Dr. Alastair Williams

Title: Reader
Phone: Tel. 01782 733300
Email:
Location: Room F4, The Clockhouse
Role:
Contacting me: via email
williams_alastair

Studied at City University, London, before pursuing doctoral research at Magdalen College, Oxford, and has worked as an orchestral horn player. In 2002, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin.

Books published:

Music In Germany since 1968 (2013) link to UK site

Music in Germany since 1968  (2013) link to US site

Constructing Musicology (2001)

New Music and the Claims of Modernity (1997)


He has also contributed to The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music (2004).

Has interdisciplinary research interests in modernity and modernism,  Austro-German music from the nineteenth century to the present, and  subjectivity in music.

Was on the Editorial Board of Music Analysis for ten years, and is now a member of the Advisory Panel. 2004–8 he was on the International Advisory Panel for Journal of the Royal Musical Association.

Has received funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the British Academy and the AHRC.

Has supervised PhDs in jazz, performance practice, analysis, and critical musicology.  

Has spoken by invitation in Berlin, Basel, Belgrade, Gothenburg and Göttingen.

In 2010 he Chaired a symposium as part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Barbican festival ‘Total Immersion: Wolfgang Rihm’.

Selected Publications

  • WILLIAMS AJ. 2008. New Music, Late Style: Adorno's "Form in the New Music"'. Music Analysis, vol. 27(2-3), 193-199. doi>
  • Williams AJ. 2013. FORTHCOMING: Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Williams AJ. 2012. Constructing Meanings and Subjectivities in Music: Theories and Practices. In Constructing the Historiography of Music: The Formation of Musical Knowledge. Danielczyk, S, Knoth, I, Suhrcke, L (Eds.). Hildesheim: Olms Verlag.
  • Williams AJ. 2012. Mixing with Mozart: Aesthetics and Tradition in Helmut Lachenmann's Accanto. twentieth-century music, vol. 8(1), 71-97. doi>
  • WILLIAMS A. 2010. 'Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition'. In Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate.

Full Publications List show

Books

  • Williams AJ. 2013. FORTHCOMING: Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • WILLIAMS AJ. 2001. Constructing Musicology. Ashgate.
  • Williams A. 1997. New music and the claims of modernity. Ashgate.

Journal Articles

  • Williams AJ. 2012. Mixing with Mozart: Aesthetics and Tradition in Helmut Lachenmann's Accanto. twentieth-century music, vol. 8(1), 71-97. doi>
  • WILLIAMS AJ. 2008. New Music, Late Style: Adorno's "Form in the New Music"'. Music Analysis, vol. 27(2-3), 193-199. doi>
  • Williams AJ. 2008. Theodor W. Adorno, 'Form in the New Music'. Music Analysis, vol. 27(2-3), 201-216.
  • WILLIAMS AJ. 2006. 'Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang Rihm's Fremde Szenen I-III and Related Scores'. Music and Letters, vol. 87(3), 379-397. doi>
  • Williams A. 2006. 'Intertextuality in Western Art Music' by Michael Klein. Music Theory Spectrum, vol. 28(2), 316-320.
  • WILLIAMS AJ. 2004. 'Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm's Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico'. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 129(2), 240-271. doi>
  • Williams A. 2002. "The Music of Harrison Birtwistle" by Robert Adlington. Notes: Quarterly Journal of The Music Library Association, vol. 58(3), 603-604.
  • Williams A. 2002. "Theodor W Adorno: Sound Figures". Music and Letters, vol. 83(1), 151-153.
  • Williams A. 2001. Adorno and the semantics of modernism. Perspectives of New Music, vol. 37(2), 29-50.

Chapters

  • Williams AJ. 2012. Constructing Meanings and Subjectivities in Music: Theories and Practices. In Constructing the Historiography of Music: The Formation of Musical Knowledge. Danielczyk, S, Knoth, I, Suhrcke, L (Eds.). Hildesheim: Olms Verlag.
  • WILLIAMS A. 2010. 'Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition'. In Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Farnham: Ashgate.
  • WILLIAMS A. 2008. Kagel, Lachenmann and Rihm: Music in Germany since 1968. In Rethinking Modernism. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  • WILLIAMS AJ. 2005. 'Wolfgang Rhim and the Adorno Legacy'. In Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and 20th-Century Music. Hoeckner B (Ed.). Routledge.
  • Williams A. 2004. Ageing of the New: The Museum of Musical Modernism. In The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music. Cook N and Pople A (Eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
  • Williams A. 2002. Cage and postmodernism. In The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Nicolls D (Ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Other

  • Williams A. 2006. Wolfgang Rihm's eine stimme 1-3.
  • Williams A. 2003. Tradition and innovation in the music of wolfgang Rihm.

Core teaching includes:
Year 1: Twentieth-century Musics
Year 2: Theory and Analysis, and Music in German Culture
Year 3: Contextual Studies.

Director of Music programme: 2002–7.
Has served as External Examiner on the University of Southampton, MMus,
The University of Durham, MA in Music, and is currently External Examiner for the University of Glasgow four-year MA programme.