Professor Deborah Mawer

‘Accenting the Classics’ Project

Under the umbrella of the French Music Research Hub, this AHRC-funded project (£461,583 full value) is founded on the historical interplay initiative. It embraces a spectrum of times and places; a mix of historical, cultural, analytical and editorial skills; and a mixed university-conservatoire base, with a performance practice angle. The substantial, but under-researched, Édition classique A. Durand et Fils acts as a ‘prism’ for exploring relations and dimensions: early 20C French composers’ and musicologists’ engagement with their pasts – French and more broadly European (some figures have been largely written out of music history); relations between composers’ editorial and compositional practices; issues of wartime publishing; role of the enterprise within pedagogy at the Paris Conservatoire (some volumes advertise the fact that many listed editors were also Conservatoire professors); implications for keyboard-based performance practice, then and now.

This exciting, multifaceted project (2016-19) involves the complementary skills of Profs. Deborah Mawer (PI), Graham Sadler (CI), Dr Rachel Moore (RF) and Prof. Barbara Kelly (CI, RNCM, Manchester), and the practice-based, pedagogical skills of pianists at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Research and teaching specialisms

• Twentieth-century French music (Ravel, Milhaud, Les Six, Jolivet)
• Music-dance interplay (ballet productions, British dance band)
• Transcultural classical-jazz relations
• Music and meaning (interpretation, criticism)
• Music education
• Music for strings, string pedagogy

• FRHistS (2012–)
• NTF (2008)
• FHEA (2001)
• PhD (King’ s College London, 1991)
• LRAM (Royal Academy of Music, 1985)
• BMus Hons (King’ s College London, 1983)

• MUS6049: Musical Intertextuality and Borrowing (Contextual Studies 3: Specialisms)
• MUS6049: Paris in the Jazz Age (1920s): Stravinsky, Ravel and Milhaud (Contextual Studies 3: Specialisms)
• MUS7015 Musicological Specialisms

Deborah's research interests are in:

• Historical, analytical and critical musicology of twentieth-century French music, especially Ravel, Milhaud, Les Six, Jolivet
• Music–dance relations: ballet, British dance band
• Transcultural classical–jazz relations, including George Russell, Bill Evans and Brubeck
• Music analysis, theory and meaning
• Music education; string-instrument pedagogy

Grants and funding

AHRC Research Grant: PI, ‘Accenting the Classics’ (£461,583 full project value; 2016–19) 2016
FHNW Musik-Akademie Basel 2015
Université Paris Diderot 2014
Music & Letters Trust 2013
L’Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM), Université de Montréal 2012
Music Analysis Development Fund 2012
OICRM, Université de Montréal 2011
Music & Letters Trust 2009
Royal Musical Association 2008
British Academy Small Grant 2004–5
AHRC Research Leave 2003–4
British Academy Small Grant 2001–2
British Academy Small Grant 1998
Music Analysis Development Fund 1997

French Historical Interplay Project

This project was catalysed in summer 2014 by the first international symposium of the French Music Research Hub based at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, directed by Mawer and Dingle. It has culminated in an edited book: 2018: Mawer (ed.), Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960. London and New York: Routledge. This essay volume, which has been further developed and expanded, offers a history of French music in the ‘long’ modernist era with a dynamic difference: one that engages with a complex interplay of times present and past; matters of musical memory; music’s connections with literature, visual art, philosophy and politics; questions of French cultural heritage in relation to European (especially Germanic) identity; as well as issues of reinterpretation and meaning. Contributors comprise Conservatoire researchers on French music and other international scholars.

Classical–Jazz Transcultural Perspectives

This is a follow-on transcultural project developing out of the monograph: French Music and Jazz in Conversation (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Forthcoming outputs include: ‘ Performing Improvisation: Bill Evans and Jean-Yves Thibaudet’ (jazz conference paper; book chapter). How can one (re)perform an improvisation; how much spontaneity remains and where does composition enter into the equation? A transcultural prism is adopted via the recordings of the French concert pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Chosen loci include ‘ Waltz for Debby’ (1956), ‘ Song for Helen’ (1978) and ‘ Your Story’ (1980). While improvisatory-compositional boundaries become more blurred, substantive differences are revealed between Evans and Thibaudet, even when handling the same material. ‘ Darius Milhaud, critique de jazz: le caractère de ses écrits et son rôle’ , Les Actes du colloque: La Critique de jazz (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, forthcoming). Proceedings of international colloquium, Université Paris Diderot (6–7 February 2014). Funded Université Paris Diderot.

André Jolivet: Theory and Practice

Among the members of La Jeune France, André Jolivet (1905–74) has typically been overshadowed by his close contemporary Olivier Messiaen. This revisionist project aims to investigate Jolivet’ s distinctive contribution and establish his rightful position within a French modernist canon. It represents part of an increasing interest in Jolivet’ s music more widely in the UK, France and internationally.

Outputs include:
Forthcoming 2018: ‘Jolivet’s Early Music Theory and its Practice in Cinq danses rituelles (1939)’, in Caroline Rae (ed.), André Jolivet: Music, Art and Literature. London and New York: Routledge.

2018: ‘Jolivet’s Rameau: Theory, Practice and Temporal Interplay’, in Mawer (ed.), Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960 London and New York: Routledge.

Deborah is pleased to hear from prospective students in her research areas

10 PhD supervisee awards on topics including: twentieth-century French music (Ravel, Poulenc, Tailleferre, Dukas); ballet/dance interactions; twentieth-century musics; jazz studies; music analysis and performance; timbral analysis; rhythm-metre in Fauré’s song setting; transformational analysis (after Lewin)

Currently supervising 5 PhD students on topics including: jazz motivic, harmonic set-theoretic analysis; performer experience of aleatory choral music; jazz improvisational techniques in choral composition; musical intertextuality and re-composition around Beethoven; creating music using modal techniques and natural elements (stone)

Books

• 2018: Mawer (ed.), Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960. London and New York: Routledge. 270pp. ISBN 9781472474759; 9781315586847 (ebk).

• 2014: French Music and Jazz in Conversation: From Debussy to Brubeck, Music since 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 319pp. ISBN 9781107037533. (Nominated by CUP for Otto Kinkeldey Award, AMS.)

• 2010: Mawer (ed.), Ravel Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 2006: The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation. Aldershot & Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
• 2000: Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ravel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• 1997: . Aldershot: Scolar Press. 408pp. ISBN 1859282490; 9781859282496.

Book chapters

• Forthcoming 2018: ‘Jolivet’s Early Music Theory and its Practice in Cinq danses rituelles (1939)’, in Caroline Rae (ed.), André Jolivet: Music, Art and Literature. London New and York: Routledge.

• 2018: ‘Jolivet’s Rameau: Theory, Practice and Temporal Interplay’, in Mawer (ed.), Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960.London and New York: Routledge, pp. 176-97.

• 2018: ‘Introduction: Revisiting French Musical History’, in Mawer (ed.), Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960.London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1-11.

• 2014: ‘Retour au point de départ? Les dernières oeuvres de musique de chambre de Darius Milhaud et la notion de “tardivité”’, in Marie-Noëlle Lavoie and Jacinthe Harbec (eds.), Darius Milhaud: Compositeur et expérimentateur, Musicologies. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, pp. 65-88.
• 2012: ‘Le jazz gallicisé et ravelisé: théorie et pratique du “blues”’ [revised, refereed paper given at Université Catholique de l’Ouest, Angers, 2008], in Pascal Terrien (ed.), Musique française: Esthétique et identité en mutation 1892-1992.Sampzon: Les Editions Delatour France, pp. 215-25.
• 2011: ‘French Music Reconfigured in the Modal Jazz of Bill Evans’, in Janne Mäkelä and Jouni Eerola (eds.), Jazz Chameleon: 9th Nordic Jazz Conference Proceedings. Helsinki: The Finnish Jazz and Pop Archive, pp. 77-89.  (2013: Portuguese translation: ‘A música francesca reconfigurado no jazz modal de Bill Evans’, trans. Fausto Borém, Per Musi, 28, pp. 7-14.)
• 2011: ‘Maurice Ravel’, in Bruce Gustafson (ed.), Oxford Bibliographies Online: Music. New York: Oxford University Press [10,000-word annotated bibliography, 130 citations.]
• 2010: ‘Crossing Borders II: Ravel’s Theory and Practice of Jazz’, ‘Introduction: The Growth of Ravel Studies’, and ‘Appendix: Itinerary for Ravel’s Tour’, in Mawer (ed.), Ravel Studies.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-8, 110-13, 114-37.
• 2010: David Epstein, completed by Mawer, ‘Encountering La Valse: Perspectives and Pitfalls’, in Mawer (ed.), Ravel Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 138-64.
• 2008: ‘Jolivet’s Search for a New French Voice: Spiritual “Otherness” in Mana (1935)’, in Barbara L. Kelly (ed.), French Music, Culture and National Identity, 1870-1939.Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, pp. 172-93.
• 2007: ‘Ricard Viñes i Maurice Ravel: una amistat inspiradora’, in Màrius Bernadó (ed.), Ricard Viñes: el pianista de les avantguardes. Barcelona: Fundació Caixa Catalunya/Lleida: Museu d’Art Jaume Morera, pp. 132-37; trans. as ‘Ricardo Viñes y Maurice Ravel: una amistad inspiradora’, pp. 318-21; trans. as ‘Ricardo Viñes et Maurice Ravel: une amité inspiratrice’, pp. 427-30.
• 2006: ‘“Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano”: French Music in the 1930s’, in Richard Langham Smith & Caroline Potter (eds.), French Music since Berlioz. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 249-80.
• 2000: ‘Musical Objects and Machines’, in Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ravel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 47-67, 270-71.
• 2000: ‘Ballet and the Apotheosis of the Dance’, ‘Introduction: The Many Masks of Ravel’, ‘Chronology’, and (with Roger Nichols), ‘Appendix: early reception of Ravel’s music (1899–1939)’, in Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 140-61, 275-76; pp. 1-4, 266; pp. xi-xiv, 251-66, 276.
• 1997: ‘Beyond Le Boeuf: Analysing Milhaud’s Fifth Chamber Symphony (1922)’ [invited paper for LancMAC,1994), incorporated in book on Darius Milhaud].

Journal articles

• 2012: ‘Music-Dance (and Design) Relations in Ballet Productions of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé’, Les Cahiers de la Société québéquoise de recherche en musique, 13/1-2, pp. 77-85
• 2009: ‘Jazzing a Classic: Hylton and Stravinsky’s Mavra at the Paris Opéra’, Twentieth-Century Music, 6/2, pp. 155-82.
• 2008: ‘“Parisomania”? Jack Hylton and the French Connection’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 133/2, pp. 270-317.
  (2013: French trans. Université de Paris-Sorbonne: ‘“Parisomanie”? La French Connection de Jack Hylton’, in Vincent Cotro, Laurent Cugny and Philippe Gumplowicz (eds.), La Catastrophe apprivoisée: Regards sur le jazz en France (Paris: Outre Mesure), pp. 67-99.)
• 2008: ‘Positioning Milhaud’s Late Chamber Music: Compositional “Full Circle”?’, Musical Times, 149/4, pp. 45-60.
• 2007: ‘Exploring Complementation in Bartók’s Third Quartet’, Music Theory Online, 13/4:
• 2006: ‘Balanchine’s La Valse: Meanings and Implications for Ravel Studies’, Opera Quarterly, 22/1, pp. 90-116. [revised, refereed paper for ‘Sound Moves’, Princeton University/Roehampton University, 2005]
• 2003: ‘Enlivening Analysis through Performance: “Practising Set Theory”, British Journal of Music Education, 20/3, pp. 257-76.
• 1999: ‘Bridging the Divide: Embedding Voice-leading Analysis in String Pedagogy and Performance’, British Journal of Music Education, 16/2, pp. 179-95.
• 1997: ‘Embedding CD-tours in HE Courses: Experience with the Analytical Listening Guide to “Darius Milhaud: La Création du monde”’, Musicus: Computer Applications in Music Education, 5, pp. 19-29.

Commercial research

Conference papers

BBC Radio 3: Studio guest, Afternoon on 3: 'Ravel and the Ballet' ‘Ravel Day’ , live with Katie Derham (7 March 2014). Also pre-recorded podcasts on Ravel and jazz; Ravel and dance; Ravel and Spain.Twitter / BBCRadio3: Deborah Mawer from @BirmCons ...

BBC Radio 3 documentary interview: ‘Dancing the Apocalypse’ (recorded 3 March 2009, broadcast 28 March 2009; repeated 31 July 2010).

BBC Radio 4 documentary interview: ‘Robert Winston’ s Musical Analysis: Ravel’ (recorded 22 July 2008; broadcast 17 Feb 2009) with Prof. Robert Winston on relating composers’ states of mind and their music.