Professor Arnold Whittall

Biography

Arnold Whittall, a full time staff member from 1975 to 1996, taught previously in Cambridge, Nottingham and Cardiff. He has also served as a visiting professor at Yale University, and lectured extensively in Europe and America. He was instrumental in expanding and promoting studies in music theory and analysis at King’s, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate topics concerning music since 1900. In 1982 he became the first Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at a British university, and collaborated with Jonathan Dunsby on Music Analysis in Theory and Practice (Faber Music, 1988).

His list of publications began in the 1960s with two articles on Benjamin Britten, and his first book was a BBC Music Guide, Schoenberg Chamber Music, followed by Music since the First World War, a text that eventually transformed itself into Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1999). He has also written extensively on Wagner and other aspects of nineteenth century music.

In 2000-2001 Arnold Whittall gave a special series of six London University lectures to mark the turn of the millennium which became Exploring Twentieth-Century Music: Tradition and Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 2003). His most recent book is Introduction to Serialism (Cambridge, 2008).

For more details, please see his full research profile here.