Musicological research at Birmingham, which was identified as a particular strength in the RAE 2008 summary report on the Department, currently covers the history and performance practice of Western music from the Medieval period to the present day, with an increasing interest in aesthetics, analysis and reception studies.

The Department’s distinction in musicology, and in early music in particular, dates from the years of Professor Anthony Lewis’s leadership. Lewis’s groundbreaking performances of Handel operas at the Barber Institute in the 1950s and 60s laid the foundation for the more general revival of interest in this aspect of the composer’s work, and Lewis’s editions of music by Purcell were equally influential.

Several musicological publications have been acclaimed, both nationally and internationally. Kenneth Hamilton’s book After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (2008) received the Certificate of Merit in the Association for Recorded Sound Collections' Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research and was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title; and Colin Timms won the Derek Allen Prize of the British Academy for his book Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music (2003).

However, with the growing awareness of music as social and cultural expression, we believe that music departments have a responsibility to engender analytical and interpretive awareness beyond the 'standard' sweep of Western classical music, encompassing the broader scope of musical practice in the existential reality of people's lives. This seems especially pertinent given the increasingly multicultural world in which we live, and in response to the growing historical dimension of such genres as jazz and rock.

Birmingham’s achievements in composition were specifically praised in the RAE 2008.

Since the founding of the Electroacoustic Music Studios in 1978 and the appointment of Jonty Harrison in 1980, electroacoustic composition and technology-focused work has assumed a growing importance in the profile of the Department. Harrison founded BEAST (Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre) in 1982, since when it has performed in many parts of the UK and mainland Europe, most recently in the Inventionen Festival, Berlin in 2010. Composers associated with the Studios and BEAST have received prizes, performances, commissions and broadcasts, and several important works have been composed in the Studios, which are supported by a full-time Studio Manager. Over 25 former postgraduate students are now teaching in the university sector in the UK and abroad.

An award of a £500,000 via the Science Research Infrastructure Fund in 2003 enabled the refurbishment of the Studios and BEAST, which can now be configured with around 100 discrete channels. The appointment of Scott Wilson in 2004-05 led to the development of BEASTmulch, a new software control system for large loudspeaker systems, and a SuperCollider class library for large scale multichannel spatialisation; this was funded by a research grant from the AHRC, with Wilson as Principal Investigator and Harrison as Co-investigator. Dr Wilson’s arrival also led to an increasing interest in live and interactive composition and more engagement with programming, particularly involving the SuperCollider language. The Department hosted the first SuperCollider Symposium in 2006 (which has since become a regular international conference), and Dr. Wilson was lead editor of The SuperCollider Book, published by MIT Press, which also contains a chapter by one of our postgraduate students. A group of postgraduates, along with Professor Harrison, have developed BEASTtools, a suite of Max/MSP patches for multichannel processing. Spatialisation remains a primary research area for postgraduate composers and staff (Wilson and Harrison recently co-edited an issue of Organised Sound on the topic).

The Studio postgraduate community (likely to number some 25 students in 2011-12) is strong and mutually supportive, and benefits from an annual commission for an acousmatic work made possible with funds from an external donor via the University’s Circles of Influence campaign. In undergraduate programmes, too, composition (both acoustic and electroacoustic) is considered an important and consistent strand: it is taught from the first year and the annual COMPASS Prizes are awarded to the best pieces produced each year. The winning electroacoustic work is performed on the BEAST system, usually in The Series at the CBSO (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) Centre, alongside professional and postgraduate work.

The Department hopes to establish a new undergraduate programme in Music and Creative Music Technology from October 2012. This has been made possible largely through the exciting possibilities of the new Bramall Music Building which, as well as the flexible main auditorium and the Dome Rehearsal Room (in which we hope to install a semi-permanent 32-channel loudspeaker dome), will boast a large 24-channel composition studio, four further studios (two 8-channel, one stereo and a ‘dead’ room) and a 5.1 recording room, connected via a flexible digital infrastructure to various performance spaces with differing acoustics within the building (Auditorium, Dome Room, CEMPR rooms, ‘dead’ room and other electroacoustic studios).

The Department is now seeking to consolidate and complement our activities related to creative work using technological resources by appointing an early career researcher with skills in areas such as (but not limited to): sound analysis and synthesis; signal processing; audio spatialisation and spatial simulation; music computer informatics; experimental musical interface design; human-computer interaction for music; gestural control; tangible user interfaces; programming for audio, including experience with domain-specific computer music languages such as SuperCollider or Max/MSP; network audio; recording and production.

• Amy Brosius – Musicologist, specialising in early Baroque Italian music and singers, with research interests in singing cultures, vocal music and gender studies.
• Kevin Busby – Studio Manager. Sound artist and producer. Facilities management, Apple Mac administration, assistance to studio users.
• Ben Earle – Musicologist with research interests in the history, analysis and criticism of musical modernism, primarily in Italy but also in this country.
• Kenneth Hamilton – Professional pianist and musicologist; author of After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (OUP).
• Jonty Harrison – Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music. Composer, primarily of acousmatic music. Prizes: Bourges, Ars Electronica, Musica Nova (Prague). Commissions: GRM, ICMA, Bourges, leading performers. Discs: 3 solo albums on empreintes DIGITALes (Montreal); works on several other labels. Guest Professor of Computer Music at Technische Universität, Berlin in 2010.
• Andrew Kirkman ­– Professor of Musicology and Head of Department. Musicologist and performer with research interests in fifteenth-century music and performing interests in music from the fifteenth-eighteenth centuries; director of the Binchois Consort (recording artists on Hyperion Records).
• Daria Kwiatowska – Composer of instrumental and vocal music. Recent performances in London (rarescale ensemble), an Olympic Commission for Vancouver Symphony, and at the Musica Polonica Nova Festival in Wrocław, Poland.
• Mary O’Neill – Director of the Centre for Early Music Performance and Research (CEMPR). Specialises in Medieval Studies and in Performance Practice issues up to the 18th century. Author of Courtly Love Songs of Medieval France (OUP).
• Matthew Riley – Musicologist, specialising in the Classical period, music analysis and Elgar; author of Edward Elgar and the Nostalgic Imagination and Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment: Attention, Wonder and Astonishment.
• Paul Rodmell – Director of Performance. Musicologist, specialising in British music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; author of Charles Villiers Stanford.
• Colin Timms – Peyton and Barber Professor of Music. Musicologist, specialising in late Baroque Italian music; editor of Stradella, Steffani and Handel; author of Polymath of the Baroque, which won the British Academy’s Derek Allen Prize.
• John Whenham – Professor of Music History. Musicologist, author of Duet and Dialogue in the Age of Monteverdi; Monteverdi: Orfeo; Monteverdi: Vespers (1610) and the Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi.
• Scott Wilson – Composer in instrumental and electroacoustic genres; specialist in live and interactive electroacoustics. Music recorded on ‘326' music label. Guest at ZKM; recent performances at SARC in Belfast, and the Inventionen Festival in Berlin. Active in the development of the SuperCollider language.
• Michael Zev Gordon – Professor of Composition, specialising in instrumental and vocal music. Winner of the choral category of the British Composer Awards 2008. A CD of his piano music, On Memory (NMC) was among The Times top ten contemporary classical albums of 2009.