Professor Leech-Wilkinson took a BMus while studying composition, harpsichord and organ at the Royal College of Music, an MMus at King's specialising in 15th-century music, and then a PhD at Clare College, Cambridge, working on 14th-century composition techniques. He was a Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and Queen’s University, Belfast, and taught at Nottingham and Southampton universities before rejoining the Music Department at King's College London in 1997. After twenty years as a medievalist, with forays into the 16th and 17th centuries, he switched focus at the start of the new millenium to research the implications of early recordings. He led a five-year project on "Expressivity in Schubert Song Performance" within the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), also directing a large-scale discographical and digitisation project making available 78rpm recordings from the King's Sound Archive. Later he led "Performers' Perceptions of Music as Shape" within the Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, and then, in a project called Challenging Performance, investigated the constraints imposed on performer creativity in classical music. Alongside continuing work on the politics of performance policing he has been producing a new edition of Machaut's Le Livre dou Voir Dit, forthcoming from the Middle English Texts Series.

Research interests

• The politics of musical performance norms
• Alternative approaches to performing western classical music
• Recordings as documents of performance practice
• 14th-century French song

Daniel is currently investigating the ways in which beliefs about correct classical music performance constrain performer creativity. His work uses early recordings and experimental performance to test beliefs about how scores should and could be performed. With a focus on performer wellbeing he examines the ways in which norms are enforced and challenges the ideology that justifies that enforcement. In parallel he works with performers to develop new approaches to performing canonical scores. He has parallel interests in the songs and poetry of Guillaume de Machaut.

For more details, please see his full research profile.

Teaching

As an emeritus (retired) professor Daniel is no longer able to supervise PhD students at King’s, but he advises students working in related fields for other institutions.

Expertise and public engagement

In retirement Daniel has led numerous masterclasses at European conservatoires and universities fostering alternative approaches to the performance of canonical repertoire.

Selected publications

'How Classical Performances Work', in Studies in the Arts III. Bern: SINTA, forthcoming 2025.

'Towards a Practice of Musical Performance Creativity', in Borio, G. (ed.), The Mediations of Music: Critical Approaches after Adorno. Open access. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022, pp. 88-103.

Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms and How to Escape Them. Open access. 2020.

'Moral judgement in response to performances of western art music,' in Aguilar, A., Clarke, E., Cole, R. & Pritchard, M. (eds.), Remixing Music Studies: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Cook. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020, pp. 91-111.

'Musical shape and feeling', in Leech-Wilkinson, D. & Prior, H. (eds.), Music and Shape. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 358-382.