Staff Profile

Introduction

Ian is a cultural theorist and musicologist, working on a range of topics in music- and sound-related areas, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 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.Ian 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 John Rink, Ronald Woodley an 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, music in the Holocaust and music and queer theory. He has published on music theory and aesthetics in the nineteenth century, German popular music, music theory, psychoanalysis, the Holocaust and gender and sexuality.

Other websites

• http://musicintheholocaust.org/ [Music in the Holocaust]
• https://musicinthesovietunion.wordpress.com [Music in the Soviet Union]
• Google scholar citations: click here

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(C1), Spanish (B2), Yiddish (B1), Russian (B1), basic Ukrainian (A2), Polish (B2), basic Hungarian( A2), basic Hebrew (A2)

Informal Interests

Singing flamenco and salsa

Cooking

Gardening

Research Interests

• Music in the Holocaust 
• Yiddish language and culture
• The Austro-German Tradition (1800-1945)
• Sound studies, urbanism and social class
• Music and sound in Poland
• Continental Philosophy
• Music and memory
• Music and gender/sexuality
• The historiography of technology

Current Work

Current projects include the monograph The Flamenco Effect: Authenticity, Community and Tradition in the South of Spain the articles 'Music, Affect and the Posttraumatic Community in Holocaust Cinema: Natan Gross's Unzere kinder (1948)' , 'A promessa do Fado na pós-fonografia: entre a tradição e o desejo' and 'Romance cartographies: flamenco articulations of queer spaces in urban Andalusia'.

See https://newcastle.academia.edu/IBiddle for more details of current projects.

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 an article with Beate Müller '“… and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, they began singing…”: languages and commemoration in Arnold Schoenberg’s cantata A Survivor from Warsaw (Op. 46)' for the Edinburgh German Yearbook (2014), a co-edited book for Ashgate (with Kirsten Gibson) entitled Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300–1918 (for more click here) and Masculinity and Western Musical Practice, (click here for more information) articles on popular music and masculinity and several chapters on Flamenco.

Dr Biddle recently gave research papers as follows:

• Universität Bern, February 2019: 'The Modern Ear: New Regimes of Listening during the Second World War'
• Durham University, May 2018: 'Masculinity, Gender nostalgia and the listening subject: towards a critical cultural history of the ear'
• Kunstuniversität Graz, keynote presentation November 2017: 'Masculinity, Creativity and the Ethics of Writing: Towards a Critical Account of Musicology’s Gender Politics'
• Universität Göttingen 2014 Research seminar: ‘Gender nostalgia and the listening subject or the many traumatic lives and afterlives of listening’
• São Paolo 2015 IASPM conference   Paper: ‘Nostalgia and the many ends of hauntology: Klezmer, Yiddish, and the new(ish) Europe’
• Labour History Research Group, Newcastle University 2017 Paper: ‘Song, work and sentiment: the work of song and the song of work as historiographical problem’
• Laing Art Gallery Newcastle 2016 Public talk: ‘Exile and the Jewish Imagination: Jewish cultural displacement and migration in the twentieth century’
• Newcastle City Library 2017 Public Talk: ‘'Mir zenen do': Jewish communities' cultural activities in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust’
• Bristol University Music Department 2015 Research Seminar: ‘Singing the Holocaust: the Yiddish Song Corpus, Media Archaeology and the Limits of Testimony’
• 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

• Universidad de Alicante (2014)
• Institutionen för Musikvetenskap, University of Uppsala, Sweden (November 2003 and November 2004).

Future Research

Future research plans include work on noise in urban communities, a series of major articles on musical communities and a single-authored monoraph on noise, and a monograph on the musics of Soviet Jewry

Dr Biddle was 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

Ian is also on the editorial board of the following Journals:

• Journal of the Royal Musical Association
• Twentieth-Century Music

Postgraduate Supervision 

Recently successfully completed PhDs supervised by Ian include: 

• Annie Hanlon (PhD): Erik Satie, gender and canons
• Gareth Hudson (PhD): Approaching the sublime in artistic practice
• Michael Blenkarn (PhD): Power electronics: a Jungian approach
• 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
• Francisco Bethencourt y Llobet (PhD): Flamenco guitar cultures
• Joao da Silva (PhD): Portuguese Music on Stage (late nineteenth-, early twentieth century

Dr Biddle is also proud to have supervised the work of:

• Richard Elliott, a member of staff at Newcastle University
• Freya Jarman-Ivens, 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 staff ICMUS

Esteem Indicators

Dr Biddle was 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

• Music in the Holocaust (see here)
• Musics and Nationalisms in Eastern Europe
• Music in the Soviet Union (see here)
• Music and Cultural Theory
• Musical Romanticism
• Music, Gender and Sexuality
• Music and Politics in Germany, 1900-1945
• Music History (first year module)
• World Music (first year module) 

Postgraduate Teaching

MMus in Music:

• Dissertation supervision
• Music and Historiography
• Ritual, Rembrance and Recorded Sound
• Urban musicologies
• Research Training

Faculty PhD Research Training

• Texts Images and Sounds, a unit of HSS8004, Qualitative Methodology in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (Foucault, Actor Network Theory)
• Key sessions in the module HSS8007, An Introduction to the Nature of Explanation and Enquiry

• Articles

  • Biddle I. Romance cartographies: flamenco articulations of queer spaces in urban Andalusia. Radical Musicology 2019, 7, n/a.
  • Biddle I. Madrid’s great sonic transformation: Sound, noise, and the auditory commons of the city in the nineteenth century. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 2019, 20(3), 227-240.
  • Biddle I. Music, Sound, and Affect in Yiddish-language Holocaust Cinema: The Posttraumatic Community in Natan Gross’s Unzere kinder (1948). Music and the Moving Image 2018, 11(3), 40-59.
  • Biddle I. Visitors, or The Political Ontology of Noise. Radical Musicology 2009, 4, n/a.
  • Biddle I. Love thy neighbour? The Political Economy of Musical Neighbours. Radical Musicology 2007, 2, -.
  • 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. Policing Masculinity: Schumann, Berlioz and the Gendering of the Music-critical Idiom. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 1999, 124(2), 196-220.
  • 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.

• Authored Book

  • Biddle I. Music, Masculinity and the Claims of History: The Austro-German Tradition from Hegel to Freud. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011.

• Book Chapters

  • Biddle I, Müller B. "and all of a sudden, in the middle of it, they began singing...": Languages and Commemoration in Arnold Schoenberg's Cantata A Survivor from Warsaw (Op. 46). In: Peter Davies & Andrea Hammel, ed. Edinburgh German Yearbook 8: New Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on the German Language, National Socialism, and the Shoah. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2014, pp.199-216.
  • Biddle I. Opera’s Unconscious, or What Men Don’t Say. In: Purvis, P, ed. Masculinity in Opera: Gender, History, and New Musicology. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, pp.197-215.
  • Gibson Kirsten, Biddle Ian. Musicologies/Masculinities. In: Marion Gerards, Martin Loeser and Katrin Losleben, ed. Musik und Männlichkeiten in Deutschland seit 1950. Munich, Germany: Allitera Verlag, 2013, pp.39-52.
  • 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. Quiet Sounds and Intimate Listening: The Politics of Tiny Seductions. In: Thompson, W., Biddle, I, ed. Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Somic Experience. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012, pp.205-222.
  • 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: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.65-77.
  • Gibson K. Music, Melancholy and Masculinity in Early Modern England. In: Biddle, I., Gibson, K, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp.41-66.
  • Biddle I. Caught in the Silken Throat: Modernist Investments in the Male Vocal Fetish. In: Biddle, I., Gibson, K, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp.259-277.
  • 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, 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. 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. 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. Hegel. In: Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan, 2001.
  • 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.

• Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)

  • 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.

• Edited Books

  • Gibson K, Biddle I, ed. Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918. London: Routledge, 2016.
  • 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, Gibson K, ed. Masculinity and Western Musical Practice. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009.
  • Biddle I, Knights V, ed. Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local. London: Ashgate, 2006.