Nancy November is a Professor of Musicology in the University of Auckland’s School of Music.
She completed her MA/PhD at Cornell University in 2003, with a dissertation on the aesthetics and reception of Haydn’s string quartets. Her research radically opens up our view of Western Classical music by means of socio-cultural critique of traditional ideologies; multivalent analysis; and methodological innovation. She is an award-winning teacher with a research emphasis on culturally sustaining pedagogy.
Combining interdisciplinarity and cultural history, her research centers on chamber music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, probing questions of historiography, canonization, and genre. Recent publications include Beethoven’s Theatrical Quartets: Opp. 59, 74, and 95 (Cambridge University Press, 2013); a three-volume set of fifteen string quartets by Emmanuel Aloys Förster (A-R Editions, 2016); and Cultivating String Quartets in Beethoven’s Vienna (Boydell Press, 2017). She is the recipient of a Humboldt Fellowship (2010-12); and three Marsden Grants from the New Zealand Royal Society. She recently edited a book on Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and has published a broad range of chamber music from the nineteenth century in modern editions. The editions include a new practical edition of Beethoven’s middle-period string quartets for Beethoven Werke, and a three-volume set of fifteen string quartets by Beethoven’s contemporary Emmanuel Aloys Förster.
She also has a significant interest in teaching and learning in higher education, with an emphasis on developing student-centred history pedagogies across the disciplines. She is the recipient of teaching-related research grants from Ako Aotearoa, NZ Fulbright. A recent project, funded by the NZ Teaching and Learning Research Initiative, is entitled: Historical Literacy Aotearoa: Fostering Effective Pedagogies for Māori and Pasifika Students in the Historical Disciplines.
