Dr Carlo Cenciarelli

(he/him)

BA (Soton) MMus (KCL) PhD (KCL)

Publication

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Research

My research sits at the intersection of musicology, film theory, sound studies, and media studies, with a particular focus on how cinema has functioned as a cultural interface for musical repertoires and audio technologies through its history, and especially since the 1960s. I am particularly interested in how cinema remediates and transforms listening practices and the meaning of music in contemporary contexts.

I have published extensively on the cinematic appropriation of J.S. Bach’s music (with a particular focus on the Goldberg Variations), the soundscapes of indie cinema (Jarmusch, Munch, and Linklater), the role of opera in digital culture (from opera DVDs to YouTube performances), and the cinematic representation and remediation of playback technologies. My work can be found in edited collections and in journals including the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, twentieth-century music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Radical Musicology, Music and Letters, and New Formations. My research on opera and media received the 2010 Rotary Prize from the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, and my article on Bach and New Queer Cinema received the 2014 Westrup Prize from Music and Letters. I am the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening (OUP, 2021), a volume that defines and fosters an emerging interdisciplinary research area exploring the relationship between cinema and everyday listening practices.

I have presented my research to academic and non-academic audiences, both locally and internationally. In Cardiff, I collaborate regularly with the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Biennal competition, I have co-curated film series at Chapter Arts Centre, I have partnered with the Italian Cultural Centre Wales to organise sound design workshops, and have delivered pre-concert talks of film and video game music at St David’s Centre. Internationally, I have been invited to give lectures in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Finland,  and Canada. In November 2024 I will take a visiting professorship in Milan.

Previous academic collaborations and interdisciplinary research networks include ‘Representing “Classical Music” in the 21^st Century’ (with Exeter), ‘Musical Lives on Screen’ (with King’s College London and La Sapienza), and the Interdisciplinary Film and Visual Culture Research Network (with JOMEC at Cardiff Uni).

I am currently working on monograph that explores the ‘cinematicity’ of personal stereos, using cinema as a lens to investigate the cultural history and phenomenology of mobile listening.

Teaching

At Cardiff University, I have developed a progression of research-led music and media modules that spans the curriculum, from Year 1 Undergraduate modules to PhD supervision.

In Year 1, I currently lead a team-taught module, Music as Culture, which explores how music serves as a powerful tool for constructing meaning and identity across diverse socio-cultural contexts. Within this module, I introduce students to fundamental principles for the audio-visual and ethnographic analysis of media music, with a particular focus on how pre-existing music—both ‘classical’ and ‘popular’—is used in commercials, film, and video games.

In Year 2, I teach Reading Film Sound, a module that provides students with historical and theoretical frameworks to interpret the evolving role of sound in cinema. For final-year UG students, I developed Aural Cultures: From the Phonograph to the Smartphone, a sound studies module that traces the history of playback technologies and their cultural impact.

At MA level, I teach Studying Musical Multimedia, which covers the history, analysis, and criticism of musical multimedia across a wide range of fictional and non-fictional screen genres including documentaries, news broadcasts, commercials, music videos, video games, opera simulcasts, and online performances. As a researcher and teacher of media, I also encourage my graduate students to experiment with audio-visual essays as an alternative to traditional essay writing, exploring new methods of communicating research.

I have supervised undergraduate and MA students on a variety of topics in the history and theory of musical multimedia, musical borrowing, intertextuality, minimalism, and the history of recordings. Currently, I am supervising PhD students working on topics such as internet music, the gender implications of cinema’s sensory turn, and the use of the Lydian mode in Hollywood cinema. I welcome PhD applications on topics related to film sound as well as music, media, and technology more broadly.

Biography

I was born in Rome, and grew up in Rieti, a small city that proudly claims to be the exact geographical centre of italy. I studied composition at the Conservatorio Alfredo Casella in l’Aquila, Italy, where I trained harmony and counterpoint under Alessandro Sbordoni and studied film music with Carlo Crivelli. 

In 2000 I moved to the UK and pursued a BA in Music at Southampton University. I then completed an MMus in Music Theory and Analysis at King’s College London, when the proverbial ‘penny dropped’ and my personal passion for music started connecting with broader ways of rethinking musicology. I won the Hilda Margaret Watts Prize for my dissertation work on Michael Nyman’s appropriation of Mozart’s music, which later became my first published piece in Radical Musicology. I remained at KCL to pursue my PhD, funded by the AHRC, where I researched the cinematic re-use of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

After completing my PhD, I gained teaching experience in film music and music analysis at several UK institutions, including King’s College London, City University of London, Oxford Brookes, the University of Surrey, and Manchester University. From 2012 to 2015 I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. I was appointed to my current position at Cardiff University in 2015.

Education and Qualifications

2011: PhD, King's College London

2005: MMus, King's College London

2003: BMus, University of Southampton

Honours and awards

Westrup Prize, awarded for articles of particular distinction published in Music and Letters, 2014

Premio Giuseppe Verdi, Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, Parma, Italy, 2010

Professional memberships

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Academic positions

British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Royal Holloway, University of London

Visiting Lecturer at Manchester University, City University, King's College London, Oxford Brookes, and Surrey University.

Committees and reviewing

Director of Postgraduate Taught Studies (2024-current)

Chair of PGT Exam Boards (2024-current)

Director of Undergraduate Studies (2020-2023)

Chair, Examination and Year Boards (2020-2023)

Director of Undergraduate Admissions (2016-2018)

Convenor of the John Bird Lecture Series (2015-2020)

Supervisions

I am currently supervising PhD students on the gender implications of cinema’s sensory turn (Emma Payne), on the musical gaze in Hitchcock’s films (Barbara de Biasi, in collaboration with Guildhall School of Music and Drama) and on the use of the Lydian mode in Hollywood cinema (Jonathan Brown).

Previous PhD projects I have supervised include studies on internet music and platform capitalism as well as consciousness in Hip Hop Music (SWWDTP with Bristol University), and have incuded interdisciplinary collaborations and cross-School co-supervisions with the School of Social Sciences (SOCSI) and the School of Journalism, Media, and Culture (JOMEC).

I welcome PhD applications for topics related to film sound and to music, media, and technology more broadly.