Profile of Dr Chris Collins

Name:

Dr Chris Collins

Position:

Lecturer in Music

Email:

c.collins@bangor.ac.uk

Location:

Room 6, Music Annexe

Phone:

+44 (0) 1248 388108

Background:

I came to Bangor as an undergraduate in 1993, and joined the lecturing staff in 2001 while completing my doctorate on the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). My research continues to focus on early twentieth-century music, and I am currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press on Falla’s relations with composers of other nationalities. I am interested in a wide range of music, and my teaching (which includes the first-year core module The Study of Music and the cross-disciplinary second-year module Words and Music) reflects this. I have conducted the University Chorus for a number of years, and I became director of the University Symphony Orchestra in 2003. Works performed by the Orchestra and Chorus under my direction include Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Orff’s Carmina Burana, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and symphonies by Bruckner and Tchaikovsky. In 2007 I was awarded a Bangor University Honorary Teaching Fellowship in recognition of my teaching and pastoral care of students. My spare time is spent listening to music and mountain walking.

Teaching:

The Study of Music
Words and Music
Debussy and Ravel
The Twentieth-Century Symphony
Manuel de Falla
The Ballets Russes
Conducting
History and Aesthetics of the ‘Classical’ Record Industry
The Art Song in France
Musicology (Masters level)
PhD supervision

Responsibilities:

Director of Studies
Director of University Music
School Timetable Officer

Research interests:

Manuel de Falla
Early twentieth-century European music (especially in France, Spain and Scandinavia)
The classical record industry
Analysis
Words and music

Main publications:

Articles and chapters

(With Helen Abbott.) ‘Working at the Words/Music Interface: Models of Collaboration’, Contemporary Music Review, 29/2 (April 2010), 159-69.

‘Les relations amicales et artistiques entre Koechlin et Manuel de Falla’, in Marie-Hélène Benoit-Otis (ed.), Charles Koechlin: Compoisteur et Humaniste (Paris: Vrin, 2010), 527-43.

‘Manuel de Falla, L’acoustique nouvelle and Natural Resonance: A Myth Exposed’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128/1 (May 2003), 71-97.

‘Falla in Britain’, The Musical Times, cxliv/1883 (Summer 2003), 33-48.

Chapter 13: ‘Falla in Europe: Relations with his contemporaries’, in Nancy Lee Harper, Manuel de Falla: His Life and Music (Lanham, 2005), 247-84.

‘Luz en la oscuridad: observaciones sobre la composición de las Noches de Falla’, in Yvan Nommick (ed.), Manuel de Falla: Noches en los jardines de España: edición facsímil de los manuscritos fundamentales del Archivo Manuel de Falla y del Archivo de Valentín Ruiz Aznar (Granada: Publicaciones del Archivo Manuel de Falla, 2006), pp. xvii-lxxiii.

Reviews and other publications

‘Images of Spain’, review of Matthew Brown, Debussy’s Ibéria (Cambridge: 2003), The Musical Times, cxlv/1887 (Summer 2004), 118-19.

‘The Passion of Youth’, programme note for the Opera North production of La vida breve in Leeds, Newcastle, Salford, Nottingham and at Sadler’s Wells, April-June 2004.

‘Memoires intimes’, review of Samuel Hsu, Sidney Grolnic and Mark Peters (eds.), Claude Debussy As I Knew Him and other writings (Rochester, NY, 2003), The Musical Times, cxlv/1889 (Winter 2004), 101-3.

‘Northern light’, review of Daniel M. Grimley (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sibelius (Cambridge, 2004), The Musical Times, cxli/1890 (Spring 2005), 103-6.

‘Don’s delights’, review of Carol A. Hess, Sacred Passions: the Life and Music of Manuel de Falla (New York, 2005), The Musical Times, cxli/1892 (Autumn 2005), 100-102.