Libel Action against the Age (1893).” In A Musicological Gift: Libro Homenaje for Jane Morlet Hardie, ed. Kathleen Nelson & Maricarmen Gómez. Lions Bay, BC: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2013. 255–282.
“Robert Dalley-Scarlett (1887–1959) and Handel Reception in Australia between the World Wars.” Musicology Australia 34 (2012): 165–183.
“‘Serious Music’: The Brisbane Reception of Percy Grainger’s Historical Chamber Music Recitals (1934).” In Grainger the Modernist, ed. Suzanne Robinson & Kay Dreyfus. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015. 181–199.
