Deborah Mawer

Emeritus Professor of Music

Email:: deborah.mawer@bcu.ac.uk

Deborah Mawer is Emeritus Professor of Music at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and Editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. She was formerly Research Professor of Music and Director of Research. Across 2016-2019 she led a large AHRC-funded project, entitled Accenting the Classics: Durand’s Édition classique (c. 1915 - 1925) as a French Prism on the Musical Past’. She joined the Conservatoire in 2013, having previously held chairs at Lancaster University and the University of Huddersfield and been postgraduate external examiner at the University of Oxford (2009 - 2012).

Founding Director of the French Music Research Hub, Mawer is an international research specialist in twentieth-century French music, especially Ravel, Les Six and Jolivet, as well as in music-dance and classical-jazz interactions. She studied at King's College London (PhD 1991) and on the Advanced Course at the Royal Academy of Music. As a modern and baroque viola player, she has freelanced with City of London Sinfonia, Vivaldi Concertante and the Avison Ensemble.

Her seven books comprise four monographs and three sole-edited books: Accenting the Classics: Editing European Music in France, 1915-1925, co-authored with Kelly, Moore and Sadler (Boydell, 2023); Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860 - 1960 (Routledge, 2018); French Music and Jazz in Conversation: From Debussy to Brubeck (CUP, 2014); Ravel Studies (CUP, 2010); The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation (Ashgate, 2006); The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (CUP, 2000); and Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s (Ashgate, 1997). She has written widely in scholarly journals and other book collections, presented at many international conferences, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Research has been funded by the AHRC (Research Grant, Research Leave), several British Academy Small Grants, Music & Letters Trust, Music Analysis Development Fund, L’Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (Canada), and the Royal Musical Association.

An Editorial Board member of The British Journal of Music Education (2007 - ) and Senior Academic Adviser for PALATINE (2006-2008), with a background in instrumental teaching and further education, she has longstanding interests in education and pedagogy, and in 2008 was awarded an individual National Teaching Fellowship.

Mawer acts as a reader and journal manuscript submissions reviewer for a wide range of leading international and UK journals and publishers, and has been an appointed referee for the European Research Council, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4 (with Robert Winston), is in demand for pre-performance talks, including at Glyndebourne, and has produced CD essays for Pentatone, Deutsche Grammophon and Hyperion.

Current Activity

‘Accenting the Classics’ Project

Under the umbrella of the French Music Research Hub, this AHRC-funded project (£461,583 full value) was 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) has involved 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. A co-authored book, Accenting the Classics: Europe's Music Through Durand's Edition classique, is under preparation and will be published by Boydell & Brewer.

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 follow-on transcultural project developed out of the monograph: French Music and Jazz in Conversation (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Outputs include:

2019: ‘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.

2020: ‘Darius Milhaud, critique de jazz: rôle et caractéristiques, Les Actes du colloque: La Critique de jazz (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes). 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:

2019: ‘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.

Areas of Expertise

Qualifications

Memberships

Teaching

Research

Postgraduate Supervision

Publications

Books

2023: Mawer et al., Accenting the Classics: Editing European Music in France, 1915-1925 Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 364pp. ISBN 9781837650323.
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. Publ. paperback, 2016.)
2010: Mawer (ed.), Ravel Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2006: The Ballets of Maurice Ravel: Creation and Interpretation. Aldershot & Burlington, VT: Ashgate/Routledge. 332pp. ISBN 0754630293.
2000: Mawer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ravel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1997: Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s.. Aldershot: Scolar Press. 408pp. ISBN 1859282490; 9781859282496.

Book chapters

2019: 'Performing Improvisation: Bill Evans and Jean-Yves Thibaudet', in Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal and Tony Whyton (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 281-91.
2019: ‘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, pp. 68-84.
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].
1996: Mawer (author), with Michael Pengelly (software developer), ‘Darius Milhaud: La Création du monde’, Analytical Listening Guide (Lancaster: Teaching Learning Technology Programme, Lancaster University), 170 screens, with manual. Distribution: BIDS, Computing Service, University of Bath. Re-issued 2000, CALMA (University of Huddersfield).
1994: ‘Structural Analysis in String Teaching and Performance: “Voice-leading for Strings”’ [Invited paper, Biennial World Conference: International Society for Music Education, University of Florida, Tampa, USA], in Towards a Change of Attitude regarding the Purpose, Goals and Values in the Education of the Professional Musician, Florida: ISME, pp. 57-71.

Journal articles

2013: ‘A música francesca reconfigurado no jazz modal de Bill Evans’, trans. Fausto Borém, Per Musi, 28, pp. 7-14.
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

2024: ‘The Complete Music for Piano of Maurice Ravel: A Classic-Romantic Synthesis’ [5,600-word essay], pp. 20-33; trans. French, pp. 34-49. Ravel, The Complete Works with Piano. François-Xavier Poizat (Paris: Aparté, AP321 [6 CDs]). (Invited contribution.)
2017: ‘Ravel’s Pre-War Orchestral-Ballet Feast’ [1,500-word essay], 3-9. Ravel, Daphnis et Chloé [complete ballet], Une barque sur l’océan, Pavane pour une infante défunte; Gimeno/Orchestre philharmonique du Luxembourg, WDR Rundfunkchor Köln ([Germany]: Pentatone, PTC 5186 652, August 2017). (Invited contribution.)
2006: ‘Ravel, Daphnis et Chloé: A Fantasy Tale of Time and Place’, pp. 2-5; trans. German, pp. 11-15; trans. French, pp. 22-26; Ravel, Daphnis et Chloé, Chung/Orchestre et Choeur de Radio France (Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon, DG 477 5706). (Invited contribution.)
2001: ‘A Very French Affair: “Les Six” and the Flute’, pp. 2-7; trans. French, pp. 10-15; trans. German, pp. 16-21; L’Album des Six, Complete Works of ‘Les Six’ for Flute and Piano, Emily Benyon/Andrew West (London: Hyperion, CDA67204). (Invited contribution.)

Reviews (selected)

2023: Review of Louis K. Epstein, The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France, H-France Review, 23/179.
2019: Review of François de Médicis and Steven Huebner (eds.), Debussy’s Resonance, Music & Letters, 100/4, pp. 738-40.
2012: Review of Philippe Cathé, Sylvie Douche et Michel Duchesneau (eds.), Charles Koechlin: compositeur et humaniste, Music & Letters, 93/4, pp. 615-17.
2011: Review of Barbara Lebrun, Protest Music in France, French History, 25/1, pp. 130-32.
2011: Review of Sylvia Kahan, In Search of New Scales, Journal of Music Theory, 55/1, pp. 147-53.
2010: Review of Millicent Hodson, Nijinsky’s Bloomsbury Ballet: Reconstruction of the Dance and Design for Jeux, Music & Letters, 91/1, pp. 123-6.
2007: Review of Jane F. Fulcher, The Composer as Intellectual: Music and Ideology in France 1914-1940, Music & Letters, 88/2, pp. 367-70.
2004: Review of Barbara L. Kelly, Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud 1912–1939, Music & Letters, 85/4, pp. 660-62.
2004: Review of Roger Nichols, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929, Music & Letters, 85/1, pp. 120-23.
2004: Review of Keith Waters, Rhythmic and Contrapuntal Structures in the Music of Arthur Honegger, Music & Letters, 85/1, pp. 123–6.
1997: Review of Howard Boatwright, Chromaticism: Theory and Practice, Music Analysis, 16/1, pp. 137–44.

Conference papers (since 2014)

Paper (11 September 2024): ‘Music History “Since Debussy”? Hodeir and Barraqué in Light of New Sources’, RMA 150 Conference, University of London and British Library, London.
Paper (30 June 2023): ‘Beside the Seaside: Premiering Elgar at the “Albert Hall of the North”’. 13^th Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain Conference, Open University, Milton Keynes.
Invited panellist/presenter (27 January 2023): ‘Accenting the Classics: il s’agit des interactions’, Colloquium, Université de Montréal.
Invited panellist/presenter: ‘Roundtable: High Tides: The Changing Currents of Musical Higher Education’ (September 2020). 56th RMA Annual Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Invited Keynote lecture, Princeton University (16–18 January 2020): International Conference: Les Six at 100, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Keynote paper: ‘Neoclassicism, Lateness and Legacy: Le cas Milhaud’. Also given as RNCM Research Forum presentation, Manchester (11 December 2019).
Invited panellist-presenter for national Public Debate: 'Music in the Curriculum: Tensions, Choices & Opportunities' (15 November 2019, City, University of London).
Invited guest lecture: ‘Exploring the Exotic: Ravel’s ’Chansons madécasses', Wigmore Study Group Summer 2019: Ravel, Wigmore Hall, London (2 May 2019 [Arts Council England]).
Panel session (AHRC-funded project; 18–20 October 2018): Publication, edition et performance/Music Publication, Editing and Performance at International ConferenceColloque: Musique et sorties de guerres, Université de Montréal. Paper: ‘Durand’s L’École moderne and Post-World War I Reconstruction’.
Panel Session (AHRC-funded project; 5–7 September 2018). Paper: ‘Durand’s L’École moderne as an Exemplar of French Neoclassicism (1870-1925)’, at hosted international conference: Editing, Performing and Re-Composing the Musical Past: French Neoclassicism (1870–) (Éditer, interpréter et re-composer le passé musical: Le néoclassicisme français, 1870–), Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University.
Panel Session (AHRC-funded project; 26-29 September 2017): ‘French Music Publishing and (Trans)Nationalism’, at Rethinking the Dynamics of Music and Nationalism, University of Amsterdam. Paper: ‘Charting the Édition classique Durand (c. 1915–25): Musical Nationalism–Transnationalism’.
Paper (23-24 November 2016): ‘Accenting Bach: Emmanuel, Garban, Roger-Ducasse and the Édition classique Durand (1916-24)’, Music and Nation, 1918-1945: Europe – The Americas (Musique et nation dans l’entre-deux-guerres), Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.
Public lecture (‘Pop-up Prof.’) (20 April 2016): ‘Music and Meaning(s): Chopin’s Etude Op. 10/3, Remade for Jack Hylton’s Danceband’, Parkside Lecture Theatre, Birmingham City University.
Paper (14–17 April 2016): ‘Performing Improvisation: Bill Evans and Jean-Yves Thibaudet’, Jazz Utopia, fourth Rhythm Changes Conference, School of Media, Birmingham City University.
International Guest Lecture (13–15 October 2015): ‘From Valses nobles to La Valse’, FHNW Musik-Akademie Basel, Hochschule für Musik, Basel, Switzerland.
Keynote Speaker (18 September 2015): ‘Changing Fortunes: Jazz-Dance Bandleader Jack Hylton and the French Press (1928–40)’, Department of History, University of Warwick.
Paper (9–11 Sept 2015): ‘Jolivet’s Rameau: Theory, Practice and Temporal Interplay’, Royal Musical Association Annual International Conference (RMA), University of Birmingham.
Paper (3–5 July 2015): ‘Making Mendelssohn French: Ravel’s Complete Edition of the Piano Works, 1915–18’, Music, Intertextuality, & Inter-Art Forms in Third Republic France: Remembering Paul Dukas at 150, Society for Musicology in Ireland, Maynooth University.
Paper (27–29 May 2015): ‘Making Mendelssohn French’,City of Light: Paris 1900–1950 International Conference, Institut français, London. Session chair: Darius Milhaud.
Programme Chair/Convenor (4 July 2014): International symposium, Historical Interplay in French Music, French Music Research Hub, Birmingham Conservatoire.
Public Research Seminar (11 March 2014): ‘When French Music Meets Jazz: Intertextuality and Borrowing in Music by Ravel and Bill Evans’, Birmingham Conservatoire.
Professorial Lecture (3 April 2014): ‘When French Music Meets Jazz’, University of Huddersfield.
Paper (6–7 February 2014): ‘Darius Milhaud, critique de jazz: le caractère de ses écrits et son rôle’. International Colloquium, La Critique de jazz, Université Paris Diderot.
Invited Speaker & Programme Committee (21–23 June 2013):Paper: ‘Poulenc’s Early–Late Association with “Jazz”’. Rethinking Poulenc: 50 Years On, Keele University. Led Analysis Workshop for doctoral students, with Philippe Cathé (Sorbonne).