Andrew D. J. Shenton

Assistant Professor of Sacred Music; James R. Houghton Scholar of Sacred Music

Andrew Shenton was born in England. His first professional music training was at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, where he studied under a scholarship from the Royal College of Organists. While at the RCM, he read for a BMus degree at London University and was an organ scholar at St. Paul’s Cathedral. After graduating, he was appointed director of music at St. Matthew’s Church in Northampton and lecturer in the humanities at Leicester University. In 1991 Shenton moved to the United States to study for a master’s degree at the Institute for Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts at Yale University and then for a PhD in musicology at Harvard University. As a student at the ISM he prepared for a ministry involved with the arts (with music as a primary focus), as he is interested in all aspects of spirituality and the arts. This is reflected in his master’s thesis, which concerns the renaissance of sacred art in post-war Britain, and in his doctoral dissertation, which is a musico-linguistic study of the twentieth-century French mystic composer Olivier Messiaen.

Dr. Shenton has a master’s degree in organ performance from Yale and holds the Fellowship Diploma of the Royal College of Organists. He has given recitals in such venues as King’s College, Cambridge; Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue (New York City debut), and the Washington National Cathedral. He has toured extensively in Europe and the United States as a conductor, recitalist, and clinician, and his two solo organ recordings have received international acclaim. In addition to diplomas in both piano and organ, Dr. Shenton holds the Choir Training diploma of the Royal College of Organists. He has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards including a Harvard Merit Fellowship and Harvard’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. He has served on the faculties of Yale University and the Catholic University of America. Throughout his studies he has been particularly concerned with issues of historically informed performance practice. In addition, he has made an extensive study of voice production and vocal technique, and frequently acts as a repetiteur, coach, and accompanist for singers. He has pioneered contemporary music in a variety of styles and has given more than forty world premieres by composers such as Geoffrey Burgon, Joe Utterback, and John Tavener.

Dr. Shenton’s first monograph, Olivier Messiaen’s System of Signs: Notes Towards Understanding His Music (Ashgate, 2008), has received critical and popular acclaim. Dr Shenton has also written numerous articles, including essays for collections on Messiaen published by both Ashgate and Cambridge University Press. He is editor of the collection Messiaen the Theologian (Ashgate, 2009), to which he also contributed an essay. His research interests include Messiaen, Pärt, music and language, music and spirituality, performance practice, and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At Boston University, Dr. Shenton directs the Master of Sacred Music program and the Boston University Messiaen Project (BUMP) (see www.oliviermessiaen.net). In addition to his position at the School of Theology, Dr. Shenton also serves on the faculties of the School of Music (CFA) and CAS/GRS.