Contact
Biography
I got my BA in Music and MA in piano performance from the University of Bristol before completing my PhD in music at the University of Manchester. I have worked as a Teaching Associate at the University of Manchester (2015-20), and as a Lecturer in Music at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (2020-21) and the University of Glasgow (2021-23).
Expertise Summary
Slavonic and East-European Music & Culture; 19th-Century Music; 20th-Century Music; Songs & Vocal Cycles; Opera; Music and Nationalism; Soviet Culture & Politics; Analysis; Dmitri Shostakovich; Georgy Sviridov; Valentin Silvestrov;
Teaching Summary
My teaching covers the history of European and Slavonic musical culture during the Long 19th Century. I focus on the way music is embedded in society and explore the links between musical culture and… read more
Research Summary
I am currently writing up an analysis of Valentin Silvestrov's Symphony No. 5 (1980-1982) for the RMA Short Monograph Series. The monograph focusses on what Silvestrov described to me in 2019 as an… read more
My teaching covers the history of European and Slavonic musical culture during the Long 19th Century. I focus on the way music is embedded in society and explore the links between musical culture and class, politics, gender, and national identity, with a particular focus on vocal genres, e.g., song traditions (mélodie, Lieder, romance) and opera. I also regularly teach on music historiography and criticism. At Nottingham I teach the Revolutionary Opera course and on Repertoires I.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), accredited by Advanced HE.
Current Research
I am currently writing up an analysis of Valentin Silvestrov's Symphony No. 5 (1980-1982) for the RMA Short Monograph Series. The monograph focusses on what Silvestrov described to me in 2019 as an 'immediate kinship' that he felt between this symphony and Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker, which he saw shortly before completing his symphony. The research highlights the centrality of time and memory in the aesthetic philosophies of both artists, and situates this within the context of post-war Soviet culture, which was characterised by a fascination with dialogues between past, present, and future, the relationships between time and space, and a revival of interest in pre-revolutionary culture, mythology, religious and spiritual practices, mysticism, esotericism, occultism, metaphysics, eschatology, prophecy, and apocalypse.
Past Research
My first book explores the intersection between music, poetry, and cultural identity in the post-Stalinist period of Soviet history through close readings of three vocal cycles by Dmitri Shostakovich, Georgy Sviridov, and Valentin Silvestrov. (DOI: 10.4324/9780429274077).
My most recent article explores the evolution of Valentin Silvestrov's musical aesthetics and his international reputation in the wake of Russia's full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (DOI: 10.1017/s0040298222001140).
More details of my research interests and outputs can be found here: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2874-4269
Future Research
I am preparing a large-scale research project focussing on the early recording industry during the late Russian Empire and early Soviet period. The project spans the two decades between 1902 and 1922 and explores the ways in which the production and consumption of recorded music and sound intersects with the construction and expression of complex hybrid identities within the Russian Empire. It argues for an understanding of recordings as an essential means of identity expression and conceptualises both the creation and the consumption of recorded sound as contiguous elements that are fundamental to the construction and performance of selfhood in both public and private spheres. In its critical treatment of the regions that fell within the boundaries of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union as highly heterogeneous in terms of social-cultural identity, the project aims to confront two concerns of recent scholarship, namely the Western-centric focus of the history of recorded sound and the Russo-centric nature of cultural discourse which scholars in the field of Slavonic and East European Studies are urgently called to address.