Nicholas Reyland
Professor of Music and Head of Undergraduate Programmes
PhD, MMus, BMus (Hons), SFHEA
Email: [email protected]
As Head of Undergraduate Programmes, Professor Nicholas Reyland leads the development and delivery of the College’s Undergraduate Curricula and Programmes. He contributes teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, supervises research students, and pursues his own musicological research.
Professor Nicholas Reyland is a musicologist with expertise in film / TV music and sound, Polish music (especially Witold Lutosławski), and – more broadly – the theory, analysis, and criticism of music since 1900. As a student, he trained as a musicologist, composer, and trumpet / cornet player at Surrey, the Royal College of Music, and Cardiff. His current research includes a series of essays on music in recent television music and sound design, on Lutosławski and trauma, and on media representations of Polishness in The Wire, as well as co-editing the Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Peak TV.
His books and edited collections include Music and Narrative since 1900, Zbigniew Preisner’s ‘Three Colors’ Trilogy: A Film Score Guide, Lutosławski’s Worlds, Music, Analysis and the Body and a special issue of Music Analysis dedicated to film music. His essays have appeared in major journals including Music Analysis, Music & Letters, Music, Sound and the Moving Image and Twentieth-Century Music, and collections such as the Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media, The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, and Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives. An AHRC Fellowship in 2015 developed an international research project on Lutosławski, culminating in the Lutosławski’s Worlds collection. Joint-winner of the 2007 Westrup Prize from Music & Letters, his co-edited collection Music, Analysis, and the Body was shortlisted for two Society of Music Theory prizes. He is co-editor of the journal Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.
Nick has given keynote lectures and invited research seminars at prestigious institutions including Cornell University, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, and the Institute for Musical Research, as well as papers at conferences throughout the UK and world. He has been interviewed for BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters and Composer of the Week, appeared as a pre-concert speaker at the BBC Proms, written essays for the Philharmonia, Proms, BBC orchestras, Rambert dance company, and The Guardian, and presented at Royal Festival Hall study days and Hallé pre-concert events. He has served on the editorial boards of Music Theory Online, Muzyka, Twentieth-Century Music, and Music Analysis, and organised conferences including the Music Analysis Conference (KeeleMAC), the International Conference on Music since 1900 (ICMSN), and Scoring Peak TV (RNCM). He joined the RNCM from Keele University in May 2018. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Current and Future Research
Professor Nicholas Reyland is a musicologist with expertise in film / TV music and sound, Polish music (especially Witold Lutosławski), and – more broadly – the theory, analysis, and criticism of music since 1900. As a student, he trained as a musicologist, composer, and trumpet / cornet player at Surrey, the Royal College of Music, and Cardiff. His current research includes a series of essays on music in recent television music and sound design, on Lutosławski and trauma, and on media representations of Polishness in The Wire, as well as co-editing the Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Peak TV.
His books and edited collections include Music and Narrative since 1900, Zbigniew Preisner’s ‘Three Colors’ Trilogy: A Film Score Guide, Lutosławski’s Worlds, Music, Analysis and the Body and a special issue of Music Analysis dedicated to film music. His essays have appeared in major journals including Music Analysis, Music & Letters, Music, Sound and the Moving Image and Twentieth-Century Music, and collections such as the Palgrave Handbook of Sound Design and Music in Screen Media, The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, and Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives. An AHRC Fellowship in 2015 developed an international research project on Lutosławski, culminating in the Lutosławski’s Worlds collection. Joint-winner of the 2007 Westrup Prize from Music & Letters, his co-edited collection Music, Analysis, and the Body was shortlisted for two Society of Music Theory prizes. He is co-editor of the journal Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.
Research Areas
- Screen music studies (film and television music and sound design)
- Polish music, especially Witold Lutosławski and Zbigniew Preisner
- Music and narrative
- Music and trauma
- Theory, analysis and criticism of music since 1900 (classical, popular, screen)
External Research Roles
Nicholas Reyland is co-editor of the journal Music, Sound, and the Moving Image and serves on the editorial boards of Music Analysis and Muzyka. He also serves on the advisory committee for the conference series International Conference on Music Since 1900.
Research Funding
- CI, British Academy Small Grant Scheme – ‘Pace, Music and Young Children’s Musical Development’
- PI, AHRC Early Career ‘Leadership’ Fellowship – ‘Lutosławski’s Worlds’
Undergraduate Teaching
- Music in Context 1 (modernism; postmodernism)
- Music in Context 2 (music since 1945; music, media, and technology)
- Performance Studies (cohort lectures and options on analysis and text)
- Electives including Music in Quality TV; Music, Narrative and Meaning; Songwriting Workshop; Independent Research Project
- Leader of Pathway Elective strand
Postgraduate Teaching
- Research Methods: Musicology (Popular Music Studies)
- Masters dissertation supervision
Research Supervision
- Matthew Holmes, the late music of Robert Simpson (co-supervisor, 2024-present)
- Dr Hannah Bayley, ‘An Analysis of the Scoring of J-Horror and J-Horror Remakes’ (AHRC funded, 2013-2022)
- Dr Alex Hayward, ‘The Specification of Narrated Worlds in Recorded Popular Song’ (AHRC-funded, 2014-2018)
- Dr Rebecca Thumpston, ‘Agency in Twentieth-Century British Cello Music’ (Keele bursary, 2010-2014)
Selected Outputs
Nicholas Reyland, ‘Musical Innovations at the High End: Ostentatious Scoring and the Must-Hear Allure of Complex Television’, in The Oxford Handbook to Music in Television, edited by James Deaville, Jessica Getman, Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, and Ron Rodman (OUP, forthcoming).
Janet K. Halfyard and Nicholas Reyland, eds, The Palgrave Handbook to Music and Sound in Peak TV (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming), including Nicholas Reyland, ‘Ostentatious Scoring: Bewitching the Modern TV Audience from The Sopranos to Wednesday’.
Sarah Rose, Alexandra Lamont and Nicholas Reyland, ‘Watching television in a home environment: effects on children’s attention, problem solving and comprehension’, Media Psychology 25/2 (2022), 1-26.
Nicholas Reyland and Rebecca Thumpston, eds, Music, Analysis, and the Body: Experiments, Explorations, and Embodiments (Analysis in Context: Leuven Studies in Musicology) (Leuven – Paris – Bristol CT: Peeters, 2018), including Nicholas Reyland, ‘Affect, Representation, Transformation: The Royle Family’s Musical Bodies’, 171-190.
Lisa Jakelski and Nicholas Reyland, eds, Lutosławski’s Worlds (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2018), including Nicholas Reyland, ‘Personal Loss, Cultural Grief, and Lutosławski’s Music of Mourning’, 39-70.
Nicholas Reyland, ed., Music Analysis: Special Issue on Film Music Analysis (UK: Wiley, 2018).
Nicholas Reyland, ‘Screen Music as Narrative and/or Affect: Kieslowski’s Musical Bodies’, in The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound, edited by Miguel Mera, Ron Sadoff, and Ben Winters (Routledge, 2017), 96-107.
Nicholas Reyland, ‘Corporate Classicism and the Metaphysical Style: Affects, Effects, and Contexts of Two Recent Trends in Screen Scoring’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 9/2 (2015), 115-130.
Nicholas Reyland, ‘The Spaces of Modernism: Lutoslawski’s Modernist Heterotopias’, Twentieth-Century Music, 12/1 (2015), 37-70.
Witold Lutosławski and Nicholas Reyland, Witold Lutosławski: Composer Portrait (London: Music Sales, 2014).
Michael Klein and Nicholas Reyland, eds, Music and Narrative since 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), including Nicholas Reyland, ‘Negation and Negotiation: Plotting Narrative through Literary and Musical Modernism’, 29-56.
Nicholas Reyland, Zbigniew Preisner’s ‘Three Colors’ Trilogy (Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2012).
Nicholas Reyland, ‘The Beginnings of a Beautiful Friendship? Music Narratology and Screen Music Studies’, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image 6/1 (2012), 55-72.
Nicholas Reyland, ‘“Livre” or Symphony? Lutosławski’s Livre pour orchestre and the Enigma of Musical Narrativity’, Music Analysis27/2-3 (2008), 253-294.
Nicholas Reyland, ‘Lutosławski, ‘Akcja’ and the Poetics of Musical Plot’, Music & Letters’, Music & Letters, 88/4 (2007), 604-631.
Professional Activity
Professor Nicholas Reyland has given keynote lectures and invited research seminars at prestigious institutions including Cornell University, the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, the RNCM, and the Institute for Musical Research, as well as papers at conferences throughout the UK and world. He has been interviewed for BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters and Composer of the Week, appeared as a pre-concert speaker at the BBC Proms, written essays for the Philharmonia, Proms, BBC orchestras, Rambert dance company, and The Guardian, and presented at Royal Festival Hall study days and Hallé Orchestra pre-concert events. He has externally examined (undergraduate, postgraduate, PhDs) widely in the UK and also internationally, and mentors on the Conservatoires UK leadership programme.
