Dr Kelvin Lee

Profile

I am a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. I studied music at the University of Hong Kong, where I received a BA (Hons) and an MPhil in Musicology, before completing an MA in Conducting (Distinction) at the University of York and a PhD in Musicology at Durham University. During my time at Durham, I also earned a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and was made a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Prior to joining Leeds, I held fellowships from Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

I have published widely on the intersections between musical systems and the broader philosophical thoughts and cultural dialogues at the turn of the twentieth century. My writings have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Music Analysis, Journal of Music Theory, Musurgia and Revue belge de Musicologie, and in edited volumes including Between Centres and Peripheries: Music in Europe from the French Revolution to WWI (Brepols) and Nikolai Medtner: Music, Aesthetics, and Contexts (Olms). My article on Arnold Schoenberg and the symphonic poem was awarded the Musurgia 25^th Anniversary Prize by the Société Française d’Analyse Musicale.

I was founding Chair of the Formal Theory Study Group, Society for Music Analysis (2018–24), and Director of the International Conference on Musical Form (2021) and the 13^th Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900 (2024). I currently serve on the Steering Committee of the Music Since 1900 conference series.

Alongside my academic work, I have worked as a conductor with professional and youth orchestras across Europe and East Asia, performing in venues such as the Musikverein in Vienna and the Municipal House in Prague. In my former role as Music Director of Shun Hing College Schola Cantorum, I have won the Third Prize at the 5^th International World Peace Choral Festival in Vienna and was invited to perform at the United Nations Office in support of the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.

As a specialist in music in Europe and East Asia around 1900, I was invited to speak in public events and write essays on composers such as Yasushi Akutagawa and Richard Strauss for the BBC orchestras, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra, among others.

I welcome collaborative opportunities in research, performance and public outreach. For enquiries and invitations, please kindly get in touch via email.

Research interests

My research broadly concerns the analysis and history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music in Europe and East Asia, with particular focuses on i) musical form, ii) tonality, iii) music and philosophy and iv) musical interculturality. These interests have also taken my work into a number of related areas including musical modernisms, music historiography, music and globalisation, and analysis and performance.

My ongoing work involves three projects that consider the impact of modern conditions on music and its historiography by integrating music-theoretical and contextual perspectives. The first is a monograph provisionally titled The Sonata Moment: Dialectical Form and Symphonic Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, which develops a dialectical theory of symphonic sonata form and explores the emergence of Austro-German musical modernism via the aesthetics of the ‘moment’. The second is an essay collection titled Formenlehre and the Challenge of History: Rethinking Contexts in Fin-de-Siècle Musical Form, which examines the issue of history and its implications for theorising formal praxis in European art music at the turn of the twentieth century. I have also embarked on a large-scale study of tonality in East Asia between the Self-Strengthening Movement of 1861 and the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, through which I seek to recalibrate the existing theories and devise a culturally sensitive alternative to account for the hybridised modern musical language in the region.

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked on, will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

• PhD in Musicology, Durham University
• Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), Advance HE
• MA in Conducting (Distinction), University of York
• MPhil in Musicology, The University of Hong Kong
• BA (Hons) in Music, The University of Hong Kong

Professional memberships

• Society for Music Analysis
• Society for Music Theory
• Royal Musical Association
• International Musicological Society