Barbara Lucy Kelly (born 2 June 1966)[1] is a musicologist specializing in 19th- and early 20th-century French music, an area in which she is widely regarded as a leading authority. She has dual UK and Irish citizenship. She is the Head of School of Music and Professor of Music at the University of Leeds and is currently the first female President of the Royal Musical Association (2021–2023).[2][3]
Kelly was born in Edinburgh, the youngest of four children of parents of Irish and Scottish heritage. Her father's family came from Galway and Dublin, and her mother's came a generation earlier from County Mayo. A talented child singer who sang a solo before Queen Elizabeth II on her silver jubilee visit to Edinburgh in 1977, Kelly entered St Mary's Music School where she started with the violin, followed by four years in the junior department of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow. From the age of 15, she sang with the National Youth Choir and played with youth orchestras.[citation needed]
From 1984 to 1988, Kelly studied music and English at the University of Glasgow,[2] where she developed a love for Fin de siècle and early 20th-century French and Russian music. This motivated her to study with French music experts, initially with David Grayson at the University of Illinois (Master's in Musicology, 1992), and subsequently with Robert Orledge at the University of Liverpool (PhD, 1994), writing her thesis on Darius Milhaud and the French Musical Tradition.[2]
In September 1993, Kelly was appointed Lecturer in Music and Senior Course Tutor at University College Scarborough (today part of the University of Hull). In January 1995, she became Lecturer in Music at Keele University[2] where she was promoted to Senior Lecturer (2002–8), Programme Director for Music (2007–11), and finally Professor of Music in March 2008. In addition, she was Head of Humanities Research at the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2012–4) and Faculty Research Director, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2014–5) at Keele.[2] Remaining a Visiting Professor at Keele, Kelly was then appointed Director of Research at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester in April 2015.[2] In November 2022, she took up the post of Head of School of Music and Professor of Music at the University of Leeds.[4]
Among her external activities, in 2016, she was a『Professeur invité』at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne.[3] Kelly has been a regular external examiner at Liverpool Hope University College (1999–2003), the University of Limerick, Mary Immaculate College (2004–8), and the University of Leeds (2005–9), and acted as a Specialist Postgraduate External at the RNCM (2007–13). Other doctoral examining roles have led her to a wide range of universities in Australia, Canada, France, England, and Malta. She is a member of a number of research groups, including the international steering group of France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789–1918[5] and Music and Nation (Musique et nation);[6] she is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IReMus).[3][7]
Based on her 1994 doctoral thesis and subsequent research, her first monograph, Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud (1912–1939) (2003), was preceded by a number of articles in books and journals, not least important biographical entries in the 2001 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, including the one on Ravel. The study covers the musical development and aesthetics of Milhaud between 1912 and the composer's emigration at the outbreak of World War II, with insights into his early works, national and religious influences, and rarely performed compositions.[2] The book has been hailed as "a magnificent contribution to the study of the work and aesthetics of Darius Milhaud, and [...] enlarging it in concentric circles, it helps to better understand the group Les Six, the emergence of neoclassicism in France, and the music of the inter-war period".[9]
Kelly's second monograph, Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus (1913–1939) (2013), deals with three generational groupings of French composers: Ravel and his circle, Les Six in the 1920s, and La Jeune France (founded 1936).[2] The book has been lauded for the attention it pays to composers beyond the Debussy–Ravel–Satie narrative, including, beyond the members of those groups, Georges Migot.[10] By also including the views of opinion-leading music critics of the period, the "book provides a detailed survey of how French music was presented in the press. By interrogating the contemporaneous discourse, including writing by composers, Kelly adds to the dynamic understanding of the period".[11]
In three (co-)edited volumes, Kelly has further strengthened her research profile. Together with Australian musicologist Kerry Murphy, she produced a 2007 publication comparing the impact of Berlioz and Debussy.[2] 2008 saw the publication of French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939, including twelve essays in three sections resulting from a conference she had organized at Keele University, described as "a distinguished collection of essays that will support and influence research on the fin-de-siècle for some time".[12]
InMusic Criticism in France: Authority, Advocacy, Legacy (1918–1939) (2018), edited by Kelly together with Canadian musicologist Christopher Moore, the various authors describe how the reception of composers like Charles Koechlin, Arthur Honegger, Nadia Boulanger, or Erik Satie was shaped by contemporary and near-contemporary music critics. The volume was welcomed as "the first detailed study of its kind [...] a thought-provoking and highly variegated impression of the roles and activities of French music criticism in the 1920s and 30s".[13]
As a form of public engagement, Kelly is also active as a radio broadcaster in programmes for the BBC focusing on French art music.
Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud (1912–1939) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), ISBN978-0-75463-033-3.
Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus (1913–1939) (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), ISBN978-1-84383-810-4.
(with Deborah Mawer, Rachel Moore, and Graham Sadler) Accenting the Classics: Editing European Music in France, 1915–1925 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2023), ISBN978-1-83765-032-3.
(with Kerry Murphy) Berlioz and Debussy. Sources, Contexts and Legacies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), ISBN978-1-13826-298-0.
French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), ISBN978-1-58046-272-3.
(with Christopher Moore) Music Criticism in France: Authority, Advocacy, Legacy (1918–1939) (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018), ISBN978-1-78327-251-8.
(with Sarah Collins and Laura Tunbridge) "A 'Musical League of Nations'? Music Institutions and the Politics of Internationalism between the Wars", roundtable in Journal of the Royal Musical Association vol. 147 no. 2 (2022).
(with Anaïs Fléchet, Martin Guerpin, and Philippe Gumplowicz) Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Berghahn Books, 2023), ISBN978-1-80073-894-2.
(with Silvano Levy) "E. L. T. Mesens' Renouncement of Music", in: French Studies Bulletin (October 1994), pp. 13–15.
"Time Present, Past and Future in the Writings and Practice of Milhaud; Comparisons with Stravinsky and Eliot", in: The Maynooth International Musicological Conference 1995. Selected Proceedings Part Two (= Irish Musical Studies vol. 5) ed. Patrick F. Devine and Harry White (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), pp. 294–320.
(with Silvano Levy) "Dangerous Music: Belgian Theories of Musical Surrealism", in: Aura (Spring 1996), pp. 72–85.
"Milhaud's Alissa Manuscripts (1913 and 1931)", in: Journal of the Royal Musical Association (December 1996), pp. 229–245.
"History and Homage", in: The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 7–26.
"Henri Busser"; "Paul Claudel"; "Raoul Gunsbourg"; "Tibor Harsanyi"; "Jean Huré"; "André Jolivet"; "E. L. T. Mesens"; "Maurice Ravel"; "Jean Rivier"; "Jean Roger-Ducasse"; "Antoine Tisné"; "Marguerite Béclard d’Harcourt"; in: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001).
"The Paris of Debussy", in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, ed. Simon Trezise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 25–42.
"Vies parasites du poète: art et recyclage dans Julien de Charpentier", in: Le Naturalisme sur la scène lyrique, ed. Jean-Christophe Branger and Alban Ramaut (St. Etienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne, 2004), pp. 271–284.
"Ravel after Debussy: Inheritance, Influences and Style", in: Berlioz and Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies, ed. B. Kelly and K. Murphy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 167–180.
"The Roles of Music and Culture in National Identity Formation", in: French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939, ed. B. Kelly (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2008), pp. 1–14.
"Debussy and the Making of a musicien français: Pelléas, the Press and the First World War", in: French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939 (as above), pp. 58–76.
"Guerrières, reines et collaborateurs: religion, politique et images et la France", in: Musique, arts et religion dans l'entre-deux-guerres, ed. Sylvain Caron and Michel Duchesneau (Lyon: Symétrie, 2009), pp. 271–295.
"Re-presenting Ravel: Artificiality and the Aesthetic of Imposture", in: Behind the Masks: New Perspectives on Ravel's Music, ed. Peter Kaminsky (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2011), pp. 41–62.
"Une étude de Ravel: époque, place et heritage, ou Ravel et "l'esthétique de l'imposture", in: Musique française, esthétique, identité en mutation, 1892–1992, ed. Pascal Terrien (Paris: Delatour, 2011), pp. 161–172.
"Originalité et tradition: Pelléas et la bataille pour la musique française (1902–1920)", in: Pelléas et Mélisande, ed. Denis Herlin, Sylvie Douche and Christopher Branger (Lyon: Symétrie, 2012), pp. 113–124.
"Remembering Debussy in Interwar France: Authority, Musicology and Legacy", in: Music and Letters, vol. 93 no. 2 (August 2012), pp. 374–392.
"Enjeux de mémoire après la mort de Debussy. Débats entre Prunières, Vallas et Vuillermoz", in: Regards sur Debussy: Actes du colloque international Claude Debussy, ed. Myriam Chimènes and Alexandre Laederich (Paris: Fayard, 2013), pp. 401–420.
"Milhaud et Ravel: affinités, antipathies et les esthétiques musicales françaises", in: Regards croisés sur Darius Milhaud, ed. Jacinthe Harbec and Marie-Noelle Lavoie (Paris: Vrin, 2015), pp. 133–152.
"L'Affaire Prunières-Vallas", in: Henry Prunières (1886–1942): un musicologue engagé de l'entre-deux-guerres, ed. Myriam Chimènes, Florence Gétreau et Catherine Massip (Lyon: Symétrie, 2015), pp.v311–328.
"Poulenc et Stravinsky: influence musicale, crise ou complicité?", in: Du Langage au style: singularités de Francis Poulenc, ed. Lucie Kayas and Hervé Lacombe (Lyon: Smétrie, 2016), pp. 159–172.
"Ravel's Late Styles", in: Late Style and its Discontents, ed. Gordon McMullan and Sam Smiles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 158–173.
(with Rebecca Thumpston) "Maintaining the Entente Cordiale. Musicological Collaboration between the United Kingdom and France", in: Revue de musicologie, vol. 103 (2017), no. 2, pp. 615–640.
"Fashioning Early Debussy in Interwar France", in: Debussy’s Resonance, eds. François de Médicis, Michel Duchesneau and Steven Huebner (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2018), pp. 559–579.
"Common Canon, Conflicting Ideologies: Music Criticism in Performance in Interwar France" in: Music Criticism in France: Authority, Advocacy, Legacy (1918–1939), ed. Barbara L. Kelly and Christopher Moore (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018), pp. 121–149.
"Reflecting the Public Appetite in Text and Music: Debussy's Act of Wartime Propaganda", in Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I, ed. by William Brooks, Christina Bashford and Gayle Magee (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2019), pp. 58–72.
"Musical Innovation and Collaboration during the First World War: Jane Bathori at the Vieux-Colombier", in: Créer, jouer, transmettre la musique de la IIIe République à nos jours. Pour Myriam Chimènes, ed. Alexandra Laedrich (Lyon: Symétrie, 2019), pp. 69–81.
"French Connections: Debussy and Ravel's Orchestral Music in Britain from Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faunetoBoléro", in: The Symphonic Poem in Britain, c.1850–1940: Texts and Contexts, ed. Michael Allis and Paul Watt (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), pp. 115–146.
"Une entente cordiale en musique: The Chesterian dans l'entre-deux-guerres", in: La Critique musicale au XXe siècle, ed. Timothée Picard (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020), pp. 1045–1054.
"Between Salzburg and London: The 1923 and 1924 Festivals / Zwischen Salzburg und London: Die Feste 1923 & 1924", in: Achtung International! Salzburg & 100 Years of the International Society for Contemporary Music, ed. Matthew Werley (Vienna: Hollitzer Verlag, 2023), pp. 112–122.
^"L'ouvrage de Barbara Kelly constitue une magnifique contribution à l'étude de l'œuvre et de l'esthétique de Darius Milhaud, et par un élargissement selon des cercles concentriques, il aide à mieux comprendre le groupe des Six, l'émergence du néoclassicisme en France, et la musique de l'entre-deux-guerres."; François de Médicis, review in Intersections. Canadian Journal of Music vol. 25 (2005) no. 1–2, pp. 245–249; here p. 249.
^Andrew Thomson, review in The Musical Times vol. 155 (2014) no. 1926, p. 99–103; here: p. 99–100.
^Helen Julia Minors, review in Notes vol. 17 no. 3 (March 2015), pp. 509–512; here: p. 512.
^Keith E. Clifton, review in Fontes Artis Musicae vol. 56 no. 2 (April–June 2009), pp. 226–227; here: p. 227.
^Alexander Carpenter, review in Notes vol. 76 no. 4 (June 2020), pp. 609–611.
