Newcastle University

Faculty Member, Music

senior lecturer, head of undergraduate studies (Music)

About

Dr Biddle is a musicologist and theorist, working on a range of topics in music-related areas. His work ranges from the cultural history of music and masculinity, through to theorising music's intervention in communities and subjectivities. He has interests in German music from 1800-1945, musics of Eastern Europe, 1877-1945, traditional musics of Spain and Portugal, especially Flamenco and Fado, and Anglo-American popular music traditions. He has recently started working on theories of technology, especially in relation to music and agency. He is co-founder and co-ordinating editor (with Richard Middleton) of the journal Radical Musicology.

Research Interests

Music and ideology
Music, technology and culture
Music and politics
Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis
Music and gender
The historiography of technology


Current Work

Current projects include an edited collection of essays Noise, Audition, Aurality: Histories of the Sonic World(s) of Europe, 1500-1945 with Kirsten Gibson, a co-authored book with Richard Elliott and Nanette de Jong entitled Technologies of Memory: Ritual, Remembrance and Recorded Sound and a single-authored book Noise Communities: On the Sonic Component of the Social.


Recently completed works include a co-edited book for Ashgate (with Kirsten Gibson) entitled Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, articles on popular music and masculinity and several chapters on Flamenco. In the last 5 years he has also published several entries for encyclopaedias, including the Revised New Grove entry on 'Hegel' and the Encycopedia of Popular Musics of the World entry on 'Nationalism', a chapter on music and sexuality for a book edited by Richard Middleton, Trevor Herbert and Martin Clayton, entitled The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction for Routledge and an article on the German electronic group Kraftwerk for the first edition of Twentieth-Century Music. He also co-edited a book with Vanessa Knights (Department of Spanish, University of Newcastle) entitled Between the Global and the Local: World Musics and National Identities.


Dr Biddle has recently completed a new single-authored book entitled Listening to Men: Musical Thought, Masculinity and the Austro German Tradition 1789-1914 based on research funded by the AHRC.


Dr Biddle recently gave research papers at the following institutions:

■Universidade nova de Lisboa
■University of Uppsala, Sweden
■Conservatorio de Música, Salamanca
■University of Bristol, Department of Music
■University of Sheffield, Department of Music
■University of Manchester, Department of Music
■Warwick University German Department
■University of Durham Music Department
■Cardiff University Music Department
■School of Music, UEA

and conference papers at the following conferences:

■Fado- Percursos e Perspectivas; Congresso Internacional Lisboa, 18 a 21 de Junho de 2008
■Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, Valencia, Spain, 2005
■V Congresso da Seção Latino-Americana da Associação Internacional para o Estudo da Música Popular, IASPM-LA, Rio de Janeiro, 2004
■Practising Popular Music: 12th Biennial International Conference of IASPM (International Association for the Study of Popular Music), Montréal 2003
■Annual Conference for the Society for Music Theory (Philadelphia 2001)
■A Tale of Three Cities: Janáèek's Brno Between Vienna and Prague (School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University of London, 1999)

and has taught as Visiting Professor at

■Institutionen för Musikvetenskap, University of Uppsala, Sweden (November 2003 and November 2004).

Contact Information