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Richard Wistreich is a musicologist, teacher and former professional singer, whose work focuses mainly on the cultural and social history of music-making in the Renaissance. He is Professor of Music at the Royal College of Music and was the RCM’s Director of Research from 2014­–2020. Previously, he held positions at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the International Centre for Music Studies at Newcastle University, and the Institut für Alte Musik at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik, Trossingen (Germany). Before taking up his current role as Chair of the Advisory Board of the Warburg Institute, Richard was Honorary Chair of the Society for Renaissance Studies, and a member of the Advisory Board of the V&A Research Institute.

Richard has published on many aspects of the history of musical performance and in particular, the role of the human voice in all its manifestations during the early modern period. Books include Warrior, Courtier, Singer: Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and the Performance of Identity in the Late Renaissance; The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi and The Cambridge History of Sixteenth-Century Music. He travels widely to talk about his work to both music specialists and at interdisciplinary conferences. Richard has also had a long and distinguished career as a singer of both early and contemporary music. For over four decades he made concert, radio and television appearances worldwide, and recorded more than 100 CDs of music ranging from albums of twelfth-century Parisian organum to music of the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and contemporary eras that include several celebrated discs of Monteverdi and Purcell.