Emily Howard
Professor in Composition and Head of Artistic Research
MA (Oxon), MMus (RNCM), PhD (Manc.)
Email: [email protected]
Professor Emily Howard holds a Personal Chair in Composition and is Head of Artistic Research at the RNCM. She is a composer, a curator and founding director of PRiSM, the RNCM Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music.
Her music is widely recorded and performed including at the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh Festival, Wien Modern and Manchester International Festival. Her works include three orchestral geometries Torus, sphere and Antisphere; the sci-fi chamber opera To See The Invisible; The Anvil for massed choirs and orchestra to mark the Peterloo Massacre; and string quartets Afference, shield and Rhomb in Silhouette. Emily’s music is published by Edition Peters, part of Wise Music Group
Between 2019 and 2024, Emily was Principal Investigator of the RNCM’s £1 million UKRI E3 award to establish and sustain PRiSM, leading multidisciplinary research collaborations and curated events including Music, AI, and Co-Creation (International Contemporary Ensemble, New York); Future Music Festival (RNCM, Bridgewater Hall, BBC MediaCity); Iannis Xenakis 100 Maths & Music Festival (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, The CBSO Centre); Ada Lovelace, Imagining the Analytical Engine (Britten Sinfonia, The Barbican Centre).
Emily is a member of The Santa Fe Institute’s Music as Complex Adaptive Systems Working Group, and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool, Department of Mathematical Sciences, where she was previously Leverhulme Artist in Residence.
Her accolades include two British Composer Awards (now Ivor Novello Awards), recognition from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and Honorary Fellowships from Lincoln College, University of Oxford and the Royal Academy of Arts.
In 2025, she was appointed to The Ivors Academy Board as a Director.
Current and Future Research
Professor Emily Howard’s research is focused on the composition of large-scale word settings, multimedia installations, chamber works, opera and orchestral music, often with significant links to extra-musical worlds including mathematics, poetry, art, science and technology. She frequently collaborates across disciplines and her music reflects and responds by embracing a diverse range of influences, often simultaneously. It is the resulting collision and union of disparate ideas from diverse sources that excites her, and the myriad renderings of these hybrid ideas in sound is central to her practice.
In a recent article for the London Mathematical Society Newsletter, Emily wrote that:
“The transformation of mathematical notions into musical ideas has become a highly valued research methodology within my compositional practice. Whilst never a direct translation, it is precisely by attempting to carry out this impossible task that something is gained. I find that this approach often reveals new questions from unusual vantage points that result in unexpected ways to organise sound. I find it helpful to distinguish between compositions that are, in some sense, intended to be mathematical structures, and those that are motivated by mathematical structures. Both scenarios are creatively interesting to me and I strive to balance intense immersion in areas of mathematics, in collaboration with mathematicians, with periods when I allow my imagination to run wild.”
Information about Emily’s works, including scores and recordings, can be found here:
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/composer/5937/Emily-Howard/
Information about PRiSM, the RNCM Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music, directed by Emily, can be found here:
Research Areas
- Musical Composition
- Music and Mathematics
- Music and Computing (including AI)
- Multi-disciplinary collaborations
- Digital Humanities
External Research Roles
Emily is a member of the AHRC Datasounds Datasets Datasense network and of the Santa Fe Institute’s Music as Complex Adaptive Systems Working Group. She serves as a member of the AHRC Peer-Review College. In 2019, Emily was a TORCH Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is a Visiting Researcher at the Oxford e-Research Centre.
Research Funding
Emily’s research has been funded by, among others, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and The Leverhulme Trust.
Undergraduate Teaching
Principal study composition
Composition techniques
Postgraduate Teaching
Principal study composition
Research Supervision
Current Supervision of Doctoral Research
Songhao Yao [Composition] – Investigations of Breathing Patterns
Megan Steinberg [Composition] – Living Instruments, Universal Composition: New Works and Music Processes for and by Disabled Musicians, RNCM PRiSM Lucy Hale Doctoral Award in Association with Drake Music, AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award
Simon Knighton [Composition] – Sonic Fusion and Juxtaposition: Considering the Coherence and Interplay Between Live Acoustic and Electronic Sounds in the Development of a Composition Practice
Niall Campbell [Poetry] – Research and creation of a new musical score for opera developed in collaboration between Royal Northern College of Music (for the composer Anna Appleby) and Manchester Metropolitan University (for the poet /librettist Niall Campbell) in a pair of linked PhD projects, in association with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Radio 3, AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award
Previous Supervision of Doctoral Research, completed
Dr Anna Appleby [Composition] – Research and creation of a new musical score for opera developed in collaboration between Royal Northern College of Music (for the composer Anna Appleby) and Manchester Metropolitan University (for the poet /librettist Niall Campbell) in a pair of linked PhD projects, in association with BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Radio 3, AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award
Dr Robert Laidlow [Composition] – Artificial Intelligence Within the Creative Process of Contemporary Classical Music, National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF) AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award with BBC Philharmonic
Dr Zakiya Leeming [Composition] – Conception to Construction: Compositional decision-making informed by theories, patterns, processes in the physical, life, and computer sciences
Dr Bofan Ma [Composition] – On Dialogues between Sound and Performance Physicality: Experimentation, Embodiment and Placement of the Self
Dr Mark Dyer [Composition] – Musical Ruins: a practice-based approach to explore ruin as a phenomenon in musical borrowing, AHRC-funded
Dr Aled Smith [Composition] – Identity, Decontextualisation, Interconnectivity, Perspective – A critical reflection upon my recent creative practice
Current Supervision of Postdoctoral Research
Dr Hongshuo Fan, PRiSM Research Software Engineer, PDRA funded by UKRI Research England (E3)
Dr Zakiya Leeming, PRiSM Artist and Producer in Residence, PDRA funded by Wellcome Trust in collaboration with the University of Oxford
Dr Bofan Ma, PRiSM Postdoctoral Research Associate, PDRA funded by UKRI Research England (E3)
Previous Supervision of Postdoctoral Research, completed
Dr Christopher Melen, PRiSM Research Software Engineer, PDRA funded by UKRI Research England (E3)
Selected Outputs
Practice Research / Compositions
- Emily Howard, “The Anvil” (2023). [Portrait Album]. Delphian Records DCD34285-CD. https://www.delphianrecords.com/products/emily-howard-the-anvil
- Emily Howard, “Torus” (2023). [Portrait Album]. NMC Recordings NMC D274 https://nmc-recordings.myshopify.com/products/emily-howard-torus
- Emily Howard, “DEVIANCE” (2023). [Musical composition]. For solo piano and multimedia (sound design by Bofan Ma; visual design by Erik Natanael Gustafsson). 15’. Commissioned by Zubin Kanga as part of Cyborg Soloists, with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. Edition Peters EP 73680. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/75896/Deviance–Emily-Howard/
- Emily Howard, “Elliptics” (2022). [Musical composition]. For soprano, countertenor and orchestra (text by Michael Symmons Roberts). 24’. Commissioned by the BBC Philharmonic. Edition Peters EP 73680. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/69113/Elliptics–Emily-Howard/
- Emily Howard, “Ombra / The Wernicke’s Area” (2022), [Musical composition]. For mezzo-soprano and viola (sound design by Bofan Ma). 40’. Commissioned by ANU Productions as part of The Wernicke’s Area, funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Edition Peters EP 73727. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/75897/Ombra–Emily-Howard/
- Emily Howard, “Compass” (2022). [Musical composition]. For percussion and string ensemble. 22’. Commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Edition Peters EP 73646. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/67983/Compass–Emily-Howard/
- Emily Howard, “shield” (2020-21). [Musical composition]. For string quartet. 14’. Commissioned by Het Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), the Fidelio Trust, the Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust and the Piatti Quartet. Edition Peters EP73579. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/64419/shield–Emily-Howard/
- Emily Howard, “The Anvil” (2019). [Musical composition]. For soprano, baritone, chamber choir, youth choir, chorus and orchestra (text by Michael Symmons Roberts). 40’. Commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and Manchester International Festival. Edition Peters EP73386. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/64230/The-Anvil–Emily-Howard/
- Emily Howard, “Antisphere” (2019). [Musical composition]. For large orchestra. 18’. Commissioned by the Barbican Centre for Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra. Edition Peters EP73424. https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/64650/Antisphere–Emily-Howard/
Written Outputs
- Emily Howard, “Torus – sphere – Antisphere: Compassing Mathematical Curvature through Musical Composition” (2023). [Journal Article]. London Mathematical Society Newsletter, Issue: 507 – July 2023, p.23-27 https://www.lms.ac.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/NLMS_507_for%20web.pdf
Public Presentations
- [September 2022]. Emily Howard: [Conference Keynote] “PRiSM AI Music Creativity”. 3rd International AI Music Creativity Conference. Japan. Open access: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0b9M1i9LTg.
- [July 2022]. Emily Howard: [Conference Keynote] “Orchestral Geometries”. Inaugural IMA Conference on Mathematics in Music. Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Royal College of Music, London.
- [April 2022]. Emily Howard: [Conference Keynote] “PRiSM Collaborations”. Music Education and Technology (MET) and Teaching Music Online in Higher Education (TMOHE). Joint online Conference. https://sempre.org.uk/2022-met-tmohe
Web Resources
- [June 2023]. Emily Howard: [Radio Broadcast] “Start the Week ‘Sums, stories and musical scores’”. Panel discussion with Kirsty Wark, and mathematicians Eugenia Cheng and Sarah Hart. BBC Radio 4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n1k5
- [November 2022]. Emily Howard & Marcus du Sautoy: [Blog Entry] “Four Musical Proofs and a Conjecture”. RNCM PRiSM Blog Series. https://www.rncm.ac.uk/research/research-centres-rncm/prism/prism-blog/four-musical-proofs-and-a-conjecture/
