Professor Stephen Downes

Biography

Stephen Downes studied at the University of Exeter and Goldsmiths' College, University of London, writing a thesis on Szymanowski as Post-Wagnerian under the supervision of Christopher Wintle. His teaching and research covers aspects of theory and analysis (especially with regard to late 19th and early 20th-century music), aesthetics, and the erotic in music since 1800. He has published two monographs on Szymanowski (1994, 2003), a full-length study of eroticism in romantic and modernist music (2006) and has recently completed two further monographs – a study of music and decadence for Cambridge University Press (2010) and a contribution to Ashgate’s Landmarks in Music Since 1950 series on Hans Werner Henze’s Tristan. He is currently working on a book on Mahler's influence for CUP. He has published many articles and book chapters on a diverse range of composers (including Bartók, Beethoven, Berg, Bridge, Henze, Karlowicz, Mahler, Penderecki, Poulenc, Rossini, Schumann and Sibelius), but there continues to be a focus on modernism in Central and Eastern Europe, where he has lectured and presented research at many of the major Universities and Music Schools. He won the Wilk Prize for Research in Polish Music from the University of Southern California for his Master’s dissertation, and in 1999 was awarded the Karol Szymanowski Memorial Medal.

Research Interests

Central and Eastern European music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially Szymanowski, Karlowicz, Bartók, Mahler, Strauss.

Music, decadence and the erotic

The influence of Wagner and Mahler

Musical hermeneutics

Romantic and modernist musical aesthetics

Frank Bridge

The music of Francis Poulenc

The music of Hans Werne Henze

Publications

Monographs

After Mahler: Weill, Britten, Henze (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

Music and Decadence in European Modernism: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

Hans Werne Henze, 'Tristan' [Landmarks in Music Since 1950] (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011 forthcoming)

The Muse as Eros: Music, Eroticism and Male Creativity in the Romantic and Modern Imagination (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)

Szymanowski, Eroticism and the Voices of Mythology (London: Royal Musical Association, 2003)

Szymanowski as Post-Wagnerian (New York: Garland, 1994)

Book Chapters

‘Karłowicz and the Dionysian: Decadence, Nihilism, Pessimism’, in Luca Sala (ed.), European Fin-de-Siècle and Polish Modernism: The Music of Mieczisław Karłowicz (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2010), 147-87.

‘Modern Maritime Pastoral: Wave Deformations in the music of Frank Bridge’, in Matthew Riley (ed.) British Music and Modernism 1895-1960 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 93-107.

‘Aesthetics’, ‘Chopin’, ‘Eroticism’, ‘Folk Music’, ‘Harmony and Tonality’, ‘Hellenism’, ‘Melody’, ‘Mythology’, ‘Musical Influences’, ‘Operas’, ‘Solo Piano Music’, ‘Sonata Form’, in Paul Cadrin and Stephen Downes (eds.) The Szymanowski Companion (Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming)

‘Szymanowski’s Mythological Synthesis: Answering the question, “Why War?”, in Mikulas Bek and Geoffrey Chew (eds.), Music and War (Brno: Masaryk University, forthcoming)

‘Cultural Affiliations and National Filiations: Textuality and History in Edward Said’s “Secular Criticism” and Szymanowski’s Poetics of “Paneuropeanism”’, in Zbigniew Skowron (ed.), Karol Szymanowski w perspectywie kultury muzycznej przeszłości i współczesności (Krakow: Musica Iagellonica, 2007), 93-104.

‘Musical Languages of Love and Death: Mahler’s Compositional Legacy’ in Jeremy Barham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mahler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 226-42.

‘Poulenc's Compositional Diary: A Source for Analysis of Creative Process and Hermeneutic Interpretation’, in Rimantas Janeliauskas (ed.), Muzikos komponavimo principai V (Vilnius: Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, 2006), 120-25.

‘Pastoral Idylls, Erotic Anxieties and Heroic Subjectivities in Sibelius’s Lemminkainen and the Maidens of the Island and First Two Symphonies’, in Daniel Grimley (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 35-48.

‘Szymanowski’s Melodic Crisis’, in Zofia Helman, Teresa Chylińska and Alistair Wightman (eds.), The Songs of Karol Szymanowski and His Contemporaries (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 2002), 167-81.

‘Eros and Paneuropeanism: Szymanowski’s Utopian Vision’, in Harry White and Michael Murphy (eds.), Musical Constructions of Nationalism (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001), 51-71.

‘ “Kryzys melodyczny” w tworczosci Karola Szymanowskiego’, in Zofia Helman (ed.), Piesni  w tworczosci Karola Szymanowskiego i jego wspowczesnych (Kraków: Musica Iagellonica, 2001), 191-206.

‘Madness in Music: Szymanowski’s Op.42’, in Mieczysław Tomaszewski, (ed.),European Song Between Romanticism and Modernism (Musika y Lyrika vol.9) (Kraków: Akademia Muzyczna, 2000), 211-227.

‘Revitalizing Sonata Form: Structure and Climax in Szymanowski’s Op.21’, in Maja Trochimczyk (ed.), After Chopin: Essays on Polish Music (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 2000), 111-142.

‘Daughters of Kundry?: Laughter and the Grotesque in Penderecki’s The Devils of Loudon’, in Teresa Malecka (ed.), Krzysztof Penderecki’s Music in the Context of 20th-Century Theatre (Kraków: Akademia Muzyczna, 1999), 95-107.

Articles

‘Remembering and dismembering the music of Wagner: Allusion and Destruction in Poulenc, Shostakovich and Henze’, Lietuvos Muzikologija [Lithuanian Musicology] 7 (2006), 68-78.

‘Modern Musical Waves: Technical and Expressive Aspects of Fin-de-Siècle Form’, Muzikološki zbornik 42/i (2006), 49-72.

‘Supremacy, Debasement and Symbolic Investiture in Lawrence Kramer’s Modern “Opera”’ [review article], twentieth-century music 2/i (September 2005), 265-301.

‘Analyzing Bartók’s Visions: Portals to Modernism and the Doors of Reception’ [review article], Music Analysis 23/ii-iii (July-October 2004) 389-401.

‘Hans Werne Henze as Post-Mahlerian: Anachronism, Freedom, and the Erotics of Intertextuality’, twentieth-century music 1/ii (September 2004), 179-208.

‘Musical Pleasures and Amorous Passions: Stendhal, the Crystallization Process, and Listening to Rossini and Beethoven’, 19^th-Century Music 26 (Spring 2003), 235-57.

‘Eros in the Metropolis: Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 125/i (March 2000), 41-61.

‘Kierkegaard, a Kiss, and Schumann’s Fantasie’, 19th-Century Music 22 (Spring 1999), 259-278.

‘Szymanowski and Narcissism’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 121/i (March 1996), 58-81.

‘Themes of Duality and Transformation in Szymanowski’s King Roger’, Music Analysis 14/ii (July 1995), 257-91.

Dictionary Entries

‘Hans Werner Henze’ and ‘Karol Szymanowski’, in Justin Wintle (ed.) New Makers of Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 2007)

‘Krakowiak’; ‘Kujawiak’; ‘Mazurka’; ‘Oberek’; ‘Polonaise’;  in Stanley Sadie (ed),New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2^nd  ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001)

Teaching

HE1 Analysis

HE2 Tonal Analysis; Early Modernism; Nineteenth-Century Studies

HE3 Analysis; Nineteenth-Century Musical Aesthetics

MMus Aesthetics, Case Studies

Departmental Duties

Head of Music and Sound Recording

Head of Music Research