Barbara Kelly

Biography

Professor Barbara Kelly studied Music and English at Glasgow University before going to the University of Illinois in 1988 for a Master’s degree in Musicology. She returned to Britain to undertake a Ph.D thesis at Liverpool, entitled Darius Milhaud and the French Musical Tradition, which she completed in 1994. She was a lecturer at University College, Scarborough, then a college of the University of Leeds, from 1993-5, before joining the staff at Keele in February 1995. She was appointed Senior Lecturer at Keele in 2002 and awarded a personal chair in 2008.  She was Head of Humanities Research (2011-2014) and Faculty Research Director at Keele University (2014-2015).  She joined the RNCM in April 2015 as Director of Research and is now Visiting Professor at Keele University (2015-2018).

Research and scholarship

Prof. Kelly’s research is focused on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century French music and culture. She has published on composers including Milhaud, Debussy, Ravel, Honegger, Poulenc and Stravinsky and on issues such as music and war, national and religious identity and anti-Semitism in France. She has published two monographs; the first, entitled Tradition and Style in the works of Darius Milhaud (Ashgate, 2003), is a detailed study of Milhaud’s music and career until his departure from Europe on the eve of WWII; the second is Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913-1939 (Boydell and Brewer, 2013). She is also a contributing editor of two collections: French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939 (Rochester University Press, 2008) and Berlioz and Debussy: sources, contexts and legacies with Kerry Murphy (University of Melbourne), which was published by Ashgate in 2007. She contributed several articles to the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001), including one on Ravel and another on Jolivet. She recently published an article on Debussy’s Legacy in Music and Letters: ‘Remembering Debussy in interwar France: authority musicology and legacy’, Music and Letters, vol. 93(11), 374-393 (2012). Her current projects include Authority, Advocacy, Legacy: Music Criticism in France (1918-1939) with Christopher Moore; Jane Bathori’s musical activities during the Great War; a project on musical societies in Paris and London (1914-1939) and a study of music at the South Place Ethical Society during World War One.

Barbara Kelly is a Professeur invité at the Université de Paris, Sorbonne (2015-16). She is a Vice- President of the Royal Musical Association, member of Council and Chair of the Search Committee. She receives regular invitations to speak in the UK, France and North America. She is a reader for the journal Music and Letters, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, OUP and Ashgate. Since 2006 she has been a member of AHRC International Network: Francophone Music Criticism. She is on the board of Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Twentieth-Century Music and Transposition: Musique et sciences sociales; she also serves on the Comité de lecture for the Revue de musicologie. She has organized a number of conferences including ‘Nationalism and Identity in Third Republic France’, Royal Musical Association interdisciplinary conference, Keele University, 6-8 July 2001; Music in Interwar France: A Study Day (1918-1939), Royal Musical Association, Keele University, 9 November 2007; with Pascal Terrien Musique Française, esthétique et identité en mutation 1892-1992, International Conference, Université Catholique de l’ouest, Angers, France 29-30 April 2008. In November 2011 she ran an international workshop on Music Criticism in Interwar France, University of Ottawa with Dr Christopher Moore (University of Ottawa). In 2013 she organized a Poulenc Festival, Rethinking Poulenc, at Keele University to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Poulenc’s death. She on the organizing committee for the Paris, City of Light Conference in collaboration with the Philharmonia at the Institut français in May 2015, and is organizing with Dr Clair Rowden (University of Cardiff) the annual meeting of the Francophone Music Criticism Network at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris in July 2015.

Grant successes include British Academy for a project on Léon Vallas; an AHRC Fellowship to complete her monograph, Music and Ultra-Modernism in France; an AHRC CDA project on the musical archives of the South Place Ethical Society (2015-2018) and an European Union Marie Curie project entitled Transnational Localism and Music after the two World Wars with Keele University and the RNCM (2015-2017).

Teaching

Teaching and curriculum development

Professor Kelly’s recent teaching included a special subject on Paris (1870-1939), a composer study, Stravinsky: tradition and legacy, undergraduate dissertation coordination and supervision, and Contextual Studies.  At postgraduate level, she teaches a seminar on musical sketches, manuscripts and editions.  She has also developed modules in Introduction to Music Theory and Music in the Community.

She has received a number of Learning and teaching innovation awards for Masters level generic training, the use of a virtual learning environment for music theory testing and for the development of a Music in the Community module.  She has been involved in curriculum development

She has been nominated by her students for an excellence in teaching on a number of occasions for her postgraduate teaching, her special subject and dissertation teaching.

Prof. Kelly has been involved in an Erasmus teaching exchange programme with Dr. Pascal Terrien at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest in Angers.  She gives classes there once a year in French on Anglo-French topics, including James McMillan, English Music after Elgar, British Religious Music, as well as topics on Stravinsky and Ravel.

Supervision

Professor Kelly has supervised postgraduate students on topics including Poulenc vocal writing, the Moulin Rouge as spectacle, Elgar’s and Newman’s Dream of Gerontius, Franco-British musical exchanges (1918-1939), Adolphe Brodsky and Chamber Music in Manchester, Le Courrier musical (1918-1925), Erik Satie’s ballets, the Ballets Suédois, Music in France during WWII.

She welcomes prospective students interested in projects relating to music and culture during in France during the Third Republic (1870-1939), British Music during the same period and Stravinsky.

Other Activities

Impact Activities

Prof. Kelly has had been interviewed by the BBC for Music Matters (Debussy and Ravel), Radio 3. In July 2010, she presented a 20-minute Proms feature on Ravel’s Paris, for which she interviewed some notable musicians including pianists Roy Howat and Anne Queffélec and musicologist Fran?ois de Médicis while on a walking tour of Paris’ 9^th arrondissement.  In November 2011 she replaced Caroline Rae for a pre-concert interview with Mme Christine Jolivet about her father André Jolivet at Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff with BBC Wales.

Since 2010 she has been giving regular public lectures on Debussy, Ravel, Delage and Vaughan Williams at Newcastle Museum, Hanley Museum and Keele University alongside recitals by pianist Michael Bell and singer Karen Radcliffe.  She has also forged links with local museums and concert hall for student performances and placements.

Concert Activities

MusicUpClose series V: Music under Fire in Paris and London: Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 1 October - 11 November 2014
http://www.soundcollective.org/#/musicupclose/4564151083

The Culture and Sustenance Festival: Meanings and Legacies of the Great War, Wednesday 19 November 2014, Sustainability Hub, Keele University

External Examiner activities

1999- 2003        Liverpool Hope University College, External examining.

2004 - 2008       Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland, external examiner.

2005 - 2009       Leeds University, External examiner.

2007 – 2012      Specialist Postgraduate External Examiner at Royal Northern College of Music