research overview
- Shay researches and writes about the music of Henry Purcell and of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. Publications include the book Purcell Manuscripts: The Principal Musical Sources (Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Robert Thompson), a recipient of the Music Library Association’s Vincent H. Duckles Award, given annually to “the best book-length bibliography or other research tool in music.” Articles have appeared in the journals Early Music, Music & Letters, and Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, and in the books Purcell Studies (Cambridge University Press) and King Arthur in Music (D. S. Brewer). He has published a new critical edition of Purcell’s opera, Dido and Aeneas (Bärenreiter; Kassel, Germany, April 2023), and is currently completing a second opera edition for Bärenreiter, Purcell's King Arthur.
