Music and Music Technology

Dr. Nicholas Reyland is a Senior Lecturer at Keele University, where he contributes to the Music, MCC (Media, Communications and Culture) and Film Studies degree programmes, and to the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Programme. His primary research interests are recent Polish music and film, narrative theory, screen music, children’s television and, more broadly, the theory, analysis and criticism of music since 1900. He has recently completed his first two books, published a wide range of peer-reviewed journal articles, been invited to speak at prestigious institutions including Cornell University and the Institute of Musical Research and written for The Guardian. Nick’s first major article, ‘Lutoslawski, “Akcja” and the Poetics of Musical Plot’, was joint-winner of the 2007 Westrup Prize for articles of particular distinction published in Music & Letters. In 2009, he ran the Sixth International Conference on Music since 1900 at Keele with his colleague Diego Garro. Nick studied music at the University of Surrey before undertaking doctoral research at Cardiff University, where was awarded his doctorate in 2005. While completing his part-time doctoral research between 1998 and 2005, he also worked for the London Sinfonietta, primarily as the ensemble’s Marketing Manager. He was also Editor of the journal British Postgraduate Musicology during this time. He lectured in music at Cardiff University from 2002-4 and at the University of Surrey in 2005. In January 2005 he was elected to the post of Events Officer of the Society for Music Analysis, a post he then held until 2008. He presently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Music Analysis and Twentieth-Century Music. He was appointed to his post at Keele in 2005, and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2012. 

Dr. Nicholas Reyland is a specialist in recent Polish music and film (particularly the music of Witold Lutoslawski, the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski, and the film scores of Zbigniew Preisner), narrative theory, screen music, children’s television and, more broadly, the theory, analysis and criticism of music since 1900. He has recently completed his first two books, Zbigniew Preisner’s ‘Three Colors’ Trilogy: A Film Score Guide (Scarecrow Press, 2011) and the co-edited collection (with Michael Klein, Temple University) Music and Narrative since 1900 (Indiana University Press, 2012). Other recent publications include articles in Music & Letters, Music Analysis, Music, Sound and the Moving Image and Witold Lutoslawski Studies, and an analysis of the changing identities of Postman Pat in the collection Popular Music and Television in Britain. He has lately given papers at prestigious institutions including Cornell University and the Institute of Musical Research, in a plenary session at the Royal Musical Association’s Annual Conference, and at the joint ICMSN/Music Analysis Conference (Lancaster University 2011). Nick is currently working on research projects including a British Academy funded study on the effect of differently paced children’s television on young children’s behaviour (with his Keele colleague Alexandra Lamont), an article on music narratology and film criticism, an article about Lutoslawski’s modernism, and a substantial chapter on music and narrative for the forthcoming Routledge compendium Ideas in the Aesthetics of Music

Dr. Nicholas Reyland contributes to the Music, MCC (Media, Communications and Culture) and Film Studies degree programmes at Keele University, and also to the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Programme. He delivers Music modules on twentieth-century music, narrative theory, music analysis and popular music, and he co-teaches interdisciplinary modules on song writing (with Joe Stretch, English) and television studies (with Beth Johnson, Film Studies). Nick also contributes sessions to the Humanities MRes programme. He is a tutor on Keele’s Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Programme, which sets out to provide new teachers in higher education with skills, knowledge, and a framework for continuous critical engagement with their teaching. He regularly delivers sessions to school and college students as part of Keele University’s Widening Participation programme. Current and recent postgraduate supervisions including PhD projects on agency and narrative in 20th-century string music and on Mozart on film, plus MRes projects on iPods and gender performativity, narrativity in progressive rock, the scoring style of Hans Zimmer, game music, J-horror, narrativity and everyday musical listening, and Mahler’s late symphonies. He is happy to discuss supervising any research relating, broadly or specifically, to his research interests.