Networks of Music and Culture in the late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries: a Collection of Essays in Celebration of Peter Philips's 450th Anniversary was published in December 2013, edited by Prof. David J. Smith (Department of Music, School of Education) with his colleague, Rachelle Taylor (McGill University, Montréal).
The book is the product of two highly successful conferences organised by the editors in 2011, one of which took place at McGill, the other here in Aberdeen. The conferences included performances by David, Pieter Dirksen (The Netherlands), Rachelle Taylor (McGill) and Hank Knox (McGill) of early seventeenth-century keyboard music which were open to the public.
Peter Philips had a colourful life. He was an English Catholic who fled to the Continent at the age of 20, worked in Rome as organist of the English College for three years before travelling Europe with Thomas Lord Paget. On Paget’s death, he settled in Antwerp earning a living as what we would call a freelance musician before landing a job as highest paid organist at the archducal court in Brussels. However, rather than taking a linear, narrative view of the composer’s life, David explores his career in terms of multifarious interacting networks involving music, religion, patronage and espionage, and this becomes the touchstone for a more general exploration of cultural networks in the period by contributors drawn from all around the world.