Nineteenth-and Twentieth-Century Music

The Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music research cluster was formed in 2024, reflecting a growing body of expertise in this area at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. The research cluster aims to support world-leading scholarly engagement with a range of issues in musical composition, performance, and listening from the Enlightenment to the start of the 21^st century. The cluster aims to establish itself as a centre of excellence in this field, supporting grant applications, new research students, and events.

The main research themes of the cluster concern:

Composer studies, including Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Messiaen, Elgar, Britten.
Cultures and technologies of musical performance, recording, and broadcasting, including the development of the piano, the BBC, the development of the piano, the Hallé orchestra, and regional British music festivals.
Performance research on 19^th- and 20^th-century repertoire, performance styles and organology.
Sketch and archival studies.
Modern song; connections between music and literature; topic theory; musical meaning and narrative.
Musical activity within marginalised groups (women, religious minorities)
Politics and identities in British musical culture; global impacts and influences

Our research objectives are:

To act as a forum for 19^th- and 20^th-century music research, particularly around the study of performance, reception, and musical cultures.
To undertake world-leading research at local, national, and international levels, for the benefit of scholars, students, and the wider public.
To develop partnerships with related organisations and institutions.
To organise seminars and international conferences around 19^th- and 20^th-century music.

People

Dr Siân Derry (lead): Beethoven, performance practice, critical editing, sketch studies.
Dr Chris Marshall (assistant lead): social and cultural histories of the BBC, technologies of sound recording and broadcasting.
Dr Joanna Bullivant (assistant lead): 19^th and 20^th-century British music including Elgar, Britten, Alan Bush, music and global communism, sound heritage.
Professor Christopher Dingle: 20^th-century French Music, notably Messiaen; music criticism; late 20^th-/21^st-century British music and musical life; early recordings.
Dr Matthew Pilcher: 19^th-century song, Beethoven, the Broadway musical.
Dr Daniel Tong: Beethoven, performance analysis
Dr Gareth Thomas: 19^th and 20^th-century Russian music (incl Ballets Russes); 19^th and early 20^th-century British music; reception studies.
Professor John Thwaites: Brahms, 19^th-century performance practice, British chamber music.