Kit Thickett

Kit Thickett is a PhD candidate in Music History. Their research interests centre around efforts to define a national operatic tradition, both aesthetically and infrastructurally, in early twentieth-century Britain, through and against continental traditions and techniques, and examine ideas of the amateur voice as it traverses the boundaries of folk and art music, community and stage, nature and culture. Prior to starting at Yale, Kit studied Music at Merton College, University of Oxford (BA, 2023), and Musicology and Ethnomusicology at King’s College London (MMus, 2024). Their Master’s thesis, ‘“Her music never seemed so limitless, so universal”: Ethel Smyth and the Sound of English Suffrage’, won the Hilda Margaret Watts Prize for its analysis of the composer’s derivation of the suffragette anthem, ‘The March of the Women’ (1911) from an Abbruzzese folk melody. It explored how the intertextuality of the anthem and the forms of affective and bodily discipline engaged in its performances, implicitly circumscribed its chorus and audience, and thereby the membership of the women’s suffrage movement, along the lines of national identity, social class, and sexuality, as well as gender. Kit’s interest in the tensions between the materiality of the voice and the discursive categorisations pinned upon it stems from their upbringing in the Anglican choral tradition. They have performed around the UK, Europe and the USA, including on national radio and television, and presently perform with Yale’s Schola Cantorum.

Department: Music