Dr Ian Biddle
Senior Lecturer in Music
- Email: i.d.biddle@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: 0191 222 8844
- Fax: 0191 222 5242
- Address: International Centre for Music Studies
School of Arts and Cultures
Armstrong Building
Newcastle University
NE1 7RU
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
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).
Selected Publications
- Ian Biddle. Caught in the Silken Throat: Modernist Investments in the Male Vocal Fetish. In: Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 259-278.
- Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
- Ian Biddle. Love thy neighbour? The Political Economy of Musical Neighbours, In Radical Musicology, v.2 (2007). Newcastle University, 2007. Available at: http://www.radical-musicology.org.uk/2007/Biddle.htm.
- Biddle, Ian. The singsong of undead labor: Gender Nostalgia and the Vocal Fantasy of Intimacy in the ‘New’ Male Singer/Songwriter. In: Freya Jarman-Ivens, ed. Oh Boy! : masculinities and Popular Music. Routledge, 2007, pp. 125-144.
- Biddle, Ian and Freya Jarman-Ivens. Introduction. In: Ian Biddle and Freya Jarman-Ivens, ed. Oh Boy: Popular Music and Maculinity. routledge, 2006, pp. 1-28.
- Biddle, Ian and Vanessa Knights (eds.). Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local. London: Ashgate, 2006.
Future Research
Future research plans include work on noise in urban communities (with a major research bid to the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust planned for 2009), a series of major articles on musical communities and a single-authored monoraph on musical mourning and modernity.
Dr Biddle is also a Doutor colaborador for the project hosted at the Instituto de Musicologia, Lisbon entitled A indústria fonográfica em Portugal no século XX [The phongraphic industry in Portugal in the 20th century]. See here for more details.
Research Roles
Co-ordinating Editor for the journal Radical Musicology, Convenor of the Popular Music Research Group
Postgraduate Supervision
Francisco Bethencourt y Llobet (PhD): Flamenco guitar
Xevi Moreno i Peracaula (PhD): Flamenco hybridities
Joao da Silva (PhD): Portuguese Music on Stage (late nineteenth-, early twentieth-century)
(from 2009): Marie Thompson: Theoretical approaches to musical meaning
Recently successfully completed PhDs include:
Richard Elliott (Loss, Memory and Nostalgia in Popular Song: Thematic Aspects and Theoretical Approaches);
Bennet Hogg (The Cultural Imagination of the Phongraphic Voice, 1877-1940);
Esther Zaplana Rodríguez (PhD): Feminine Performativity.
Dr Biddle is also proud to have supervised the work of:
Freya Jarman-Ivens, now working at Liverpool University;
Kirsten Gibson, now a member of staff in ICMUS.
Esteem Indicators
Dr Biddle was recently shortlisted for the Ruth Solie Prize (click here for more) for the book, co-edited with Vanessa Knights, Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local (Ashgate 2006).
Background
Ian Biddle graduated from Nottingham University in 1988 and completed his PhD at Newcastle in 1995, 'Autonomy, Ontology and the Ideal: Music Theory and Philosophical Aesthetics in Early Nineteenth-Century German Thought', under the supervision of Ronald Woodley and David Clarke. He has also studied composition with Roman Haubenstock-Romati at the Hochschule (now Universität) für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna and Musicology at the Abteilung für Musikwissenschaft at Vienna University. Since then he has taught at Newcastle and UEA Norwich, contributing to the teaching of analysis, cultural history and musical aesthetics and theory, music and politics, the operas of Leoš Janácek, music and gender and music and queer theory. He has published on music theory and aesthetics in the nineteenth century, German popular music, music theory, psychoanalysis and gender and sexuality.
Qualifications
BA (Hons) first class (Nottingham)
PhD (Newcastle)
Previous Positions
1995-1996: Lecturer A (temporary) University of Newcastle
1997-1998: Lecturer A University of East Anglia, Norwich
1998-2005: Lecturer A/B University of Newcastle
2005-present: Senior Lecturer University of Newcastle
Languages
German
Spanish
some Portuguese (reading knowledge)
some Russian and a little (very little) Czech
Informal Interests
Singing flamenco and salsa
Cooking
Gardening
Undergraduate Teaching
Music and Cultural Theory
Musical Romanticism
and several cultural/historical options including:
Music, Gender and Sexuality; Musics and Nationalisms; Music and Politics in Germany, 1900-1945.
Postgraduate Teaching
MA in Music:
Cultural Theories of Music;
Music and Historiography;
Music Research Training
Mres in Digital Media:
Theoretical Foundations of Digital Media