User:Jmonelle/Raymond Monelle

Raymond Monelle was born in Bristol, England, August 19, 1937; died Edinburgh, Scotland, March 12, 2010. Music theorist, teacher, music critic, composer and jazz pianist, Monelle wrote three books, dozens of articles on music, and many music criticism reviews in newspapers, mainly for the Opera Magazine and The Independent. His main field of research was Music Signification or, as it is also known, Music Semiotics. Towards the end of his life he wrote a novel, yet to be published, entitled Bird in the Apple Tree, about the adolescence of the composer Alban Berg.

Education - Monelle read Modern History at the University of Oxford (MA, Modern History) and the University of London (BMus). A member of the Royal Musical Association at least since 1968, he completed his Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh with a Doctoral Thesis on “Opera seria as drama: the musical dramas of Hasse and Metastasio,” which he wrote under the supervision of Prof. David Kimbell.

Scholar - Monelle was renowned for his research in the field of Music Signification (the Semiotics of Music). His three books, many articles and countless lectures, presented in various venues all over Europe, North America and Israel, had an immense impact on the international music scholarship scene. In 1988 he joined the Music Signification Project, founded by Eero Tarasti two years earlier, and became one of the project’s leaders, acting as keynote speaker and editor of proceedings in all the International Congresses of Music Signification that followed. His publications, which are among the leading lights for the research in Music Semiotics at the turn of the 21st century, touch a wide variety of subjects and musical styles, but focus mainly on two subjects: the first is the analysis of music as text. In this respect, Monelle was strongly influenced by Derrida’s writings on deconstruction. The second subject, which is the main target of Monelle’s last book is The Musical Topic. Here he presented led a research – unprecedented in its depth – into the topics of the military, the hunt and the pastoral, expanding far beyond mere music analysis into a general study of the history of culture and of ideas, thus strengthening the bridge that reconnects the study of the music itself with the understanding of its general cultural impact. Toward the end of his life, he began studying the subject of The Musical Sublime, inspired by the writings of Slavoj Žižek. Monelle was known for his and sharp analytical mind, his merciless pen and his subtle irony, none of which ever clouded his perfect gentlemanly courtesy to his many colleagues and interlocutors. His influence is apparent not only in the writings of his former students, several of whom became scholars in their own accord, but also in the works of Music Semioticians that were his peers. Among the scholars that acknowledge his influence one can count Robert Hatten, Michael Spitzer, Daniel Chua, Robert Samuels, William Dougherty, Christine Esclapez, Christina Anagnostopoulou, Esti Sheinberg, Edith Zack, and many others. These, together with other music scholars that admired his work, are putting together a collection of articles in his honor and memory. Teacher - Monelle joined the Faculty of Music at the University of Edinburgh in 1969 serving throughout the 1970s as conductor of the university society choir and opera club, and teaching History, Counterpoint, Harmony, Analysis, and the Semiotics of Music. Most famous were his “Wagner Project Weeks” in which he took students for a week away from Edinburgh to Holy Island, off the shores of Eastern Scotland, for a week of listening and study of Wagner’s Niebelungenring. Many of his students cherish these weeks as a most important milestone in their musical education. He was granted the title of a Reader in 1992(?) and full professorship in 2002(?) the year in which he retired from the university of Edinburgh. After his retirement he continued to teach theory and counterpoint at Napier University in Edinburgh.

Composer and Performer - Monelle composed several works:, among the works for piano and for organ, choir arrangements of Christmas Carols and a Requiem Mass. He did some conducting, , mainly of choral and opera productions, and was particularly known for his skilled jazz piano playing. , He also nurtured the careers of two of Scotland's most notable composers, Donald Runnicles and James MacMillan.