Recent Conference and other Papers

Impuls New Music Course, Graz, Austria, February 2013
‘The Cold War in Germany as Ideological Weapon for Anti-Modernists’

Symposium on ‘Über das Forteilen und Zurückhalten. Zur Tempogestaltung in der Musik des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts’, Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, Berlin, March 31st, 2012
‘Tempo and its Modifications in the Music of Brahms from Sources and Evidence of Early Performers’

Ligeti Conference, Senate House, London, March 30th, 2012
Lecture-recital on ‘Technical and aesthetic issues in the performance of Ligeti’s Études for Piano’.

Radical Music History Conference, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland, December 8th, 2011
‘The Cold War in Germany as Ideological Weapon for Anti-Modernists’

Keynote Address, Symposium on The Art of Artistic Research, Norwegian Academy of Music, Friday May 6th, 2011
‘Instrumental Technique and Scholarly Enquiry: Issues and Methods’

Impuls New Music Course, Graz, Austria, February 9th, 2011
‘A Template for New Music? The Emergence of the West German New Music Infrastructure between 1945 and 1955: Personalities, Institutions and Ideologies’

Red Strains Conference, British Academy, London, January 14th, 2011
‘Cardew serves Stalinism: Saint Cornelius and the Reification of the International Proletariat’

Coventry University Symposium on Experimental Music, September 25th, 2010
‘Transatlantic Rivalries in the Discourse Surrounding Experimental Music’

The Symphony Orchestra as Cultural Phenomenon, Institute of Musical Research, London, July 3rd, 2010
‘Militarisation, Industrialisation and the Growth of the Symphony Orchestra in the Nineteenth Century’

Symposium on Analysis and Performance, Orpheus Institute, Gent, March 31st, 2010
‘Performance as Analyis, Analysis as Performance’

Adorno on Performance Conference, Royal Northern College of Music, September 2008
‘Between Adorno and HIP’. Paper on possible reconciliations between Adorno’s writings on performance and the work of Harnoncourt, Taruskin and others

CHARM Conference on recordings, Royal Holloway College, September 2008
‘Recording, Ideology and Critical Approaches to Interpretation’. Paper considering relationship between recorded traditions and my own work.

Conference on Musical Material, Royal Musical Association, July 4th, 2008
‘Material as Archetype in Michael Finnissy’s The History of Photography in Sound’

Fifth Biennial Twentieth-Century Music Conference, York University, July 2007
‘The Market-Place as Woman??? Postmodernism’s “Un-Other”’. On the appropriation of market-oriented values under the guise of identity politics in post-modernist discourses around contemporary music.

Guest Professor – Orpheus Institute, Gent, Belgium, 10-14th April 2007
Two lecture-recitals:
“Making Possible the Irrational: Strategies and Aesthetics in the Music of Stockhausen, Cage, Ligeti, Xenakis, Ferneyhough, Barrett”
“Complexity as Imaginative Stimulant: Issues of Rubato, Barring, Grouping,
Accentuation and Articulation in Contemporary Music, with Examples from
Boulez, Carter, Feldman, Kagel, Sciarrino, Finnissy”

Keynote Address – Society for Music Analysis Study Day, University of Sussex, on Programme Notes, 25th November 2006
‘The Marxist Programme Note: The Logic of the Supplement in the Textual Accompaniment’

Royal College of Music Lachenmann Festival, 16th November 2006
‘Against Habit, For Listening: The Music of Helmut Lachenmann’

Trinity College of Music, Rzewski Festival, 15th May 2006
Interview with Frederic Rzewski

Guest Lecture, University of Southampton, 25th April 2006
‘Identity Politics and the Aesthetics of the Free Market: McClary, Brett, Taruskin and Musicological Neo-Conservatism’

Beckett’s Proust/Deleuze’s Proust – Conference, Cardiff University, 10th March 2006
‘Coldness and Cruelty in Deleuze’s Proust: A dialectical encounter with domination, submission, Oedipus, the politics of transgressive desire, and capitalism’

‘Hung up on the number 64’ – Cage Conference, Huddersfield University, 4th February 2006
‘The Best Form of Government….’: John Cage’s laissez-faire anarchism and capitalism.

Guest lecture, Leeds University, 2nd February 2006
‘New Music in Britain during the Blair Years’

Fourth Biennial Twentieth-Century Music Conference, University of Sussex, 25th August 2005
‘Verbal Discourse as Aesthetic Arbitrator’

Guest lecture, University of Southampton, 16th February 2004
‘Rethinking Romanticism’

Hochschule der Kunst, Berlin, 18th January 2004
‘Rethinking Romanticism’