Dr Nicholas McKay

Biography

BA Music & Philosophy (Essex); MA Twentieth-Century Music (Durham); PhD Stravinsky & Semiotics (Durham). Senior Lecturer in Music; Head of Music Department (2000-2006); Director of Student Support for the School of Humanities (2006-2009); Head of Music Department (2010+) (Sussex).

Role

Head of Music; Senior Lecturer in Music

Completed PhD thesis on the Semiotic Analysis of Igor Stravinsky's Music in 1998. Regularly presents papers at the International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies (Helsinki, Talinn, Paris, Vilnius), published in Acta Semiotica Fennica.

Current research interests embrace music theory, analysis, semiotics, aesthetics, opera, musical meaning and the application of linguistic theory to music analysis.

Assistant editor for the peer-reviewed Journal of Musical Meaning.

One-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship (October 2005 - October 2006) writing a book on the semiotic interpretation of allusion, quotation and gesture in Stravinsky's music.

Regularly present pre-performance talks and study days for Glyndebourne Touring and Festival opera productions (e.g. Albert Herring, La Boheme, La Cenerentola, Eugene Onegin, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Hansel und Gretel, Le nozze di Figaro, Rodelinda, La Traviata, Tristan und Isolde, The Turn of the Screw); has produced an Opera Bite CD for Glyndebourne on Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice; and has directed and taught the Opera at Glyndebourne Summer School in July 2009, 2010 and 2011. 

Recent/Forthcoming Papers Include:

McKay, N.,‘Stravinsky’s opera in a postmodern age: an intermedial semiotic reading’, invited paper at the international ‘Music, Semiotics, and Intermediality’ XII Congress on Musical Signification, Catholic University of Louvain & The Royal Academy for Science and the Arts of Belgium, Brussels (2-6 April 2013)

--- ‘Deracinated, Dysphoric and Dialogised: the Wild and Beguiled. Semiotics of Stravinsky’s Topical Signifiers’, invited paper at the International Conference on Music Semiotics in Memory of Prof. Raymond Monelle, University of Edinburgh, (26-28 October 2012)

--- ‘Dialogising Stravinsky: A Topic Theory and Gestural Interpretation’, invited paper at the international conference, Rethinking Stravinsky: Sounds and Gestures of Modernism, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Campus Universitario di Fisciano & Fondazione Filiberto Menna, Salerno, Italy (26-28 September 2012)

--- ‘Dysphoric States: Stravinsky's Topics – Huntsmen, Soldiers and Shepherds’, invited paper at the international Symposium and Book Launch in Honour and Memory of Raymond Monelle (1937–2010), University of Edinburgh (18-19 August 2012)

--- ‘The Metaphor of Voice in Stravinsky’s Music’, invited research series paper, Music Department, University of Hull (22^nd February 2012)

--- ‘Music Semiotics as a Hermeneutic Tool for Musical Interpretation and Analysis’, invited paper at the Institute of Musical Research (London) 'Directions in Musical Research' series (24 February 2011)

--- 'Ethnic cleansing, anxious influence and secret codes: a semiotician's guide to Stravinsky's musicological afterlife and its archaeological contra-factum', paper presented at the International Convention on Musical Signification [ICMS] 10 (Vilnius, Lithuania, 21st-25th October 2008)

--- 'Evocative metaphors, narrative craft: signifying processes in the neoclassic music of Stravinsky' paper presented at the ICMS 8 (Sorbonne, Paris, 3rd-8th October 2004)

---, 'Silent accusations, incriminating voices: not speaking one's mind in the infernal machine of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex', invited paper presented at the Third Marks Conference of the Institute for Hellenic and Roman Studies, 'Stravinsky/Cocteau/Oedipus: Myth, Music and Modernism: a colloquiem on the Stravinsky/Cocteau Oedipus Rex', (University of Bristol, 7th July 2004)

---, '"One for all and all for one": voicing in Stravinsky's musical theatre', paper presented at FIRT Working Group in Music Theatre International Conference, (St. Petersburg, 22nd-26th May 2004)

----, 'Stravinsky's 'other' voices: quotation or allusion' paper presented at the International Conference on Music and Gesture, UEA August 2003

Teaching:

DPhil Supervision:

'Igor Stravinsky's Influence on Contemporary Conducting Technique'

'The Relationship between Analysis and Performance in Brahms' Fourth Symphony'

MPhil Supervision:

'Alexander Scriabin's Style and Musical Gesture in the Late Piano Sonatas: Sonata No. 8 as a Template Towards a Paradigm for Interpretation and Performance'

Postgraduate MA Teaching:

Dissertation (Analysis, Contextual, Critical)

Undergraduate BA Teaching:

Dissertation Topic (year 3)

Advanced Performance (year 3)

Music, Stage and Screen: from Opera to Film (year 2)

Introduction to Music Studies: Harmony, Analysis & Context (year 1)

Studying Cultures (year 1)

Student Consultation

Term 2, 2013:

Open Office Hours (drop-in)

Wednesdays 13.00-14.00 (wks 1-7)

Wednesdays 12.00-13.00 (wks 8-10 & 12-13)

Bookable Office Hours (bookable on Study Direct)

Fridays 12.00-13.00 (wks 1-6)

Mondays 13.00-14.00 (wks 6-10 & 12-13)

SILVERSTONE BUILDING ROOM 232

McKay, Nicholas (2013) The rite signs: semiotic readings one hundred years on. In: A laboratory of spring. Avant plus . Centre for philosophical research, Warsaw. ISBN 9788393167159

McKay, Nicholas (2013) Stravinsky's sideways glance. Journal of Music and Meaning. ISSN 1478-5722 (In Press)

McKay, Nicholas (2012) Dysphoric states: Stravinsky's topics: huntsmen, soldiers and shepherds. In: Music semiotics: a network of significations in honour and memory of Raymond Monelle. Ashgate, pp. 249-261. ISBN 9781409411024

McKay, Nicholas (2012) Dysphoric states: Stravinsky's topics - huntsmen, soldiers and shepherds. In: Music semiotics : a network of significations in honour and memory of Raymond Monelle. Ashgate, pp. 249-261. ISBN 9781409411024

McKay, Nicholas (2010) Ethnic cleansing, anxious influence and secret codes: a semiotician's guide to Stravinsky's musicological afterlife and its archaeological contra-factum. In: Before and After Music: Proceedings of the 10th International Congress on Musical Signification. Umweb, pp. 565-574. ISBN 978-9986-503-93-4

McKay, Nicholas (2007) On topics today. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, 4 (1). pp. 1-30. ISSN 1862-6742

McKay, Nicholas (2003) Igor's eccentric gestures: a semiotoc decoding of Stravinsky's syntax with markedness theory. In: Musical Semiotics revisited, Approaches to musical semiotics 4. The International Semiotics Institute, pp. 498-510. ISBN 9525431037

McKay, Nicholas (2002) Oedipus's Requiem: Verdi's Voice in Stravinsky. In: Historiae Musicae Cultores - Biblioteca. Leo S. Olschki, pp. 411-441. ISBN 8822251962

McKay, Nicholas (2001) Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice. [Image]

McKay, Nicholas (1998) A semiotic evaluation of musical meaning in the works of Igor Stravinsky: decoding syntax with markedness and prototypicality theory'. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.