Dr Martin Iddon
Details
Current Teaching
MUSC101 Music Theory
MUSC102 Music History and Practice
MUSC200 Music Techniques
MUSC237 Enterprise Unit
MUSC341 Dissertation
FASS524 The Ontology of the Image
Potential Doctoral Proposals
I would be interested in hearing from students wanting to write theses on any aspect of music and musical cultures after 1945, from historical, analytical or sociological perspectives. I have particular interests in the culture of New Music in West Germany and the music of Boulez, Cage, Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, Nono, Pousseur and Stockhausen.
Research Interests
I joined the staff at Lancaster in 2006, after completing my doctoral research on the Darmstadt New Music courses at the University of Cambridge and spending a year teaching in the Music Department of University College Cork in Ireland. At some point in between, I also taught school children about composing music with computers and, incongruously, worked as a headhunter in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. My research interests are still mainly focused on Darmstadt and composers who have been associated with the courses there, especially the music of Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, Luigi Nono, Henri Pousseur and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as points of intersection and conflict between compositional trends in the United States and in Europe after World War II. I am also an active composer, and my string trio, ...ŕ son dernier soupir, was shortlisted by the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Other performances of my work have recently taken place in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Canada and the USA.
Additional Information
Publications
- 'The Haus that Karlheinz Built: Composition, Authority and Control at the 1968 Darmstadt Ferienkurse', Musical Quarterly, vol. 87, 87-118
- 'On the Entropy Circuit: Brian Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study II', Contemporary Music Review, vol. 25, nos 1-2, 93-105
- Other Darmstadts, ed. with Paul Attinello and Christopher Fox (= Contemporary Music Review, vol. 26, no. 1) (Routledge, 2007)
- 'Gained in Translation: Words about Cage in late 1950s Germany', Contemporary Music Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 89-104
- Translation: Gianmario Borio, 'Work Structure and Musical Representation: Reflections on Adorno's analyses for interpretation', Contemporary Music Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 53-76
- 'Trying to Speak: Between Politics and Aesthetics, Darmstadt 1970-72', Twentieth-Century Music, vol. 3, no. 2, 255-275
- Review: Amy C. Beal, New Music, New Allies: American Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification, Notes, June 2007, vol. 63, no. 4, 856-859
- 'Pamphlets and Protests: The End of Stockhausen's Darmstadt', Musikkulturen in der Revolte. Studien zu Rock, Avantgarde und Klassik im Umfeld von '1968', ed. Beate Kutschke (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2008), 55-63
- 'The Dissolution of the Avant-garde', Search: Journal for New Music, Winter 2008, no. 1, online at: http://searchnewmusic.org/index.html
- Review: Janet Halfyard (ed.), Berio's Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis, Studies in Musical Theatre, 2008, vol. 2, no. 1, 115-117
- 'Toward a Minor Music: American Experimentalism at Darmstadt, 1958-1974', Travelling Sounds: Music, Migration and Identity in the U.S. and Beyond, eds. Wilfried Raussert and John Miller Jones (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008), 125-148
- 'Darmstadt Schools', Darmstadt, Du Stadt meiner Träume: The International Reception of Darmstadt as the Shangri-La of Musical Modernism, Musicological Colloquium at the Brno International Music Festival, October 2006. Conference proceedings: Colloquia musicologica Brunensia, vol. 41, eds. Mikulás Bek, Geoffrey Chew and Petr Macek (Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, forthcoming 2008)
- Review: Nick Collins and Julio d'Escrivan, The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music, Notes, December 2008 (forthcoming)
Compositional output
...ŕ son dernier soupir (2006), string trio (SPNM shortlisted work & semi-finalist, Donald Aird Memorial Composers Competition), ca. 12'
- First performance: members of the New Llano Quartet, Los Angeles, CA, USA, 15 April 2007
- First European performance: Ensemble SurPlus, Stuttgart, Germany, 19 August 2007
closed vessel: Ausstrahlung (2007), fixed media, 1' (in collaboration with Antti Sakari Saario)
- First performance: Erickson Hall, University of California at San Diego, CA, USA, 1 June 2008
- First European performance: FrammentAzioni Project, Contemporanea Festival, Udine, Italy, October 2008
Broadcast on Taukay Web Radio (http://radio.taukay.it)
Ventilation (2007), six voices and glass harmonica, ca. 30'
- First performance: Ana-Maria Alarcon-Jiminez, Sarah Felong, Brian Christian, Ian Power, Ben Power, Chris Tonelli (voices and glass harmonica), UCSD Festival of New Music, University of California at San Diego, CA, USA, 9 May 2008
dead white male (edit) (2007), fixed media, 10' (in collaboration with Antti Sakari Saario)
- First performance: Erickson Hall, University of California at San Diego, CA, USA, 1 June 2008
- First Canadian Performance: Mid-Autumn Harvest Moon Festival V, Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1 October 2008
I never knew it was the longest day (2007), any number of strings, any duration
- First performance: Guthrie & Streb, Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA, USA, 18 April 2008
Rapt before the sky (2007), flute (commisioned by Richard Craig), ca. 8'
proposition 6a: ceci n'est pas une machine de guerre (Refrain) (2008), fixed media, amplified piano, live electronics, ca. 10' (in collaboration with Antti Sakari Saario)
CD release on: Sound Report: The Comfort of Strangers (Sound Network, 2008)
- First performance: LICA-MANTIS Electroacoustic Music Festival 2008, Great Hall, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK, 1 March 2008
- First US performance: Erickson Hall, University of California at San Diego, CA, USA, 1 June 2008
- Other performance: 'The Comfort of Strangers', Futuresonic, Contact Theatre, Manchester, UK, 3 May 2008
Lichtschatten (2008), chamber ensemble, ca. 4' (SPNM commission)
- First performance: Trinity College of Music Contemporary Music Group, 'Sonic Illuminations', BFI Southbank, London, UK, 10 May 2008
dead white male (2006-08), fixed media, 49' (in collaboration with Antti Sakari Saario)
- First performance: with Proto-type Theater's About Silence, Forest Fringe, Bristo Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland, 17 & 18 August 2008
- Other performance: with Proto-type Theater's About Silence, Battersea Arts Centre, London, UK, 13-15 November 2008
