Professor Alastair Williams
- Title
- Professor
- Location
- Room F4 The Clockhouse
- Contact me
- Via email
- Phone
- 01782 733300
- a.williams@keele.ac.uk
Biography
BIOGRAPHY
Studied at City, University of 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: New Music and the Claims of Modernity (1997); Constructing Musicology (2001); Music in Germany since 1968 (2013).
He has also contributed to The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music (2004) and The Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music (2019).
RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
Research interests include modernism in music, 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 served as a member of the AHRC Peer Review College.
Has supervised PhDs on jazz, performance practice, analysis, and critical musicology. He is currently supervising a PhD on stylistic diversity in the music of John Zorn. Has spoken by invitation in Berlin, Basel, Belgrade, Gothenburg and Göttingen.
On the basis of his research strengths, he advised the London Sinfonietta on its 50th anniversary season 2017/18.
TEACHING
Year 1: Twentieth-century Musics
Year 2: Film and Screen Music
Music in German Culture
Year 3: Contextual Studies
OTHER ACTIVITIES
Director of Music programmes: 2002–7.
Has served as External Examiner on the University of Southampton, MMus; the The University of Durham, MA in Music; and the University of Glasgow four-year MA programme. He is currently External Examiner for the BA Music at Anglia Ruskin University.
Research and scholarship
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’.
Teaching
Core teaching includes:
Year 1: Twentieth-century Musics
Year 2: Theory and Analysis, and Music in German Culture
Year 3: Contextual Studies.
Selected Publications
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2018. Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Structure and Expression in John Adams, Kaija Saariaho and Thomas Ades. In Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music. Heile B and Wilson C (Eds.). (20 vols.). London: Routledge. doi> link> full text>
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2018. Subjectivity, Analysis and the Body: Wolfgang Rihm's Tutuguri. In Music, Analysis and the Body: Experiments, Explorations and Embodiments. Reyland N and Thumpstone R (Eds.). (vol. 6). Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.
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2017. Genres and Theatres: Wolfgang Rihm's Opera-Fantasy Dionysos. Contemporary Music Review. doi> full text>
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2013. Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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2004. 'Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm's Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico'. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 240-271, vol. 129(2). doi>
Full Publications Listshow
Books
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2013. Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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2001. Constructing Musicology. Ashgate.
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1997. New music and the claims of modernity. Ashgate.
Journal Articles
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2004. 'Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm's Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico'. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 240-271, vol. 129(2). doi>
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2017. Genres and Theatres: Wolfgang Rihm's Opera-Fantasy Dionysos. Contemporary Music Review. doi> full text>
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2014. Post-War Modernism: Exclusions and Expansions. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 193-197, vol. 139(1).
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2012. Mixing with Mozart: Aesthetics and Tradition in Helmut Lachenmann's Accanto. twentieth-century music, 71-97, vol. 8(1). doi>
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2008. New Music, Late Style: Adorno's 'Form in the New Music'. Music Analysis, 193-199, vol. 27(2-3). doi>
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2008. Theodor W. Adorno, 'Form in the New Music'. Music Analysis, 201-216, vol. 27(2-3).
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2006. 'Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang Rihm's Fremde Szenen I-III and Related Scores'. Music and Letters, 379-397, vol. 87(3). doi>
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2006. 'Intertextuality in Western Art Music' by Michael Klein. Music Theory Spectrum, 316-320, vol. 28(2).
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2002. "The Music of Harrison Birtwistle" by Robert Adlington. Notes: Quarterly Journal of The Music Library Association, 603-604, vol. 58(3).
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2002. "Theodor W Adorno: Sound Figures". Music and Letters, 151-153, vol. 83(1).
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2001. Adorno and the semantics of modernism. Perspectives of New Music, 29-50, vol. 37(2). doi>
Chapters
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2018. Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Structure and Expression in John Adams, Kaija Saariaho and Thomas Ades. In Routledge Research Companion to Modernism in Music. Heile B and Wilson C (Eds.). (20 vols.). London: Routledge. doi> link> full text>
-
2018. Subjectivity, Analysis and the Body: Wolfgang Rihm's Tutuguri. In Music, Analysis and the Body: Experiments, Explorations and Embodiments. Reyland N and Thumpstone R (Eds.). (vol. 6). Leuven, Belgium: Peeters.
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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.
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2010. Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition. In Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Paddison M and Deliege I (Eds.). Farnham: Ashgate.
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2008. Kagel, Lachenmann and Rihm: Music in Germany since 1968. In Rethinking Modernism. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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2005. 'Wolfgang Rhim and the Adorno Legacy'. In Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and 20th-Century Music. Hoeckner B (Ed.). Routledge.
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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.
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2002. Cage and postmodernism. In The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. Nicolls D (Ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Other
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2018. ‘Founding a Tradition: 1968–1989’.
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2006. Wolfgang Rihm's eine stimme 1-3.
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2003. Tradition and innovation in the music of wolfgang Rihm.
Other Activities
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.
School of Humanities
Chancellor's Building
Keele University
Staffordshire
ST5 5AA
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 733109
Head of School
Dr Nick Seager
Room: CBB1.038 (Chancellor's Building, 'B' Extension)
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 733142
Email: n.p.seager@keele.ac.uk
School and college outreach
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734009
Email: outreach@keele.ac.uk