Alastair Williams

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.

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.