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Dr Ben Winters

Profile summary

Professional biography

I read music at Christ Church, University of Oxford, completing my BA in 1997 and an MSt in 1998. I returned to Christ Church in 2002 to read for a DPhil in musicology (supervised by Prof. Peter Franklin), completing it in 2006 with the aid of a University Graduate Studentship, a Halstead Scholarship, and a Wingate Fellowship. From 2006 to 2008 I was University Research Fellow in Music at City University, London, and from 2008 to 2009 I was an Early Career Research Associate at the Institute of Musical Research, University of London. From 2009 to 2011, when I took up my position at the Open University as Lecturer in Music, I was a college lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. I've also taught at Oxford Brookes, Bristol, and Surrey Universities, at Royal Holloway University of London, and at City University, London.

I'm also a conductor and a violinist, performing regularly with the Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra in Bristol. As a conductor, I've worked with the composers Thomas Hyde, Paul Patterson, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, conducting a gala concert in the presence of Max in honour of his 70th Birthday.

Research interests

My primary research interests are in the area of film music and Viennese modernism. My first book, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood: A Film Score Guide (Scarecrow Press, 2007) was described by Janet Halfyard as an example of ‘outstanding documentary research…meticulously scholarly’ while Jack Dubowsky noted that ‘Winters capably wears all the hats of critical theorist, historian, musicologist and compositional analyst.’ My second monograph, Music, Performance, and the Realities of Film: Shared Concert Experiences in Screen Fiction (Routledge, 2014) was described  by Douglas Knight as “[achieving] the rare feat of both finding fertile new ground and exploring it with a bracingly fresh perspective… [It is c]onstantly compelling, erudite, and gracefully argued.” In 2017, I co-edited The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound with Miguel Mera and Ronald Sadoff, of which Mervyn Cooke said “It would be difficult to imagine a more wide-ranging or more skilfully assembled collection of essays on the richly varied subject of screen music and sound than this magnificent book" and co-edited Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear (Routledge, 2017) with Nicholas Attfield. 

I've published on film music and the music of Korngold in a number of journals—including Music & Letters, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Cambridge Opera Journal, and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image—and have contributed essays on film music to many edited volumes, including The Cambridge Companion to Film Music and The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic LIstening.  I am a co-editor (with James Deaville and Kathryn Kalinak) of Ashgate's Screen Music Series, and am a co-editor of the journal Music, Sound, and the Moving Image. 

 

Teaching interests

At the Open University, I have contributed to modules at all levels of study, including A113 Revolutions, A234 Understanding Music, A342 Central questions in the study of music, and the Music MA (A873 and A874). Between 2020 and 2023, I was also in charge of the School's developing Film & Media curriculum. I am currently working on the new Music MA (A890 and A891).

I'd welcome expressions of interest from potential PhD students in the areas of screen music (of all kinds), the music of E W Korngold, Viennese modernism of the fin-de-siècle, and orchestral music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Publications

'Magic Fire': a Wagner Film with a Difference (2021)
Winters, Ben
The Wagner Journal, 15(3) (pp. 11-22)

Musical Wallpaper? Towards an Appreciation of Non-narrating Music in Film (2012-06)
Winters, Ben
Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 6(1) (pp. 39-54)

Music and Narrative: An Introduction (2012-04)
Winters, Ben
Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 6(1) (pp. 3-7)

Strangling blondes: nineteenth-century femininity and Korngold's Die tote Stadt (2012)
Winters, Ben
Cambridge Opera Journal, 23(1-2) (pp. 51-82)

The non-diegetic fallacy: film, music, and narrative space (2010-05)
Winters, Ben
Music & Letters, 91(2) (pp. 224-244)

‘There have been developments’: Frankenstein’s Monster finds a (Mahlerian) voice (2009-10)
Winters, Ben
Interdisciplinary Humanities, 26(2) (pp. 116-127)

Screen Music Sources in the UK and Ireland (2009-10)
Winters, Ben and Mera, Miguel
Brio, 46(2) (pp. 37-65)

Corporeality, musical heartbeats, and cinematic emotion (2008-06-01)
Winters, Ben
Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 2(1) (pp. 3-26)

Catching Dreams: Editing Film Scores for Publication (2007-09)
Winters, Ben
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 132(1) (pp. 115-140)

Music, Performance, and the Realities of Film: Shared Concert Experiences in Screen Fiction (2014-02-13)
Winters, Ben
Routledge Research in Music
ISBN : 978-0-415-82453-8 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood: A Film Score Guide (2007-03)
Winters, Ben
Scarecrow Film Score Guides
ISBN : 0-8108-5888-6 | Publisher : Scarecrow Press | Published : Lanham, MD

Historical sound-film presentation and the closed-curtain roadshow overture (2021-03)
Winters, Ben
In: Cenciarelli, Carlo ed. The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening. Oxford Handbooks
ISBN : 9780190853617 | Publisher : Oxford University Press

Influence (2020-10-29)
Winters, Ben
In: Kristiansen, Morten and Jones, Joseph E. eds. Richard Strauss in Context. Composers in Context (pp. 311-319)
ISBN : 9781108379939 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Analogue Authenticity and the Sound of Wes Anderson (2020-02-06)
Winters, Ben
In: Vernallis, Carol; Rogers, Holly and Perrott, Lisa eds. Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics. New Approaches to Sound, Music and Media (pp. 50-55)
ISBN : 978-1-5013-4100-7 | Publisher : Bloomsbury Press

New Opportunities in Film: Korngold and Warner Bros. (2019)
Winters, Ben
In: Goldmark, Daniel and Karnes, Kevin C eds. Korngold and His World (pp. 111-130)
ISBN : 9780691198736 | Publisher : Princeton University Press | Published : Princeton

Korngold's Violanta: Venice, carnival, and the masking of identities (2017-11-17)
Winters, Ben
In: Winters, Ben and Attfield, Nicholas eds. Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear (pp. 51-74)
ISBN : https://www.routledge.com/Music-Modern-Culture-and-the-Critical-Ear/Attfield-Winters/p/book/9781472476869 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Introduction (2017-11-17)
Attfield, Nicholas and Winters, Ben
In: Attfield, Nicholas and Winters, Ben eds. Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear (pp. 1-12)
ISBN : 9781472476869 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Introduction: Framing Screen Music and Sound (2017-06-01)
Mera, Miguel; Sadoff, Ronald and Winters, Ben
In: Mera, Miguel; Sadoff, Ronald and Winters, Ben eds. The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound (pp. 1-14)
ISBN : 9781138855342 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : New York

Idolizing the Synchronized Score: Studying Indiana Jones Hypertexts (2017-06-01)
Winters, Ben
In: Mera, Miguel; Sadoff, Ronald and Winters, Ben eds. The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound (pp. 531-542)
ISBN : 9781138855342 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : New York

The Composer and the Studio: Korngold and Warner Bros. (2016-12-31)
Winters, Ben
In: Cooke, Mervyn and Ford, Fiona eds. The Cambridge Companion to Film Music. Cambridge Companions to Music (pp. 51-66)
ISBN : 9781316146781 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

The sound of satire; or, trading places with Mozart (2016-01-25)
Winters, Ben
In: Evans, Mark and Hayward, Philip eds. Sounding Funny: Sound and Comedy Cinema. Genre, Music and Sound (pp. 29-50)
ISBN : 9781845536749 | Publisher : Equinox Press

Swearing an oath: Korngold, film and the sound of resistance? (2014-02)
Winters, Ben
In: Levi, Erik ed. The Impact of Nazism on Twentieth-Century Music. Exil.Arte-Schriften (pp. 61-76)
ISBN : 978-3-205-79543-8 | Publisher : Böhlau Verlag | Published : Vienna

Superman as mythic narrative: music, romanticism, and the ‘oneiric climate’ (2012-07)
Winters, Ben
In: Halfyard, Janet K. ed. The Music of Fantasy Cinema. Genre, Music and Sound (pp. 111-131)
ISBN : 978-1845535322 | Publisher : Equinox Press | Published : Sheffield

‘It’s all really happening’: sonic shaping in the films of Wes Anderson (2012-04-26)
Winters, Ben
In: Wierzbicki, James ed. Music, Sound, and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema. Routledge Music and Screen Media Series (pp. 45-60)
ISBN : 978-0-415-89894-2 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Silencing the truth: music and identity in The Unforgiven (2011-10-05)
Winters, Ben
In: Kalinak, Kathryn ed. Music in the Western: Notes from the Frontier. Routledge Music and Screen Media Series (pp. 77-93)
ISBN : 9780415882279 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon, UK

Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear (2018)
Attfield, Nicholas and Winters, Ben eds.
ISBN : 9781472476869 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound (2017-06-01)
Mera, Miguel; Sadoff, Ronald and Winters, Ben eds.
ISBN : 9781138855342 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : New York

'Music and Narrative', Music, Sound, and the Moving Image Special Issue Vol. 6 Issue 1 (Spring 2012) (2012-04)
Winters, Ben
Liverpool University Press