Professor Richard Widdess FBA

Musicology of South Asia, including history, theory, analysis and social context of music in North India and Nepal; music and religion in South Asia; analysis of world music; music cognition, performance and meaning in oral traditions

Fellow type: UK Fellow
Year elected: 2015
Subjects: Music
Sections: Africa, Asia and the Middle East , History of Art and Music
Website: http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31997.php

Summary

Richard Widdess is Professor of Musicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He holds a PhD in Music from the University of Cambridge, and was Research Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Christ's College, Cambridge. He has been Chair of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology; a founder editor of the British Journal of Ethnomusicology; committee member of the Indian Musicological Society; member of the QAA Subject Benchmarking Group for Music; co-organizer of the Institute of Musical Research South Asia Forum; and Head of the Department of Music, SOAS. He received the Music Forum (Mumbai) Award for contributions to Indian Music (2006). His research interests include the history and theory of music in India, especially with reference to modal concepts and the practice of vocal music; the ethnography of religious music, with reference to the temple singing traditions of Nepal; the analysis of musical performance in orally-transmitted traditions; and aspects of musical cognition and music's language relationships.

Current post

Professor of Musicology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Past appointments

Soas, University Of London Professor of Musicology

1970 -

Publications

Dhrupad: tradition and performance in Indian music (with Ritwik Sanyal) 2004

The Ragas of Early Indian Music: modes, melodies and musical notations from the Gupta period to c. 1250 1995

Dapha: sacred singing in a South Asian city. Music and meaning in Bhaktapur, Nepal 2013

Dynamics of melodic discourse in Indian music: Budhaditya Mukherjee’s alap in rag Puriya-Kalyan in Michael Tenzer and John Roeder (eds.), Analytical and cross-cultural studies in world music 2011

Other Fellows of the British Academy

Professor Martin Kemp FBA

Now full-time writing, speaking and broadcasting on art and science, especially Leonardo da Vinci.

Professor Nicholas Cook FBA

Theory and analysis; performance studies including empirical approaches; multimedia; cross-cultural interaction; Beethoven; Schenker

Professor Francesca Orsini FBA

Literatures of South Asia; multilingual and located approach to world literature; book history in South Asia

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