Professor Robert Adlington

Head of Research

Professor Robert Adlington is Head of Research & Professor of Musicology.

A musicologist specialising in modernist, avant-garde and experimental music since 1960, Professor Robert Adlington, Head of Research & Professor of Musicology recently joined London’s Royal College of Music. He is the author of books on Harrison Birtwistle, Louis Andriessen, and avant-garde music in 1960s Amsterdam, and editor of volumes on new music theatre, music and communism, and music and democracy. His journal articles and book chapters include studies of Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, British experimental music theatre of the early 1960s, musical modernism, and musical temporality.

Robert’s recent research explores the relationship of music and democracy. A new monograph, Musical Models of Democracy (OUP, 2023), examines the different ways in which musicians have sought to embody democratic principles within their practice. Following the lead of recent theorists of democracy, emphasis is given to the heterogeneity of democracy as a concept, and to the tendency for individual models of democracy to reflect particular, situated interests.

Robert is a senior researcher on the ERC-funded digital humanities project ‘Interactive Research in Music as Sound’ (IRiMaS). He has served in editorial roles for the journals Music Analysis, Twentieth-Century Music, and the Tijdschrift voor de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis.

From 2018 to 2022 he acted as Deputy Chair of Sub-panel 33 (Music, Drama, Dance, the Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies) for the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021).

He previously worked at the University of Huddersfield, where he held the Queen’s Anniversary Prize Chair in Contemporary Music, and the University of Nottingham, where he was at various times Director of Research, Director of Postgraduate Studies, Admissions Officer and Head of Department.

Selected publications

Adlington R & Buch E (eds.) (2020), Finding Democracy in Music, Routledge [DOI].

Adlington R (ed.) (2019), New Music Theatre in Europe: Transformations Between 1955-1975, Routledge [DOI].

Adlington R (2018), Politics and the popular in British music theatre of the Vietnam era, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143 (2), 433-71 [DOI].

Adlington R (2018), Modernism: the people’s music? in B Heile & C Wilson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Musical Modernism (pp. 216-38), Routledge [DOI].

Adlington R (2016), The crises of sense: listening to Berio’s Un re in ascolto, in G Ferrari (ed.), Le Théâtre Musical de Luciano Berio (pp. 53-78), L’Harmattan [LINK].

Adlington R (2016), Whose voices? The fate of Luigi Nono’s Voci destroying muros, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 69 (1), 179-236 [DOI].

Adlington R (2013), Composing Dissent: Avant-garde Music in 1960s Amsterdam, Oxford University Press [DOI].

Adlington R (ed.) (2013), Red Strains: Music and Communism Outside the Communist Bloc, British Academy/Oxford University Press [DOI].

Faculties / departments: Research