Research interests
Research interests include the music of Debussy, Alban Berg, and the post-WW2 avant-garde; post-structurlaist music theory and analysis. Member of the Editorial Board of Music Analysis and founder member of the Society for Music Analysis.
Current PhD students and their fields of study
Christopher Mabley - Music Analysis: 'Secret Codes and Ciphers in the Music of Anton Webern'
Alexander McIntyre - Music Analysis: 'Music and Ideas of Nikolai Roslavets'
Indioney Rodrigues - Music Analysis: 'Rhythm and Metrics in 20th Century Music'
Selected publications
Books, articles and chapters in books
'Berg's "Scheideweg": analytical issues in Op.2/ii', Music Analysis, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1982), pp. 189-202.
'Salome's final monologue', in Richard Strauss: Salome, ed. Derrick Puffett (Cambridge: CUP, 1989), pp. 109-30.
'Informants' words and musicians' statements: some remarks on the place of discourse in understanding music'. [Translation of Jean-Jacques Nattiez, 'Paroles d'informateurs et propos de musiciens', in Musicologie générale et sémiologie (Paris: Bourgois, 1987), pp. 230-44], Musicology Australia, Vols 10-11 (1988-89), pp. 27-34.
Introduction to Jean Molino, 'Musical fact and the semiology of music', Music Analysis, Vol. 9, No. 2 (July 1990), pp. 105-11.
'Elettra's first aria and the Storm scene', in W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo, ed. Julian Rushton (Cambridge: CUP, 1993): 137-152.
'Tonality and the series (Berg)', in Jonathan Dunsby (ed.) Models of Musical Analysis: Early Twentieth-Century Music (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 81-113.
'Debussy's significant connections: metaphor and metonymy in analytical method', in Anthony Pople (ed.), Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music (Cambridge: CUP, 1994), pp. 127-51.
Edited (with Mark Everist), Analytical Strategies and Musical Interpretation: Essays on Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Music (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), 344pp.
'Introduction: Different Trains', in Craig Ayrey and Mark Everist (eds), Analytical Strategies and Musical Interpretation (Cambridge: CUP, 1996), pp. 1-32.
'Berg's "Warm die Lüfte": a preliminary analysis', in 'Pitch-class Set Genera: A Symposium', edited by Craig Ayrey, Music Analysis, Vol. 17, No. 2 (July 1998), pp. 163-76.
'Universe of particulars: Subotnik, deconstruction and Chopin', Music Analysis, Vol. 17, No. 3 (October 1998), pp. 339-81.
In press
'Stravinsky in analysis: the anglophone traditions', in Jonathan Cross (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
'Syntax, figures, and dissemination in Debussy's "Soupir" (1913)', in Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Music Analysis (Rotterdam: Rotterdams Conservatorium, 2002).
'Nomos/Nomos: law, melody and the deconstructive in Webern's "Leichteste Bürden der Bäume", Cantata II, Op. 31', Music Analysis, Vol. 21/3 (2002).
Major reviews
Wendy Steiner (ed.), The Sign in Music and Literature, Music and Letters, Vol. 64 (1983), pp. 274-80.
Arthur B. Wenk, Debussy and Twentieth-Century Music, and Roy Howat, Debussy in Proportion, Music Analysis, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1984), pp. 265-77.
Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition (Der freie Satz), Musicology Australia, Vol. 8 (1985), pp. 51-5.
Current projects
'Debussy's Poetics of Reflection'. Book proposal and sample chapters accepted by Ashgate Publishing.
'Music and the deconstructive idea'. A book-length study. Initial stage funded by the AHRB (October 1999-May 2000).
Articles on Boulez's Le marteau sans maître, and Wofgang Rihm are in preparation.