Research - Keele University
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Music and Music Technology

Research in Music and Creative Music Technology

2008 Research Assessment Exercise:
Of research assessed in Music and Music Technology at Keele, 82% has been assessed as being in the highest two categories as world leading and internationally excellent (4* and 3*).
Keele Music & Music Tech is in the top-three highest in research ranking, in company with prestigious institutions such as Royal Holloway University of London and Birmingham University.

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The Music Department at Keele University enjoys a firmly established research culture with all full-time academic staff undertaking research at a high level. Staff and research students concentrate on composition, electroacoustic music and digital arts, nineteenth / twentieth-century European music, film, analysis and critical theory. The Department comprises a group of established researchers with skills focused on key areas within contemporary musical culture. Members of staff are recognised members of the research community and have received several research and creative awards from the Arts and Humanities research Council (AHRC), an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and commissions from IRCAM, Sonic Arts Network and the Brighton Festival (see the staff's profiles and their research output). Musicological publications include articles and books of twentieth-century music and ideas, such as post-war European modernism, early twentieth-century French, critical theory and analysis, including the pressures on musicology caused by expanded repertoires and theoretical developments, identity in music and developments in methodology. Staff's specialisations represent also areas on which PhD supervision is offered.

Research in Music Technology and Digital Arts spans from the development of new music software tools, to the composition of computer music in various forms. Although all researchers in composition have an interest in electroacoustic music, the balance of output between electroacoustic and instrumental/vocal composition varies between staff members. This provides a complementary pattern of expertise and interest, which ranges from orchestral composition through to acousmatic tape music and audio-visual works. Compositional output is widely disseminated through performances worldwide and through broadcasts and CD recordings. Staff compositions have received prestigious international awards. Findings from creative work are also presented in the form of written publications, where the theoretical and aesthetic dimensions of compositional practices, and, in the case of electroacoustic works, the technical means of production, are presented for dissemination.

Research areas:

  • Composition, including computer aided
  • Musicology
  • Critical theory, modernity
  • Late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French music and culture
  • Polish music
  • Theory and analysis of 20th/21st century music
  • Film and television music.
  • Interaction between acoustic instruments and computer platforms
  • Electroacoustic Music
  • Computer-based audiovisual composition
  • Music Software Development