Christopher Wintle

Christopher Wintle teaches in the Music Department of King’s College London and until recently was their Director of the Institute of Advanced Musical Studies, in charge of publications and events. He studied in the Universities of Oxford (graduate study in musical composition with Egon Wellesz) and Southampton (graduate study in musicology with Peter Evans) and spent a year (1974) as Visiting Fellow at Princeton (working with Benjamin Boretz and Milton Babbitt on musical theory and analysis). He has also taught at the Universities of Southampton and Reading, and for many years (1980-89) was Head of Music Theory and Analysis at Goldsmiths’ College London. His main concern is with how composers proceed, with the matter viewed from technical, expressive and aesthetic points of view. His analytical writings cover a range of music from the seventeenth century to the present day; he has written extensively on opera and for many years (from 1980) wrote opera criticism for the Times Literary Supplement; and he has helped to organize the papers of Hans Keller, one of the leading music critics of the post-war years, since his death in 1986. As a critic he has been especially interested in how changing ideas of affect help enrich our understanding of music; and as a conductor he has performed modern music with the Ulysses Ensemble (a group he ran with Jonathan Harvey) and has given various concerts of polyphonic and modern music with his own choir.