Dr Timothy Coombes

I am primarily a cultural historian of music in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century France. My doctoral project investigated how music shaped and exhibited understandings of childhood in this period. I am currently expanding this project into a monograph. My other main interest is in philosophical and analytical questions about dance, movement, and the body. 

 

At undergraduate level, I teach courses on music from the nineteenth century to the present day (in particular, Modernism in Vienna) as well as analysis and the methodologies paper (MTS). I welcome any inquiries from students interested in pursuing coursework projects—extended essays, dissertations, or analysis portfolios—on topics related to my research interests.

 

Enter Children, with Childhood [review article]’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association (forthcoming).

 

(Trans)National Fairy Tale and Romantic Childhood: Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel through its Parisian Reception’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 33/1-2 (2022), 1-21.

 

The Mysterious Souls of Hellé and Debussy’s Toys’, Music & Letters, 102/1 (2021), 80-100.

 

Auden’s imaginary song’, in Delia da Sousa Correa (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 601-8.

 

The Nursery as Circus: Dancing the Childlike to Fauré’s Dolly Suite, 1913’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 142/2 (2017), 277-325.

late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French musical culture; the history of childhood; dance and embodiment (especially philosophical questions); the nonhuman turn