Dr Malcolm Miller

I am a musicologist and pianist and have taught as an Associate Lecturer in London Region (01) since 1991. I currently tutor the A342 Central Questions in the Study of Music, having previously taught A224 ‘Inside Music’, A214 ‘Understanding Music’ (for its entire duration) and A341 ‘Beethoven’, as well as some lively music summer schools!

My forthcoming book Boundaries, Space and Register in Beethoven's Piano Music (Boydell, forthcoming, 2025) is part of an ongoing project about registral analysis. I am  contributing co-editor of Beethoven the European (Brepols, 2023) and editor of Arietta, Journal of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe. My Wagner research includes a monograph-in-progress Wagner and Song:  the Wesendonck Lieder in Context, concurrent with a chapter on Henry Wood and Wagner in a forthcoming volume edited by Chris Walton. My rediscovery of Sir Henry Wood's orchestration of the song 'Träume' resulted in its modren revival at the 'Tribute to Sir Henry Wood' Prom on 31 August 2019 as part of the Wood 150th Birthday Proms season.  For the 2013 Wagner Bicentenary, I curated a panel on 'Wagner and Israel' at the conference ‘Richard Wagner's Impact on His World and Ours’ (Leeds), accompanied a Wagner song recital, and covered the 2013 Zurich Wagner Festival for the TLS. Several articles on Wagner songs have appeared in The Wagner Journal since 2014,  with a chapter on Wagner song orchestrations in Of Essence and Context (Springer, 2019). My work on 20th and 21st century music includes co-editing a volume Music and Exile (Brill, 2023) in which I contributed the chapter on Franz Reisenstein's radio opera Anna Kraus.  

A regular contributor to journals and magazines, my articles and reviews (including many world and regional premieres) appear in Tempo, Strad and Musical Times and currently Musical Opinion and Classical Music Daily. I have taught courses at City Literary Institute and Morley College.

Educational qualifications

• Ph.D, King’s College London (Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder)
• M.Mus, Theory & Analysis, Kings College London (Beethoven’s Egmont Overture)
• ARCM (Piano Performance); LGSM (Piano Teaching)
• B.A. (Hons), University of Sussex.

Publications

Books and book projects

• Boundaries, Space and Register in Beethoven's Piano Music (Boydell & Brewer, forthcoming, 2025)
• Classical and Popular Music in Israel: Transcultural Dialogues and Contrasts (Contributing Editor; University of Rochester Press, forthcoming, 2025)
• Music and Exile (Brill, 2023), contributing co-editor 
• Beethoven the European (Brepols, 2022), contributing co-editor
• Wagner and Song: The Wesendonck Lieder in Context (In preparation)
• Mediterranean Muse: Piano Music by Four Generations of Composers in Israel (Jewish Music Institute, SOAS, University of London, 2005; Millennium Award project.)
• The Accordion in all its Guises – Editor; special issue of Musical Performance – (2002, Harwood Academic, Taylor & Francis). 

Journal editor

• Arietta – Journal of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe, Vols. 1-10, 1999-2024 (available in RILM)

Book chapters 

• ‘Jewish Influences in the Music of Berthold Goldschmidt’ in Berthold Goldschmidt’ (Toccata Press, forthcoming)
• ' "A Place of Refuge in My Arms": Reizenstein's Anna Kraus as Holocaust Opera', in Music and Exile, Eds. Malcolm Miller and Jutta Raab Hansen, Yearkbook 22 of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies (Brill, 2023)
• 'Beethoven's Registral Structures and Strategies of Transcendence in the Late Piano Sonatas', in Beethoven the European - Transcultural Contexts of Performance, Interpretation and Reception, Eds. Malcolm Miller, William Kinderman, Speculum Musicae Vol 48, (Brepols 2022)
• ‘Friendship and Exile: The Correspondence between Paul Frankenburger/ Ben-Haim and Otto Crusius, Friedrich Crusius and Otto Eduard Crusius’ in Jüdische Musik im süddeutschen Raum / Mapping Jewish Music of Southern Germany, Eds. Claus von Bockmaier, Tina Frühauf, Allitera Verlag, 2021, pp.189-245
• ‘Essence, Context and Meaning in Versions of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder by Wagner, Mottl and  Henze’, in Of Essence and Context - Between Music and Phiolosophy, eds. Rūta Stanevičiūtė, Nick Zangwill & Rima Povilionienė, Springer International Publishing, 2019,  “Numanities: Arts and Humanities in Progress Vol.7” (ISSN 2510-442X; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14471-5
•  ‘Ancient Symbols, Modern Meanings: The Use of the Shofar in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Music’, in Qol Tamid: The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture, eds. Friedmann and Gereboff, Claremont Press, 2017. Available at: www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvbcd1px.12
• ‘Bloch, Wagner and Creativity: Refutation and Vindication, in Ernest Bloch Studies, eds. Knapp and Solomon, CUP, 2017.
• The ‘Ud as a symbol of Middle Eastern Cultural Dialogue: Radical Fusions in Recent Concert Music in Israel’, in ICONEA 2011, Proceedings of the International Conference of Near-Eastern Archaeomusicology, held at Senate House, Institute of Musical Research, University of London, December, 1-3, 2011, Edited by Richard Dumbrill, 2014
• ‘Music as Memory: British Émigré Composers and their Wartime Experience’, in The Impact of Nazism on Twentieth-Century Music,  ed. Erik Levi, Böhlau Verlag, 2014
• 'Peak Performance: Register and Structure in Beethoven's Razumovsky Quartets Op.59’ in Beethoven’s String Quartet, ed. William Kinderman, U of Illinois Press 2005

Dictionary Entries

• MGG (2000-8) – New edition: entries on selected British 20th century composers
• ‘Late Romantic Personalities’in Classical Music Encyclopaedia (Harper -Collins, 2000; Flame, 2004)
• ‘Felix Mottl’, entry in New Grove Dictionary of Opera
• New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians II (2001) - Original articles and revisions on 20th century British composers and 19th century German composers.

 

Articles in journals (selection)

• ‘Beethoven The European, Lucca, 4-6 December 2020’ in ‘Communications’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 18/2, September 2021, pp. 334-341
• Sir Henry Wood's 'Dreams' – Wagner Expanded', Musical Opinion, July-September 2019
• "This Round of Songs": Cyclic Coherence in the Wesendonck Lieder', The Wagner Journal, 9/3, November 2015
• ‘Spinning the Yarn: Intertextuality in Wagner's Use and Reuse of his Songs in his Operas’, The Wagner Journal, 8/2, July 2014
• 'View from the Top: High Registral Structure in Beethoven's Diabelli Variations Op.120', Arietta, Journal of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe, 8, 2014
• ‘Resonance and Distance: Simon Bainbridge in Conversation’, Tempo, 67/265,  July 2013, pp 37-49
• Assorted book reviews (2007-13) for Music & Letters (Michael Nyman); 19th Century Music Review (Wagner and Zurich); Nations and Nationalism (Israeli National Identity); Journal of Popular Music Studies (Israeli Popular Music);
• ‘Between Two Cultures: A Conversation with Shulamit Ran’, Tempo, 58/227, January 2004, pp 15-32
• ‘Creative Recomposition: Beethoven’s Bonn Piano Quartets and the early Viennese Piano Sonatas’, in Arietta – Journal of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe, 4, 2004
• ‘The Shofar and Its Symbolism’, Historic Brass Society Journal 14, 2002
• 'Recent Cello Music by Graham Whettam', Tempo, 216 (2001), pp. 31-36
• 'Beethoven and his Jewish Contemporaries', in Shofar, 18/4, Summer 2000 (U of Nebraska Press)
• ‘Leopold Mozart’s influence on Mozart’s early Piano Sonatas’, Piano Journal, January 1997
•  ‘From Liszt to Adams II’, Tempo 179, Dec 1991; ‘From Liszt to Adams I’, Tempo 175, Dec 1990
• ‘Multivalency and Comparative Analysis: aspects of Musical Postmodernism’, Studies in Music, 21, 1987
• ‘Schenkerian Analysis: A Practical Introduction’ (Report), Music Analysis 5:1, 1986

• Numerous regular reviews and articles for journals such including: Musical Opinion, Tempo (c. 100 articles/reviews 1986-2015), Classical Music, Classical Piano, Piano Journal (EPTA), International Piano Quarterly, Arietta, The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Renaissance, Musica Judaica. Also much published in The Strad, Musical Times, Music Teacher, Opera Now, Opera, The Times Higher Education Supplement, The Times Literary Supplement, The European, Choir & Organ and other journals. And on-line journal Music and Vision Daily, URL: www.mvdaily.com

Conference papers since 2000

• ‘Space, structure and gesture in Beethoven’s piano oeuvre’, RMA Annual Conference, Durham University, September 2022
• ‘Traces of transnationalism, displacement and creativity in the music of émigré composers from Germany to Britain: the cases of Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968) and Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996)’, IMS Conference, Athens University, Aug 2022
• ‘Jewish identity and the refugee experience in the music of emigré British composers: the cases of Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996) and Franz Reizenstein (1911-1968)’, WUJS, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Aug 2022
• ‘Register, structure and gesture in Beethoven’s piano variations Op.34’, NEWMAC, Newcatsle University July 2022 
• ‘Über'm Sternenzelt!’: In search of Beethoven’s structural use of registral extremes’, International conference 'Musikwissenschaft nach Beethoven', (Musicology after Beethoven), German Musicological Society, Bonn (28.9-1.10 2021)
• 'At the Boundaries : Beethoven’s structural use of registral extremes', Brummac 21 (online), Music Analysis Conference at Birmingham University, July 2021
• 'Beethoven’s Registral structures and strategies of transcendence in the Late Piano Sonatas', International Conference 'Beethoven The European', Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca, 2-4 December 2020
• 'Liturgy for the concert hall: Jewish musical influences in the songs and chamber works of Samuel Alman (1877-1947).' Magnified & Sanctified - The Music of Jewish Prayer 2, 9-12 September 2019, Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, with recital of Alman with Malcolm Miller, piano, Cantor Yoni Rose, (Frankfurt Synagogue), tenor, Eliah Sakakushev-von Bismarck, (Villa Seligmann), cello 
• ‘Sir Henry Wood conducts Richard Wagner’, presented at 'Maestro: Conductors in Performance: A symposium organised by the Royal Academy of Music in conjunction with the Bern University of the Arts', RAM, London, March 2019
• ‘Alterity and trans-culturalism in Wagner Reception in the 20th and 21st centuries: The Wesendonck Lieder as innovative cultural practice.’, IMS 2017 Tokyo (March 2017).
• ‘Wood’s “Wagner – Dreams”: New light on Henry Wood’s orchestration of Träume for violin and orchestra’, Conference on Music since 1900/SurreyMAC 2017 (Surrey University, September 2017)
• ‘Structure and Style at the Summit: High Register in Beethoven’s ‘experimental’ Piano Sonatas Op.90 and Op.101’, KeeleMAC 2015, July 2015, Keele University
• ‘Innovation and Inspiration: New Works for the Synagogue by Composers of Art Music in Britain’,  Magnified & Sanctified: The Music of Jewish Prayer - International Conference, Leeds University Music Dept., June 2015
• ‘Letters from the Front: Paul Frankenburger (Ben-Haim’s) early unpublished correspondence with Otto Crusius (1857-1918)’, World Jewish Studies Congress, Jerusalem, August 2013
• ‘The music of the Shofar: ancient symbols, modern meanings.’, ICONEA conference, IMR, Senate House, London November 2012
• ‘Contesting cultures of East and West: Symbiosis of middle-eastern instruments and identities in vocal and chamber music from Israel’, International Musicological Society Conference, Rome, June 2012
• ‘Cultures and Contrasts of East and West: The symbiosis of Middle-eastern and European elements in piano trios by composers in Israel over four generations.’ for the IMR Conference on The Piano Trio, London, November 2010
• ‘Bloch Reception and Wagner: refutation or vindication?’: for the Fifteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 2009
• ‘Music as Memory: British Émigré Composers and their Wartime Experience’, presented at ‘Music in Exile’ conference, Institute of Musicological Research, Senate House, 8 April 2008
• ‘New Music at the Proms: Patronage or Patronizing?’, Conference - ‘The Proms and British Musical Life’, BBC, King’s College London, British Library, 23-25 May 2007
• ‘Wagner and the Leitmotif of Love: The Wesendonck Lieder and their reworking in Tristan und Isolde’, lecture delivered for the Open University at Durham University, July 2005 and at Bayreuth University, as part of ‘Wagner: Music, Aesthetics, Politics ~ International Seminar’ presented by the University of Illinois, August 2005.
• ‘Stars and Stripes of David: the Impact of America on Contemporary Israeli Music’, paper at Milken Archive International Conference on 350 years of American-Jewish Music, New York, November 2003 (JTS, Mannes College).
• ‘Creative Recomposition: Beethoven’s Bonn Piano Quartets and the early Viennese Piano Sonatas’, Beethoven and the Creative Process, International Conference at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, May 2003.
• ‘Mediterranean Muse: Recent Piano Music from Israel’ and ‘East and West: Piano Music by Three Generations of Composers in Israel’; two lecture-recitals at the LJCC, c/o King’s College, London in November 2002 and June 2003.
• 'Im Treibhaus and Tristan: Self quotation in the music of Richard Wagner' (Conference at Dublin University, on German Literature and Music, Dec 2000)
• 'Cristofori - A Eulogy' (McMaster University, Oct.2000, part of Piano 300 anniversary in Great Romantics Festival, Hamilton Ontario, director Alan Walker)