Staff

Academic Staff

Untitled Document

Peter Nelson

Head of Music / Professor

Email: p.nelson@ed.ac.uk

Tel: +44 131 650 2428

Location:

Rm 215, Alison House

Outline Biography

I was born in Glasgow, and studied English Literature and Music at Glasgow University. After further study at the University of Edinburgh and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I was appointed to lectureships at the Universities of Glasgow, then Nottingham, and since 1986 I have taught in Music at the University of Edinburgh. My creative work has always involved computers, and at Edinburgh I set up the electronic music studios, and helped to develop a research group in Music Informatics.

My compositional output includes chamber, choral, orchestral and electronic music, with commissions from many leading performers and ensembles including the BBC, Radio France, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Edinburgh Quartet and the Dunedin Consort.

Through the 1980's I worked closely with the composer, Iannis Xenakis and his UPIC computer music system, composing a number of works for the UPIC. I have written on the work of Xenakis, and on topics in Music Informatics and Rhythm Theory.

I co-founded Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust (ecat), which presents a regular season of new music concerts in Edinburgh, bringing the leading international performers, composers and ensembles to Scotland. I am also editor of the international journal, Contemporary Music Review published by Routledge.

Research interests

Composition
Interactive Computer Systems
Rhythm Theory
Music Informatics
Analytical and aesthetic aspects of 20th century music

Research activity

new work for the Hebrides Ensemble, for performance in January 2012.
new work for the Spinnerei Festival Leipzig, for performance in November 2011.
Paper, Towards a Social Theory of Rhythm presented to the 1st International Colloquium: Topics in Musical Universals, Aix-en-Provence: ESCOM.
AHRB New work for video-based gesture recognition of a live-performer and real-time sound processing. Development of a Real-Time, Interactive Computer System for Musical Performance
EPSRC Cognitively Pertinent Models and Tools for the Discovery and Analysis of Structural Similarities in Musical Data. In collaboration with The City University, London

Publications

Publications list for Peter Nelson

Supervision

Projects supervised by Peter Nelson

Teaching

Composition
Orchestration
Hons Option: A Century of Rhythm
Music 1B: Music and Technologies
Music 2A: units - Modernism and Post-Modernism
Music 2B: unit - György Ligeti

This article was published on Oct 30, 2012