Dr David Beard

BA (Hons) Dunelm, MMus (theory and analysis) KCL, DPhil Oxon

Publication

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Research

My research is focussed on intersections between archival, analytical, creative and critical-theoretical perspectives on post-1945 concert music, experimental music theatre and opera. I have published widely on contemporary British concert music and opera, and am currently writing the first book on the music of Judith Weir CBE and Master of the Queen's Music, for Cambridge University Press.

From 2021-23 I held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship and before that I was Director of Research overseeing the School's REF2021 submission (2017-2021). 

Teaching

My Undergraduate teaching is focused on music since c. 1890 to the present and embraces a range of historical, cultural, political and music-analytical perspectives on European cultural centres (The Birth of Modernism), and the varied topography of British music since 1900 (Topics in Musicology 2B). I devised a module on Ambient music (Sounded Out) and supervise dissertations on a range of topics, including popular music, concert programming, and experimental contemporary art music.

My Masters teaching has included seminars on music and race, ethnicity and identity, academic reading and writing, sketch studies, early modernism, and ecomusicology.

PhD topics I have supervised include the emergence of the avant-garde in West Germany in the 1940s, virtual bands and vocaloids, and the music of Pavel Haas.

I have been an External Examiner for BA (Hons) degrees in Music at the Universities of Bristol (2017-21), Cambridge (2020-3), Keele (2020-3), and Oxford (2017-20).

Biography

I studied music at Durham University (1990-93) before completing an MMus in music theory and analysis at King's College London (1993-4), and a DPhil at the University of Oxford on the early instrumental music of Harrison Birtwistle (2000).

Halcyon summer breaks during my first degree were spent working in London for the National Sound Archive (Kensington) and The Musical Times (then in Mandela Street, Camden). I was later employed by Macmillan Publishers as an assistant editor on the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, in Holborn (1994-5). I held a scholarship at the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel, in 1999, and was appointed Lecturer in Music at Cardiff University in January 2000.

Honours and awards

2021   Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (18 months)

2020    Ruth Solie Prize for ‘the most outstanding article on a subject in British music’ published in 2018 and 2019, awarded by the North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA)

2016    Research Leave Fellowship (full academic year), Cardiff University

2014    Music Analysis Development Fund Award, Society for Music Analysis

2013    Research Leave Fellowship (Autumn semester), Cardiff University

2013    Honorable Mention, 2013 Diana McVeagh Prize for Best Book on British Music, NABMSA

2010    International Collaboration Award, Cardiff University

2008    AHRC Research Leave Award

2006    Music & Letters Award, to present a paper at a conference in the USA

2005     British Academy Small Research Grant

Professional memberships

North American British Music Studies Association

Academic positions

Tutor for Christ Church, Jesus College, St Edmund Hall and St Peter's, University of Oxford.

Speaking engagements

'"Elective Affinities": Found Objects, Musical Repurposing and Concealed Meanings in Music by Judith Weir', John Bird Seminar, School of Music, Cardiff University, Cardiff University, 11 October 2023

Round Table on The Black Spider with composer Judith Weir and Director Rhian Hutchings, WNO Youth Opera, Millennium Arts Centre, Cardiff, 28 May 2022.

'"An Absolute and Infectious Integrity": Parallels Between Peter Maxwell Davies and Judith Weir', 'Revealing Max' Study Day, School of Music, Cardiff University, 7 May 2022.

'Musicology's Crises of Identity', invited keynote at ‘Shaping the Present by the Future: Ethno/musicology and Contemporaneity’, The Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia, 24–6 September 2020.

‘Music, Untangled: Judith Weir’s Endless Melodies’, North American British Music Studies Association Eighth Biennial Conference, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA, 1 August 2018; longer version presented as invited seminar at Surrey University, Department of Music and Media, 9 May 2018.

‘Between Ourselves: Judith Weir’s Dialogues with Modernism’, Kenneth Gloag Memorial Day Symposium, 2 December 2017, School of Music, Cardiff University.

‘Out of the Air: Judith Weir’s Emergence in 1970s Britain’, paper for themed panel at event to commemorate Michael Finnissy’s 70^th birthday, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November 2016.

Public interview with Harrison Birtwistle at the ‘Open Circuit’ contemporary music festival, University of Liverpool, 5 March 2016.

Invited chair of themed panel ‘Socialist State Politics – Music Performance Policies’ at ‘Musical Legacies of State Socialism: Revisiting Narratives about Post-World War II Europe’ conference at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, 24–26 September 2015.

‘“Out of the Air”: Judith Weir’s Emergence in 1970s Britain’, part of themed session: ‘When Was British Musical Modernism? Post-war Perspectives, 1945-1980’, 51st annual RMA conference, University of Birmingham Department of Music, 9 September 2015. Also presented as a one-hour seminar at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, 28 September 2015.

Invited chair of themed panel ‘Clocks and Complexity’ at ‘The State We’re In: Directions in Researching Post-1900 British Music’ conference, University of Surrey, 17 April 2015.

David Beard in conversation with Judith Weir (Master of the Queen’s Music), University of Nottingham Department of Music Colloquium Series, 24 March 2015.

 ‘“The Mystery of the Kiosk Composer”: Harrison Birtwistle's Creative Processes Explained’, invited talk for ‘Birtwistle at 80’, a Study Day jointly run by the Institute of Musical Research and the BBC, Barbican Centre, London, 25 May 2014.

‘“Stand Back and Light the Fuse”: Harrison Birtwistle and the Redistribution of Authorial Subjectivity’, invited talk at Liverpool University, Department of Music, 18 February 2014.

‘Instinctive Interventions: Birtwistle at the National Theatre and Beyond’, invited talk at ‘Poetry, Music, Drama: The Creation of Contemporary Opera’, a one-day conference on contemporary opera, organized by the Institute for Musical Research and the Institute for English Studies at the University of London’s School of Advanced Studies, Senate House, 16 January 2013.

‘Wagnerian Opera Transformed: Birtwistle’s Io Passion’, paper delivered at the ‘Love to Death’ opera conference, Wales Millennium Centre, 31 May 2012, and chair of ‘Beyond Opera’, 1 June 2012.

Pre-concert interview with Judith Weir, School of Music, concert hall foyer, 14 December 2011.

Invited talk to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Peter Hall’s 1981 production of the Oresteia, organized by the Archive for Performance of Greek and Roman Drama, Classics Faculty, University of Oxford, held in the Ashmolean Museum (other speakers included Tony Harrison and Oliver Taplin), 19 November 2011.

Invited academic and public talks and participation in workshops on emotion communication in music, with emphasis on the vocal functions underlying the production of affect bursts and speech prosody, in conjunction with singers and instrumentalists performing Daniel Kramer’s award winning production of Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy. The Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, the University of Geneva, and the Grand Théâtre de Genève, 4–5 April 2011.

‘When Actors Meet Musicians: The Music for Peter Hall’s Oresteia and “the Agamemnon Experiments”’, invited lecture and seminar, University of Aberdeen, 19 March 2010.

Chair of ‘Twentieth-Century British Composers’ session at the Cardiff Music Analysis Conference (CarMAC), 5 September 2008.

‘“Incidental” Music? Settings of Greek Tragedy by Judith Weir and Harrison Birtwistle’, invited lecture, The Faculty of Classics and The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, University of Oxford, 27 October 2008.

‘From Heroische Bogenstriche to Waldeinsamkeit: Gender and Genre in Music by Judith Weir’, invited paper, ‘Dichotonies: a Workshop on Gender and Music’, Cologne University (part of the Klang.Körper Festival for Contemporary Music and Gender), 15 June 2008. 

‘Opera and Text’, invited talk for academic staff at Cardiff University Humanities Research Day, The Committee Room, Cardiff University Main Building, 14 May 2007. 

Chair of post-concert interview with Michael Finnissy, School of Music, Concert Hall Foyer, 5 December 2007.

‘Working with Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches: Resisting the Fetish’, invited talk at AHRC-funded Music Archival Skills Research Training Day for music postgraduates, University of Huddersfield, 21 October 2006. 

‘Escaping the Labyrinth: Deciphering the “scene-agent ratio”’ in Harrison Birtwistle and Tony Harrison's Yan Tan Tethera’, Second biennial conference of the North American British Music Studies Association, Saint Michael's College, Colchester VT, 4 August 2006; also given as an invited lecture at Bristol University, 2 May 2006 and University of Cambridge, 29 March 2006.

‘A Theatre of Sculptural Sound: Birtwistle’s Concept of a Secret Drama in Gawain’, invited lecture, Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, University of Sussex, 24 November 2004.

‘The Music of The Second Mrs Kong’, invited talk and round-table discussion with the composer and librettist, BBC SO, Royal Festival Hall, London, 6 November 2004.

‘Meta-Narratives and Multidimensional Opera: Harrison Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus’, invited paper, Music and Networking Conference, University of Belgrade, 14-17 April 2004.

‘Subject Position, Style and Genre in Contemporary Electronica and Dance Music’, invited lecture, University of Surrey, November 2003; also presented as an invited lecture at the University of Durham, October 2003, and at the Third Biennial Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, University of Nottingham, June 2003.

‘Gesture and Genre in British Music Theatre Works from the 1970s’, invited paper and contributor to round table discussion, ‘Beyond Opera’, International Conference on ‘Music and Gesture’, University of East Anglia, Norwich, August 2003.

‘Rock Bottom: British Pop in the mid-1970s and the Voice of Robert Wyatt’, invited seminar at the Faculty of Music Colloquium, University of Oxford, May 2002.

Chair of session in ‘Music Analysis and Popular Music’ at Society for Music Analysis-sponsored study day, Cardiff University, 17 November 2001.

‘Landscape and Identity in Recent British Chamber Music’, invited talk at meeting of the Cheltenham Music Society, Francis Bacon Hall, Dean Close School, June 2001. 

‘Re-inscribing Opera: Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus’, ‘Opera at the Millennium’ conference, Hofstra University, New York, U.S.A., November 2000; an expanded version was subsequently presented for an invited John Bird seminar, the School of Music, Cardiff University, December 2000 .

‘“From the Mechanical to the Magical”: A Pre-Compositional Plan for Birtwistle’s C.A.M.P.’, invited talk for the Research Seminar at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel, Switzerland, December 1999. 

‘Sounded Schemes: Compositional Processes and the Listener in Birtwistle’s Music’, paper at the 3^rd Triennial British Musicological Societies’ Conference, Surrey University, July 1999.

‘Birtwistle and Serialism: Three Sonatas for Nine Instruments’, conference paper at the Theory and Analysis Graduate Study Day, University of Oxford, May 1998. 

‘Birtwistle’s Verses for Ensembles ‘, invited talk for the Faculty of Music Colloquium, University of Oxford, June 1997. 

‘Birtwistle’s Secret Theatre’, Contemporary Music Postgraduate Research Day, Cardiff University, March 1996.

Committees and reviewing

Director of Learning and Teaching (2024- )

Director of Research (2017-2021)

Director of Postgraduate Research (2014-16)

Subject Lead (Music) for Cardiff University on the Creative and Critical Practice Panel of the AHRC funded South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership consortium (2014–16)

Director of the MA in Musicology programme (2009–13)

Director of Undergraduate Admissions (2003–8, January–May 2011, and July 2012)

Convener of the John Bird Guest Lecture Series, School of Music (2000–08)