Music Research Seminar: Christopher Fox

Christopher Fox (University of York) will join us to present on ‘Dots, lines, squiggles and words: what's the point of notation?’

Location: Lecture Theatre 2, School of Music

This event is part of the 2024/25 Music Research Seminar Series.

'The making of scores has been a defining feature of the western art music tradition for many centuries and a characteristic that makes this tradition something of an outlier in the musical world. For those of us who make notations, why do we do it and what do we think we are going to achieve? This talk will offer a critical consideration of a range of notational practices, from the 'embodied scores' of Éliane Radigue's recent works, to computer-generated real-time scoring, to Christopher Fox's own use of indeterminacy.

Speaker bio:

Christopher Fox is a composer who also writes about new music. He studied at the universities of Liverpool, Southampton and York. At the heart of his work are close collaborations with the musicians and ensembles who regularly perform his music, including the pianists Kate Ledger, cellist Anton Lukoszevieze, soprano Elizabeth Hilliard, clarinettist Heather Roche, and the ensembles Apartment House and EXAUDI. His music is extensively recorded, with portrait CDs on the Ergodos, Hat Hut, Kairos, Metier and NMC labels. His writings on music have also been published widely, in the journals Contact, Contemporary Music Review, The Guardian, Musical Times and TEMPO (which he has edited since 2015). A book on his music, Perspectives on the music of Christopher Fox: Straight lines in broken times (edited by Rose Dodd), was published in 2017 by Routledge. He is Emeritus Professor of Music at Brunel University London, Honorary Professor of Music at the University of York and Visiting Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield. In 2021 he was elected as a member of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

This will be a hybrid event. The guest speaker will be present with us in the School of Music, and colleagues and other guests are encouraged to join us there. But if you are unable to do so then please consider joining us via Zoom.

No booking is required. Those wishing to attend online should contact series convenor Dr Ellis Jones (e.n.jones@leeds.ac.uk).