Music and Music Technology

Professor, studied Music and English at Glasgow University before going to the University of Illinois in 1988 for a Master’s degree in Musicology. She returned to Britain to undertake a Ph.D thesis at Liverpool, entitled Darius Milhaud and the French Musical Tradition, which she completed in 1994. She was a lecturer and Senior Course Tutor at University College, Scarborough, then a college of the University of Leeds, from 1993-5, before joining the staff at Keele in February 1995. She was appointed Senior Lecturer at Keele in 2002 and awarded a personal chair in 2008.  Between 2007 and 2011 she was Programme Director for Music.  She is currently Head of Humanities Research at Keele University.

Prof. Kelly’s research is focused on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French music and culture. She has published on composers including Milhaud, Debussy, Ravel, Charpentier and Honegger and on issues such as nationalism and identity and anti-Semitism in France.
 
She contributed several articles to the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001), including one on Ravel and another on Jolivet. She has one monograph entitled Tradition and Style in the works of Darius Milhaud (Ashgate, 2003) and has completed an edited collection entitled French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939 (Rochester University Press, 2008). She has also edited a volume on Berlioz and Debussy: sources, contexts and legacies with Kerry Murphy (University of Melbourne), which was published by Ashgate in 2007.  In addition to work on the shaping of Debussy’s legacy, she is currently completing a monograph on French Musical Modernism: A Fragile Consensus (1913-1939) which will be published by Boydell and Brewer in their Music and Society series in 2013.

Barbara Kelly is a member of the Royal Musical Association, serving as a member of Council between 2004 and 2007, and is an ordinary member of the American Musicological Society. She receives regular invitations to speak in the UK, France and the USA. in addition, she is a reader for the journal Music and Letters, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, OUP and Ashgate.  Since 2006 she has been a member of AHRC International Network: Francophone Music Criticism. She has organised a number of conferences including ‘Nationalism and Identity in Third Republic France’, Royal Musical Association, international and interdisciplinary conference, Keele University, 6-8 July 2001; Music in Interwar France: A Study Day (1918-1939), Research Institute for the Humanities, Keele and Royal Musical Association, Keele University, 9 November 2007; with Pascal Terrien Musique Française, esthétique et identité en mutation 1892-1992, International Conference, Université Catholique de l’ouest, Angers, France 29-30 April 2008.  In November 2011 she ran an international workshop on Music Criticism in Interwar France, University of Ottawa with Dr Christopher Moore, University of Ottawa.  The workshop brought together 14 invited scholars working on interwar music in France from Europe and North America. 

Recent Research Grants

Léon Vallas project, British Academy, small research grant, 2008-09

Research Fellowship, Research Institute for the Humanities, Keele University, January-July 2010

Research Fellowship, AHRC, January-July 2011

Workshop Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, November 2011

University of Ottawa workshop grant, November 2011

Seminar and conference papers

Professor Kelly is regularly invited to give research seminar papers at various universities in the UK and abroad, including recent invitations at the University, of Birmingham, University of Nottingham, University of Bristol, University of Surrey, and the University of Cardiff.  She has given research seminars outside the UK at the Université de Montréal, University of Ottawa, Canada and Maynooth, Ireland.  In addition, she regularly participates in conferences in Europe and North America.  Recent appearances include the American Musicological Society, Indianpolis, the Journée d’Etudes, Sorbonne, Paris, Debussy Conference, Université de Montréal.  In addition, she has received invitations to speak at conferences at the University of Nottingham; at a Milhaud study day, Université de Montréal; the Prunières seminaires, CNRS, Paris; and the Debussy celebrations in Paris, CNRS and Ministry of Culture, France.

Teaching and curriculum development

Professor Kelly’s recent teaching included a special subject on Paris (1870-1939), a composer study, Stravinsky: tradition and legacy, undergraduate dissertation coordination and supervision, and Contextual Studies.  At postgraduate level, she teaches a seminar on musical sketches, manuscripts and editions.  She has also developed modules in Introduction to Music Theory and Music in the Community.

She has received a number of Learning and teaching innovation awards for Masters level generic training, the use of a virtual learning environment for music theory testing and for the development of a Music in the Community module.  She has been involved in curriculum development

She has been nominated by her students for an excellence in teaching on a number of occasions for her postgraduate teaching, her special subject and dissertation teaching.

Prof. Kelly has been involved in an Erasmus teaching exchange programme with Dr. Pascal Terrien at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest in Angers.  She gives classes there once a year in French on Anglo-French topics, including James McMillan, English Music after Elgar, British Religious Music, as well as topics on Stravinsky and Ravel.

Supervision

Professor Kelly has supervised postgraduate students on topics including Poulenc vocal writing, the Moulin Rouge as spectacle, Elgar’s and Newman’s Dream of Gerontius, Franco-British musical exchanges (1918-1939), Adolphe Brodsky and Chamber Music in Manchester, Le Courrier musical (1918-1925), Erik Satie’s ballets, the Ballets Suédois, Music in France during WWII.

She welcomes prospective students interested in projects relating to music and culture during in France during the Third Republic (1870-1939), British Music during the same period and Stravinsky.

Impact Activities

Prof. Kelly has had been interviewed by the BBC for Music Matters (Debussy and Ravel), Radio 3. In July 2010, she presented a 20-minute Proms feature on Ravel’s Paris, for which she interviewed some notable musicians including pianists Roy Howat and Anne Queffélec and musicologist Fran?ois de Médicis while on a walking tour of Paris’ 9^th arrondissement.  In November 2011 she replaced Caroline Rae for a pre-concert interview with Mme Christine Jolivet about her father André Jolivet at Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff with BBC Wales.

Since 2010 she has been giving regular public lectures on Debussy, Ravel, Delage and Vaughan Williams at Newcastle Museum, Hanley Museum and Keele University alongside recitals by pianist Michael Bell and singer Karen Radcliffe.  She has also forged links with local museums and concert hall for student performances and placements.

External Examiner activities

1999- 2003        Liverpool Hope University College, External examining.

2004 - 2008       Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland, external examiner.

2005 - 2009       Leeds University, External examiner.

2007 – 2012      Specialist Postgraduate External Examiner at Royal Northern College of Music