Newcastle University

Introduction

Ian Biddle is a cultural theorist and musicologist, working on a range of topics in music- and sound-related areas. His work ranges from the cultural history of music and masculinity, theorising music's intervention in communities and subjectivities, sound, soundscapes and urban experience, and the politics of noise. He has interests in memory studies, sound studies, Italian workerist and autonomist theory, psychoanalysis and theoretical approaches to 'affective' states. He is co-founder and co-ordinating editor (with Richard Middleton) of the journal Radical Musicology.

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 Czech
Yiddish and a little Hebrew 

Informal Interests

Singing flamenco and salsa
Cooking
Gardening

Research Interests

• Music and politics
• Music in the Holocaust 
• Sound studies
• Psychoanalysis
• Music and memory
• 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 In the Shadow of the Phonograph: Ritual, Remembrance and Recorded Sound and a single-authored book Noise Communities: On the Sonic Component of the Social.

His single-authored book, Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History: the Austro-German Tradition From Hegel to Freud (Ashgate) was recently published (click here for more information). 

Other recently completed works include a co-edited book for Ashgate (with Kirsten Gibson) entitled Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, (click here for more information) 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 recently gave research papers at the following institutions:

• Universidad de Alicante, Spain
• Universidade nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• 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

• 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)

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

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 2012 and 2013), a series of major articles on musical communities and a single-authored monoraph on noise.

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

• Xevi Moreno i Peracaula (PhD): Flamenco hybridities
• Sean MacMenamin (PhD): Sorabji and the periphery 
• Kieran Rafferty (PhD): Song and Dramaturgy 
• Adam Potts (PhD): Japanese Noise Music and Philosophy 

Recently successfully completed PhDs include: 

• Francisco Bethencourt y Llobet (PhD): Flamenco guitar cultures
• Joao da Silva (PhD): Portuguese Music on Stage (late nineteenth-, early twentieth century

• Richard Elliott, now a lecturer at Sussex University
• Freya Jarman-Ivens, now a lecturer at Liverpool University
• Esther Zaplana Rodríguez, now a lecturer at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
• Kirsten Gibson, now a member of staff in ICMUS
• Bennet Hogg, now a member of 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).

Undergraduate Teaching

Musics and Nationalisms in Eastern Europe
The classical style
Roots of Hip Hop
Musical Romanticism
Music, Gender and Sexuality
Music in the Holocaust

Music and Politics in Germany, 1900-1945

Postgraduate Teaching

MA in Music:

Music and Historiography
Ritual, Rembrance and Recorded Sound
Music Research Training

Faculty PhD Research Training: Texts Images and Sounds, a unit of HSS8004  

• Biddle I, Gibson K, ed. Noise, Audition, Aurality: Histories of the Sonic Worlds of Europe, 1500-1918. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013. In Preparation.
• Biddle I. Opera’s Unconscious, or What Men Don’t Say. In: Purvis, P, ed. Masculinity in Opera. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. In Press.
• Biddle I, Thompson M, ed. Sound, Music Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience. New York: Continuum, 2013.
• Biddle I, ed. Music and Identity Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.
• Biddle I. Quiet Sounds and Intimate Listening: The Politics of Tiny Seductions. In: Biddle, I., Thompson, W, ed. Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Somic Experience. New York: Continuum, 2012, pp.205-222. In Press.
• Biddle I, Fouz-Hernández S. Voicing gender: transgender performance and the national imaginary in the Spanish cinema of the democratic era. In: Shaw, L., Stone, R, ed. Screening Songs in Hispanic and Lusophone Cinema. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2012, pp.30-50.
• Biddle I. Listening, consciousness, and the charm of the universal: what it feels like for a Lacanian. In: Clarke, D., Clarke, E, ed. Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.65-78.
• Biddle I. Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History: The Austro-German Tradition from Hegel to Freud. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011.
• Biddle I. Caught in the Silken Throat: Modernist Investments in the Male Vocal Fetish. In: Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson, ed. Masculinity and WesternMusical Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp.259-278.
• Biddle I, Gibson K, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
• Biddle I. Visitors, or The Political Ontology of Noise. radical musicology 2009, 4, 22 pars.
• Biddle I, Jarman-Ivens F. Introduction. In: Jarman-Ivens, F, ed. Oh Boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music. London; New York: Routledge, 2007, pp.1-28.
• Biddle I. Love thy neighbour? The Political Economy of Musical Neighbours. Radical Musicology 2007, 2, -.
• Biddle I. The singsong of undead labor: Gender Nostalgia and the Vocal Fantasy of Intimacy in the ‘New’ Male Singer/Songwriter. In: Jarman-Ivens, F, ed. Oh Boy!: Masculinities and Popular Music. London: Routledge, 2007, pp.125-144.
• Biddle I, Knights V, ed. Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local. London: Ashgate, 2006.
• Biddle I. On the Radical in Musicology. Radical Musicology 2006, 1, -.
• Biddle I. 'Vox electronica: Nostalgia, Irony and Cyborgian Vocalities in Kraftwerk’s Radioaktivität and Autobahn'. Twentieth Century Music 2004, 1(1), 81-100.
• Biddle I, Knights V. Repensar la nación: entre lo local y lo global en el siglo veintiuno. In: V Conference of Latin American Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. 2004, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• Biddle I. Of Mice and Dogs: Music, Gender, and Sexuality at the Long Fin de Siècle. In: Clayton, M., Herbert, T., Middleton, R, ed. The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. London & New York: Routledge, 2003, pp.215-226.
• Biddle I. 'Nationalism'. In: Shephard, J, ed. The Encyclopedia of Popular Musics of the World. London and New York: Continuum, 2002, pp.288-292.
• Biddle I. Hegel. In: Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan, 2001.
• Biddle I. The Gendered Eye: Music Analysis and the Scientific Outlook in German Early Romantic Music Theory. In: Clark, S; Rehding, A, ed. Music Theory and Natural Order: from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp.183-196.
• Biddle, I. 'Das Ich, das Begehren und die Wiedergeburt des Komponisten: Neuere Werke von Roger Redgate' ['The Ego, desire and the rebirth of the compser function: Roger Redgate's recent compositions']. Musik und Ästhetik 1999, 3(12), 5-25.
• Biddle I. Policing Masculinity: Schumann, Berlioz and the Gendering of the Music-critical Idiom. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 1999, 124(2), 196-220.
• Biddle, Ian. 'F W.J. Schelling's Philosophie der Kunst: an Emergent Semiology of Music.'. In: Ian Bent, ed. Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp.25-36.