Sam Ridout

Profile

Funded by the Audrey and Stanley Burton 1960 Charitable Trust, I began my PhD in autumn 2017, having previously completed an MA in Critical and Applied Musicology at the University of Leeds and a MusB in Music at the University of Manchester.

I am one of the directors of Quilting Points, a critical theory reading group at the university, which is currently reading the work of Julia Kristeva.

Research interests

My research explores the intellectual background to the development of musique concrète by Pierre Schaeffer, attending in particular to the aesthetic and political commitments that shaped Schaeffer's post-war musical experiments.

More broadly I am interested in the intersections of critical theory, aesthetics and sound studies, often in relation to electronic music.

Conference Papers

'The Aesthetics of Animated Sound: François Bayle, Bernard Parmegiani and the Service de la Recherche de l'ORTF', British Forum for Ethnomusicology/Royal Musical Assocation Research Students' Conference, University of Sheffield (January 2019).

'Pierre Schaeffer, the Radio Play and the Aesthetic Preconditions of Musique Concrète', Sound and Music in Documentary Film, University of Huddersfield (February 2017).

'Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and the Problem of Contingency', Reassessing Pierre Schaeffer's Contributions to Music and Sound Studies, University of Birmingham (December 2016).