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Senior University Lecturer, University of Cambridge

I am a musicologist and cultural historian. Before coming to Cambridge, I was Reader at the University of Bristol, and have also taught at King’s College London and Cambridge itself.

My research focuses on nineteenth-century intellectual history, Richard Wagner, and the philosophy of technology. Other interests include Franz Liszt and post-Classical Weimar, performance theory and the grey area between improvisation and composition, as well as posthumanism and musical creativity in the digital age. In my research and teaching, I approach music and its cultures in the widest interdisciplinary sense, incorporating perspectives of cultural and intellectual history, music theory and the history of science, and as well as mediality and the philosophy of technology.

Following an edited translation of Carl Stumpf’s The Origins of Music (OUP 2012), my first monograph, Wagner’s Melodies (CUP 2013), examines the cultural and scientific history of melodic theory in relation to Wagner's writings and music. Other publications include editions and translations, as well as research and review articles, and some media work.

My latest project, funded by an ERC Starting Grant, is entitled 'Sound and Materialism in the 19th Century.' This began in September 2015 and examines how a scientific-materialist conception of sound was formed alongside a dominant culture of romantic idealism. It will last five years, and three postdoctoral scholars--Edward Gillin, Melle Kromhaut, and Melissa van Drie--joined the project in 2016.

Alongside this, I am using a Philip Leverhulme Prize to support work on a monograph about music and virtuality. It views virtuality as the flipside of materialism, and examines the influence of cutting edge technologies on our relationship to music and sound within an environment, from HD simulcasts to prosthetic hearing.

Major prizes for research include the Lewis Lockwood Award and the Alfred Einstein Award of the American Musicological Society, the Bruno Nettl Prize of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Donald Tovey Memorial Prize of the University of Oxford, and a Deems Taylor Award of the American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

When time permits, I am active as a collaborative pianist, having performed in Germany, Italy, the UK, and on both coasts of the US.

Experience

  • –present
    Senior University Lecturer, University of Cambridge