Professor Ian Pace

Overview

Ian Pace is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work interacts with musicology, sociology, history, politics and culture, who has worked at City St George's since 2010, as well as an active concert pianist specialising in avant-garde music. He currently holds the position of Professor of Music, Culture and Society and University Advisor: Interdisciplinarity in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, having previously worked in the former Department of Music, where he was Head of Department in 2020-21. His areas of primary expertise include German history, society, politics and music in the twentieth century (especially in the Weimar Republic and post-1945 area), music, culture and fascism, the Cold War and its implications for culture, modernist aesthetics in music and other arts, sociology of culture, historical and contemporary performance, performance studies, and the interactions between scholarship and practice, music and other historiography, the history and sociology of higher education,sexual and other assault in elite education, music analysis, urban sociology, comparative research theories and methodologies, the work of Theodor W. Adorno and the Frankfurt School, twentieth-century French theory, ethnography and autoethnography, critical musicology and wider modern art, literature, theatre, architecture, cinema and media. He is keen to supervise PhD theses on most areas relating to modern German and British history, culture, society, politics, urban sociology, the sociology of higher education, avant-garde music and its institutions, historical and contemporary performance, or critical methodologies and theories. 

He studied at Chetham's School of Music, The Queen's College, Oxford, the Juilliard School, New York, where he studied with the Hungarian pianist György Sándor, and Cardiff University, from which he gained his PhD on 'The Reconstruction of Post-War West German New Music during the early Allied Occupation (1945-46), and its Roots in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich (1918-45)'. 

He has had a major international career as a pianist. His vast repertoire of all periods focuses particularly upon music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the farthest reaches of musical modernism and transcendental virtuosity. He twice – in 1996 and again in 2016/17 – performed the complete piano music of Michael Finnissy across a series of concerts. He has played in 26 countries, recorded over 40 CDs for NMC, Metier, Naïve, Hat Art, Mode, Sub Rosa, Prima Facie and other labels, and given over 350 world premieres, by composers including Patrícia de Almeida, Gilbert Amy, Julian Anderson, Richard Barrett, Konrad Boehmer, Luc Brewaeys ,Pascal Dusapin (whose piano concerto À Quia he premiered and recorded with the Orchestre de Paris and Christoph Eschenbach), Brian Ferneyhough, Christopher Fox, James Dillon, Volker Heyn, Wieland Hoban, Takeo Hoshiya, Takuya Imahori, Yatsutaki Inamori, Evan Johnson, Maxim Kolomiiets, André Laporte, Michael Nyman, Hilda Paredes, Horatiu Radulescu, Lauren Redhead, Frederic Rzewski, Gerhard Stäbler, Howard Skempton, Yuji Takahashi and Walter Zimmermann, as well as championing many younger or lesser-known figures. He has also worked with and co-directed several ensembles and currently runs the City Pierrot Ensemble. Amongst the orchestras with whom he has appeared as soloist are the Orchestre de Paris under Christoph Eschenbach, the SWF Orchester Stuttgart under Rupert Huber, and the Dortmund Philharmonic under Bernhard Kontarsky. He has also run piano classes at the festivals in Acanthes, Metz, Impuls, Graz, and the Akademie für Neue Musik, Munich, and regularly given masterclasses and workshops for composers in many countries. For his 50th birthday in 2018, BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now devoted a two-hour programme to his work, the first time this has been done for a single performer.

He founded the City Pierrot Ensemble in 2017, made up from leading professional musicians who teach at City, who have played in a variety of locations, with major concerts of music of Brahms, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Messiaen and others. He is also a composer; recent important works include Das hat rrrrassss! (2018), for speaker and piano, Clothcomposers (2019) for solo piano, Matière: Le Palais de la mort (2021), inspired by visions of the piano playing of Emily Brontë and the musical/sonic dimensions of the Brontë family, and Lancashire Rock (2022) for clarinet, piano and percussion.

He previously held positions at Dartington College of Arts (2007-2010), University of Southampton (2003-2006) and London College of Music and Media (1998-2001), as well as having been Artist in Residence at Trinity Laban (2006). His undergraduate teaching has encompassed classical social theory, culture and society, the sociology of London, popular music and society in Britain since 1945, 19th and 20th century musical history (including popular music and jazz history), nineteenth-century opera, Debussy, aesthetics of modernism and postmodernism, music under fascism and communism and in the Cold War, instrument history, site-specific music, and music journalism. 

Ian authored the monograph Michael Finnissy’s The History of Photography in Sound: A Study of Sources, Techniques and Interpretation, (Divine Art in 2013), co-edited and was a major contributor to the volumes Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy: Bright Futures, Dark Pasts (Routledge, 2019), Researching and Writing on Contemporary Art and Artists (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), and Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy (Ashgate, 1998). Forthcoming publications in 2025-26 including volumes on Writing on Contemporary Musicians (Routledge), and Rethinking Contemporary Musicologies: The Limits of Interdisciplinarity and the Dangers of Deskilling (Routledge), and a new textbook on music analysis. He has also published many articles in Music and Letters, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music Analysis, Contemporary Music Review, TEMPO, The Musical Times, The Liszt Society Journal, International Piano, Musiktexte, Musik & Ästhetik, The Open Space Magazine, as well as contributing many book chapters. Recent publications have included 'The Historiography of Minimal Music and the Challenge of Andriessen to Narratives of American Exceptionalism', in Writing to Louis Andriessen: Commentaries on life in music, ed. Rose Dodd (Lecturis, 2019); 'Composition and Performance can be, and often have been, Research' (Tempo 70/275 (January 2016)), 'Positions, Methodologies and Aesthetics in the Published Discourse about Brian Ferneyhough: A Critical Study', in Search: Journal for New Music and Culture 2015 (11), 'Ferneyhough Hero: Scholarship and Promotion', Music and Letters 96/1 (February 2015), and chapters on 'Instrumental Performance in the nineteenth century', in The Cambridge History of Musical Performance, edited Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 'Verbal Discourse as Aesthetic Arbitrator' in Björn Heile (ed), The Modernist Legacy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 'Notation, Time and the Performer's Relationship to the Score in Contemporary Music', in Darla Crispin (ed), Unfolding Time: Studies in Temporality in Twentieth-Century Music, edited Darla Crispin (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009), and 'Coldness and Cruelty as Performance in Deleuze's Proust', in Mary Bryden and Margaret Topping (eds), Beckett's Proust/Deleuze's Proust (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 

Other forthcoming publications include a new biography of Karlheinz Stockhausen for Reaktion Books, monographs on music in Weimar and post-war Germany, a book on Brahms Performance Practice for Routledge, and a history of specialist musical education in Britain. Recent recordings have included the complete piano music of Brian Ferneyhough and Sam Hayden and a CD of music of Marc Yeats; forthcoming recordings include John Cage's Music of Changes, the complete piano music of Horatiu Radulescu, new recordings of the music of Michael Finnissy, and a CD of the complete piano music of Volker Heyn. In 2022 he gave a landmark series of recitals at City of the nine symphonies of Beethoven in the transcriptions by Franz Liszt for solo piano. He has recently appeared in Austria, Brazil and toured Japan

He has supervised doctoral dissertations on the early history and music of the French courant spectrale; the violin playing and careers of Marie Hall, Maud Powell and Alma Moodie and gendered expectations on performance; performance practice in the music of Nikolai Medtner; Alfred Cortot's performances and editions of Schubert; and cross-cultural conceptions of time in the work of John Cage, George Crumb and Toru Takemitsu. He is currently supervising dissertations on the violin playing of Ferdinand David; Gordon Green and the Manchester School of Piano Playing; form, genre and performance in Liszt's Sonata in B minor and Dante Sonata; an auto-ethnographic study of jazz and Middle Eastern performance concentrating on issues of authenticity and cross-cultural interactions; The Sonata 'Maid of Orleans' by William Sterndale Bennett; and a study of the incorporation of practice into higher education. 

He has given many conference papers and guest lectures, recently on Internationalism in music in Nazi Germany; the history of New Music and its institutions; Autoethnography and self-reflexivity in music studies; Britten's Peter Grimes and representations of violence; the Cold War in Germany and modernist historiography; American Experimentalism and Exceptionalist ideologies in musical historiography; mediations between scholarly and performance-based approaches to playing the Sonata of Paul Dukas; critical views on the ethnography of Western Art Music; conceptualising practice-as-research in relation to performers' activities; and on the writings on Benjamin Britten by Clifford Hindley and the aestheticisation of pederasty. He worked as principal consultant for a new film on avant-garde music in West and East Germany after 1945, ‘“Wir fangen ganz von vorn an”. Avantgarde zur Stunde Null in Ost und West’ (2020) directed by Bettina Ehrhardt and commissioned jointly by Arte and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, and appeared in the film as commentator and pianist.

He has also written widely for non-academic publications including London Review of Books, Times Higher Education, The Conversation, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Critic and Café Americain, and has recorded a range of podcasts, including directing the podcast City Politicos to cover the 2024 UK General Election.. He is also an active blogger, posting regularly on musical, musicological, political and other subjects - https://ianpace.wordpress.com 

Ian is a founding member and Secretary of the London Universities' Council for Academic Freedom, as well as co-convenor of the City St George's branch of Academics for Academic Freedom, also sitting on the national advisory council for this institution. He was involved in representations to the Department for Education on the issue of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. He is also a campaigner against abuse in musical education, having appeared widely in the media on the subject, and was involved in Home Office meetings relating to the setting up of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, for which he gave written and verbal evidence on abuse in specialist music education. 

He has also been a trustee of the Society for Music Analysis since 2018, elected three times, and serves as Awards Officer for the organisation, having created a series of new awards in this capacity.

Qualifications

• Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy, July 2021
• PhD, Cardiff University, United Kingdom, September 2006 - May 2018
• ACT (Master's Equivalent), The Juilliard School, United States, 1991 - January 1992
• BA, The Queen's College, Oxford, United Kingdom, 1986 - January 1989

Employment

• Professor of Music, Culture and Society, City, University of London, United Kingdom, September 2023 - present
• University Advisor: Interdisciplinarity, City St George's, University of London, United Kingdom, September 2023 - present
• Strategic Advisor (Arts), City, University of London, United Kingdom, September 2022 - present
• Professor of Music, City, University of London, United Kingdom, March 2022 - present
• Head of Department, City, University London, United Kingdom, June 2020 - December 2021
• Reader in Music, City, University of London, United Kingdom, July 2019 - March 2022
• Senior Lecturer, City, University of London, United Kingdom, June 2015 - July 2019
• Lecturer, City, University London, United Kingdom, January 2010 - July 2015
• Lecturer in Contemporary Musicologies, Dartington College of Arts, United Kingdom, October 2007 - January 2010
• AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Research Fellow, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, March 2003 - June 2006
• Piano Teacher, Co-Director, Contemporary Performance Course, London College of Music and Media, United Kingdom, September 1998 - August 2001
• Freelance concert pianist, Freelance, N/A, January 1993 - present

Languages

Dutch; Flemish (can read), French (can read, write, speak, understand spoken, peer review), German (can read, write, speak, understand spoken, peer review), Italian (can read), Portuguese (can read), Russian (can read) and Spanish; Castilian (can read)

Expertise

Geographic Areas

• Europe
• Europe - Central
• Europe - Western

Title of thesis: Gordon Green (1905-1981) and his Piano Class: Research into Early Twentieth-Century Pianism in Britain, European Traditions, and Issues of Schools and Representation

September 2016 - October 2023

Summary of research

Gordon Green OBE (1905-1981) was an important cultural figure in the history of pianism in Britain until his death in 1981: a close friend of Alan Rawsthorne, he had numerous pupils among them such important artists as Philip Fowke, Martino Tirimo, Stephen Hough, Gordon-Fergus Thompson, Christian Blackshaw, Martin Roscoe, John Ogdon. Gordon fostered and promoted important cultural liaisons in Manchester, as piano professor of the Royal Manchester College of Music (now known as Royal Northern College of Music-RNCM), in London as professor of the Royal Academy of Music (London, UK), but also at home on 33 Hope Street, Liverpool where he would receive distinguished guests such as writer Olaf Stapledon, actor Robert Donat, British writer and political activist Nancy Cunard, and a stream of musicians of international repute including Sviatoslav Richter, Wilhelm Kempff, and Shura Cherkassky.
Indeed, Green’s cultural significance comes sharper into focus, despite the fragmented nature of existing evidence, when taken together with his broader civic liaisons and activities as a campaigner notably for nuclear disarmament, pacifist, internationalist, and certainly anti-fascist. Taken together his musical and civic dimensions, which seem to stem from a strong moral stance, contribute to a better understanding of his overall output.
Notably there is a vast research gap when it comes to British pianism. The reference to a British piano tradition of any sort is further problematised by the lack of enough published research. Thus, the present research is envisioned as a useful starting point for a wider mapping of pianistic historiography in Britain of the twentieth century, while taking a critical look at methodologies involved in the construction of ‘schools’ and specifically the problematic aspect of assembling the ever-popular teacher-pupil trees in any musicologically meaningful way.
Therefore, my research intends to address Green's role and position in the history of pianism in Britain (1930-1980) with a view to draw comparisons to European schools and traditions stemming from individual studios, conservatoires, or otherwise geographically circumscribed centres of learning. In the process, foreign pianistic traditions present in Britain from mid nineteenth century onwards are also discussed at length. Lastly, the research would like to contribute to and/or amend the British pianistic tradition(s) as they are currently charted by the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland.

Research interests

19th Century performance history and practice; romantic aesthetics; Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms; history of the piano and pianists; history of violin style; the 19th-century orchestra; Russian music and performance; aesthetics of modernism and postmodernism; Second Viennese School; Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók; music in the Third Reich; the post-1945 avant-garde; music, culture, and society in West Germany; music in the Cold War; contemporary music in Britain; institutions and festivals of new music (including Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, Musica Viva, etc.); music of Stockhausen, Xenakis, Nono, Cage, Schnebel, Kagel, Ligeti, Lachenmann, Radulescu, Ferneyhough, Finnissy and others; early electronic music; music-theatre; contemporary performance techniques and issues; issues of notation; historiography; music and identity; the role of verbal discourse around music; Theodor Adorno; Pierre Bourdieu.

Publications by category