Ivan Hewett

MA Oxon

Doctoral Supervisor

Ivan Hewett has worked in music for more than 30 years as lecturer, promoter, broadcaster and journalist. He has an MA from the University of Oxford.

Since 2002 he has been a critic and writer for the Daily Telegraph, where he is now Chief Music Critic, and is an Academic Professor at the Royal College of Music. He is particularly interested in issues around the creation and reception of contemporary music, and the workings of contemporary harmony. He contributed a chapter to The New History of the Proms, published by Thames and Hudson, and has also written a chapter for a book examining the varieties of ‘classical’ music around the world, published by Boydell and Brewer in 2016. He has also contributed chapters to two forthcoming books: Sound Judgement: The Science and Practice of Valuing Musical Performance (OUP) and Inside the Contemporary Conservatoire: Critical Perspectives from the Royal College of Music (Routledge). His book Healing the Rift, a meditation on the dilemmas of modern music, is published by Continuum.

Ivan often hosts public events, such as the pre-concert debate at the centenary celebration of the music of Iannis Xenakis at the Southbank on 8 October 2022. He has a long-standing connection with the Academy of Ideas, and has often taken part in summer schools and debates for that organisation. The most recent of these is a debate on the importance of the critic in maintaining the freedom of the arts at the Living Freedom Summer School 29 June – 1 July 2023.

Selected publications

Hewett I (2022, April 18), Obituary of Harrison Birtwistle, The Guardian [LINK].

Hewett I (2021), The vanishing discipline: the threat to musicology, Search: Journal for New Music and Culture, 12, 1-17 [LINK].

Hewett I (2020), Between Englishness and modernism: the critical reception of Tippett’s operas, Journal of Music Criticism, 4, 1-28 [LINK].

Hewett I (2017), All in a chord [Five-part radio series on the musical and historical significance of five different chords], BBC Radio 3 [LINK].

Hewett I (2016, March), The path to total purity [an obituary assessment of Pierre Boulez], Prospect Magazine, 240, 76-79 [LINK].

Hewett I (2007), Joining the queue: audiences for the Proms, in J Doctor & D Wright (eds.), The Proms: A New History (pp. 210-231), Thames & Hudson [ISBN 9780500513521].

Hewett I (2003), Music: Healing the Rift, Bloomsbury (originally Continuum), [ISBN 0-8264-5939-0].

Hewett I (2001), All too human? [a review of three books on musical aesthetics and criticism], Musical Times, 142 (1876), 43-47 [DOI].

Faculties / departments: Research, Academic staff