Dr Caroline Potter

Visiting Reader in French Music

Email:: caroline.potter2@bcu.ac.uk

Caroline Potter is an award-winning writer and academic who specialises in French music, based in London. Currently Visiting Reader in French Music at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, she has held full-time academic positions in the Music departments of Roehampton and Kingston Universities.

She gives guest lectures and pre-concert talks worldwide, including keynote lectures at Princeton University, Madrid Complutense University and for the Music since 1900 international conference.

Caroline has published books on Boulez, Satie, the Boulanger sisters, and Henri Dutilleux: her book Erik Satie, a Parisian composer and his world (Boydell Press, 2016), was named Sunday Times Classical Music Book of the Year.

She is a frequent broadcaster for organisations including the BBC and was Series Advisor to the Philharmonia Orchestra's ‘City of Light: Paris 1900-1950' season. She also reviews contemporary music for the US website I Care If You Listen and the journal Tempo.

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Research

Publications

Books

Henri Dutilleux (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 236 pp. This book was reprinted in 2001 and reissued by Routledge as a paperback in 2016
Nadia and Lili Boulanger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 192 pp. Reissued by Routledge as a paperback in 2016
French music since Berlioz (ed. Caroline Potter and Richard Langham Smith) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 363 pp. CP’s contribution includes chapters on musical life during the Second World War, and French music since 1945. Reissued by Routledge as a paperback in 2016
Erik Satie: Music, Art and Literature (ed. Caroline Potter) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 10 chapters, including chapter by CP, ‘Satie as poet, playwright and composer’ (pp. 67-84), and conversation between CP and Howard Skempton, ‘After Satie’ (pp. 229-242). Reissued by Routledge as a paperback in October 2016
Erik Satie, a Parisian composer and his world (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2016), 270 pp.
Pierre Boulez: Organised Delirium (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2024), 198 pp.

Journal articles

‘Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983): a centenary appraisal’, Muziek en Wetenschap (Amsterdam), vol. II no. 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 109-128
‘Dutilleux and visual music’, Muziek en Wetenschap, vol. III no. 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 251-266
‘Debussy et Dutilleux’, Cahiers Debussy, vol. 17-18 (1993-4), pp. 121-131
‘Nadia and Lili Boulanger: sister composers’, Musical Quarterly, vol. 83 no. 4 (Winter 1999), pp. 536-556
‘Nadia Boulanger and Raoul Pugno’s opera La ville morte’, Opera Quarterly, 16/3 (Summer 2000), pp. 397-406
‘Dutilleux at 90’, Musical Times (Spring 2006), pp. 51-8
‘Unreliable machines: an interview with Kenneth Hesketh’, Musical Times (Winter 2008), pp. 15-24
‘The composer, the choreographer and the film star: Henri Dutilleux’s collaborations with Roland Petit’, Musical Times, 151 (Summer 2010), pp. 71-82.
‘The end – or is it? Dutilleux’s revisions’, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 29 no. 5 (2010), pp. 515-527. Part of a special ‘Dutilleux at 95’ number edited by Caroline Potter and Caroline Rae; CP and CR are also joint authors of the Preface (pp. 429-430)
‘Erik Satie’s ‘Obstacles venimeux’’: Ars Lyrica, 20 (2011), pp. 101-114
‘Marche gaie: a rediscovered work by Lili Boulanger’, Notes, vol. 68 no. 4 (June 2012), pp. 715-728. A piano arrangement and orchestration of the rediscovered work was published by Schott in 2013
‘Erik Satie’s musique d’ameublement and Max Jacob’s Ruffian toujours, truand jamais.’ Revue de musicologie 101/2 (2015), pp. 345-366. ISSN 0035-1601
‘Pierre Boulez, surrealist’, in Music and Surrealism issue of Gli Spazi della musica, 7 (2018): http://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/spazidellamusica/article/view/2997/2679

Book chapters

‘Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979): The Teacher in the Marketplace’ in The Business of Music, ed. Michael Talbot (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2002), pp. 152-170
‘The French string quartet’ in The 20th-century String Quartet, ed. Douglas Jarman (Todmorden: Arc Press, 2002), pp. 25-40
‘Debussy and Nature’ in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, ed. Simon Trezise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 137-151. Translated into Italian by Eddo Cimatti for an edited collection of essays on Debussy, Musica e ideologia nella Francia di Debussy e altri saggi (Milan: Carta Bianca, 2014, pp. 93-110)
‘Interview with Edwin Roxburgh’ in British music in the 1990s, ed. Peter O’Hagan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 141-8
‘Messiaen and Dutilleux’ in Olivier Messiaen: Music, Art and Literature, ed. Nigel Simeone and Christopher Dingle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 23-37
‘Henri Dutilleux et le prix de Rome’ in Le Concours du Prix de Rome en musique, ed. Alexandre Dratwicki and Julia Lu (Lyon: Symétrie, 2011), pp. 445-456
‘Adventures in Gastromusicology: Satie, La Sirène and Trois petites pièces montées’ in Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, ed. Deborah Mawer (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 81-96
‘The anxiety of exoticism: André Jolivet’s relationship with non-Western musics’ in André Jolivet: Music, Art and Literature, ed. Caroline Rae (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), pp. 159-172
‘Text-music relations in Erik Satie’s works seen through his sketches’ in Esquisses musicales: Enjeux et approches du XIXe au XXe siècle, ed. François Delécluse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 67-89
‘Relationships with poets and other literary figures’ in Debussy in Context, ed. Simon Trezise (Cambridge: CUP, 2024), pp. 135-142
‘En blanc et immobile: Erik Satie, mysticism and whiteness’ in Art, Music and Mysticism at the Fin de Siècle, ed. Corrinne Chong and Michelle Foot. London: Routledge, 2024, pp. 49-61