Dr Terence Curran

Professional biography

Much of my research has been concerned with the history, psychology, and aesthetics of performance, with a particular focus on recording; my work in this area considers the intersection of music and technology, the extent to which technology influences artistic practice, and the ways in which musicians respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by technical innovations. It encompasses a range of disciplines including musicology, psychology of music, performance studies, cultural history, oral history, and the history and analysis of recordings.

My work on the psychology of recording has been featured in a series of radio programmes (Performing to the Red Light) commissioned by BBC Radio 4, for which I studied working practices in commercial recording sessions and interviewed musicians, producers, and engineers about their experience of the recording process.

For my doctoral thesis I conducted a large-scale study on the recording of classical music in Britain in the 1950s and its impact on music and musicians. My findings were based largely on the analysis of oral history interviews that I conducted with musicians, producers, engineers, and others associated with recording during the 1950s and early 1960s. The thesis also contained chapters on the state of classical music in Britain in the 1950s and the development of the recording industry, and included case studies of significant recordings from the period.

I have been invited to work on collaborative projects and in 2011 I co-edited a book about the Chopin Museum in Warsaw. The book documented the refurbishment and re-design of the museum and its exhibition spaces, from the launch of the architectural competition to its re-opening as part of the Chopin bicentenary celebrations in 2010.

In 2016 I held the post of Cultural Engagement Fellow at the Royal College of Music where I led the AHRC-funded research project ‘Exile Estates – Music Restitution’, working in collaboration with the British Library, the International Centre for Suppressed Music, and the Jewish Music Institute. The project focussed on the musical legacy of the conductor and composer Peter Gellhorn (1912-2004) and formed part of the RCM’s wider research on the experience of German and Austrian musicians who came to Britain as refugees in the 1930s.

In 2018-19 I worked as academic consultant on a series of television programmes (Our Dementia Choir) investigating the role of music in helping people living with dementia, which were first broadcast on BBC One TV in May 2019. Other recent research has included work on the theme of music and migration, the theatre music works of Peter Maxwell Davies, and aspects of learning and teaching in conservatoires.

I am currently conducting research on a major archive of previously unknown material on recording in the 1950s and 1960s.