Professor Robert Sholl profile picture

Professor Robert Sholl

Professor of Music
London College of Music
robert.sholl@uwl.ac.uk

Robert Sholl was educated in Australia, France and England. In Melbourne, he studied the piano with Mack Jost and Michael Brimer, and the organ with Lindsay O’Neill. In France he studied analysis and improvisation at the Sorbonne with Michel Fischer and Jacques Castérède. He studied the organ with Olivier Latry (Notre-Dame de Paris). In England he worked with Daniel K.L. Chua and John Deathridge at Kings College, London on the music of Olivier Messiaen.

Robert’s publications on twentieth-century music include a new biography of the French composer Olivier Messiaen: Olivier Messiaen: A Critical biography (Reaktion, 2024), and he is editor of Olivier Messiaen in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Robert is also editor (with George Parsons) of James MacMillan Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Contemporary Music and Spirituality (Routledge, 2017), edited with Sander van Maas, and Messiaen Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He recently contributed to The Sacred Music Podcast on the music of Messiaen. He has published articles on Messiaen and Jean-Louis Florentz in The Oxford Handbook to Spectralism (2023) and has a forthcoming study on Charles Tournemire’s "Sept Chorals-Poèmes d'Orgue pour les sept paroles du Xrist" (1935) in Art, Music, and Mysticism in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Corrinne Chong and Michelle Foot (Routledge, 2024). He has written on Stravinsky ("Le Sacre du printemps"), John Adams, Luciano Berio, Harrison Birtwistle, Brian Ferneyhough and Arvo Pärt. His research interests include twentieth and twenty first century music, critical theory and philosophy, musical analysis, performance, artistic research, improvisation, somatic techniques (especially the Feldenkrais Method), music and psychoanalysis, music and spirituality, listening and film music.

Robert has organised four conferences at the Southbank Centre and was recently the artistic director for the Royal College of Organists’ London Forum, which was a celebration of Messiaen’s work. He has given papers at the Universities of Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Cambridge, Oxford, London, Amsterdam, Boston, McGill, Fordham, Hong Kong, Melbourne, The Royal Academy of Music, The Royal College of Music, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama (for their conference on The Phantom of the Opera), three times at the American Musicological Society Conferences (Washington, Milwaukee and Boston), twice at EUROMAC (Leuven and Strasbourg), at IRCAM, EPARM (2022) and for React (Reflective and Critical Approaches to Teaching and Learning of Musical Performance) at Luleå University of Technology, located at Campus Piteå in northern Sweden. Robert has been an academic referee for major university presses, Trinity Laban, has worked as consultant for the University of Aix-en-Provence and has tutored for The Royal College of Organists (RCO). In 2021, he was an invited jury member for the Fundación BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. He is also a council member of the Guild of Church Musicians and a member of the Academic Board of the Royal College of Organists for whom he is also an examiner. In April 2022, he gave a lecture for the RCO on French Organ music 1920-2000 (available on iRCO).

Robert is a trained Feldenkrais practitioner. In 2019 he published a study of the Feldenkrais Method and musical performance in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association entitled “Feldenkrais’s touch, Ephram’s laughter, Gould’s sensorium: listening and musical practice between thinking and doing”. He is also the editor of The Feldenkrais Method in Creative Practice: Dance, Music and Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2021), which contains a separate study of Feldenkrais’s work, psychoanalysis and Glenn Gould. As a result of this work, he recently examined artistic research in the Feldenkrais Method at the department of music and dance at UNIARTS in Stockholm and was an invited speaker at the Feldenkrais World Summit entitled "Never stop: The artistry of self-care and creativity for lifelong embodied performance".

In 2016-17 he performed all of the organ works of Messiaen at Arundel Cathedral (watch here). 

In 2021-23 he played all six of the Vierne organ symphonies together with major works of Tournemire and chamber music and songs, as well as the complete organ works of Maurice Duruflé (watch here). Robert has played at St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St John’s, Smith Square and twice both at the Madeleine and at Notre-Dame de Paris. In May 2022, he gave recitals at Southwark Cathedral and at Exeter College, Oxford, which included this improvisation.

Improvisation has become a regular part of Robert’s recitals and he has released improvisations to silent films: James Sibley Watson’s and Melville Webber’s The Fall of the House of Usher (for which he published a companion article in Perspective of New Music in 2020), Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera (unmasking scene), which was shown at The Barbican Centre in 2017, and a live recording of Maria’s dance from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. He has also released improvisations to other films, with more than 2 hours of improvisation on Youtube at Robert Sholl@robertsholl657 In 2021-22 he collaborated with Dr Leslie McMurtry (University of Salford) to create the first radio dramatisation of Phantom, for which he has written and recorded three songs and an opera scene using a period piano and straight voices. This is available via The Shattered Podcast and Apple Podcasts. Improvisation is also at the centre of a forthcoming article connecting artistic practice for an Erasmus-funded ‘React’ project as embodied learning to pedagogy, improvisation and composition through Bach’s "Goldberg" variations. Robert teaches an undergraduate year 3/4 elective on improvisation to silent film and the Feldenkrais Method at the Royal Academy of Music.

Robert has recorded Les ombres du Fantôme (with Justin Paterson, Anna McCready, and Andy Visser  a set of fourteen improvisations that act as thematic shadows of Gaston Leroux’s novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (1910). These are released on Divine Art/Métier and a film about the work is available here. A track, ‘In the Torture Chamber’, was performed live at the Duke’s Hall, The Royal Academy of Music, in the EPARM conference (2022). The improvisations shadow the narrative, themes, characters and events of the book. The improvisations were recorded using the organs of Coventry and Arundel Cathedrals, some with soprano, and saxophone/bass clarinet. They use an invented musical language and explore the acoustics of those buildings, the gesture and the materiality of the instruments in physical, spiritual and sonic space that is enhanced and extended through recording technology and electronic augmentations (watch here).

  • Qualifications

    BMus (Melbourne), MMus (King's College, London), PhD (King's College, London), FRCO (Chm), ARCM, Grad Dip (St-Maur), FHEA

  • Memberships

    American Musicological Society
    Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
    Guild of Church Musicians
    Royal College of Organists
    Royal Musical Association

Teaching

I am a Professor of Music at the University of West London and also teach at the Royal Academy of Music. At UWL I supervise PhDs and teach at Masters and Undergraduate levels. I am particularly interested in PhD students on topics concerning twentieth- and twenty-first century music (including French music, cultural studies, analytical studies and film music), somatic techniques (including The Feldenkrais Method), keyboard music (by practice, cultural and pedagogical studies), and artistic research (especially concerning improvisation).

Research

  • Research and publications

    2024

    Commissioned Monograph: Olivier Messiaen: A Critical Biography(Reaktion) reviewed in the Wall Street Journal by Tim Page (2 August 2024) and Gramophone magazine by Nigel Simeone (September 2024)

    Edited book: Messiaen in Context, Cambridge University Press (34 chapters), Three articles: “The Image of Messiaen,“ pp. 3-9; “Olivier Messiaen and Surrealism,” pp. 257-66, and “Oliver Messiaen and Jacques Charpentier,” pp. 278-89. Three French-English translations: articles by Michel Bourcier, “Olivier Messiaen and Jean-Louis Florentz: A Filiation?”, pp. 306-13; Jacques Amblard, “The Simplicity of Messiaen,” pp. 233-39, and Amblard, “Messiaen in France Today,” pp. 314-21. Reviewed in Gramophone magazine by Richard Whitehouse (March 2024).

    CD: “Les Ombres du Fantôme”: fourteen improvisations on themes from Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra with electroacoustic interventions   and augmentations by Justin Paterson (recorded at Arundel and Coventry Cathedrals), with Andy Visser saxophone/bass clarinet and Anna McCready soprano – (Divine Art MEX 77105). See Les ombres du Fantôme: A behind the scenes look at the album creation on YouTube. Visit the Phantom Opera website.

    Article: “Artistic practice as Embodied Learning: Reconnecting Pedagogy, Improvisation, and Composition,”Rethinking the Teaching of Music Performance in Higher Level Institutions, ed. Jorge Salgado Correia, Gilvano Dalagna, Helen Julia Minors, and Stefan Östersjö (ERASMUS funded project): React website, Cambridge: Open book, pp. 135-64, available at Open Book Publishers.

    Improvisation: ‘The Unmasking scene’, The Phantom of the Opera dir. Rupert Julian (1925), recorded 18 May 2022 at Tempo Rubato, Melbourne (live) (YouTube).

    Article: “Joséphin ‘Sâr’ Péladan, Charles Tournemire and apocalyptic mysticism,” Art, Music, and Mysticism at the fin-de-siècle: Seeing and Hearing the Beyond, ed. Corrinne Chong and Michelle Foot (New York: Routledge), pp. 62-95. Musical examples recorded at Arundel Cathedral on Soundcloud.

    2023

    Review-article: on Yves Balmer, Thomas Lacôte, and Christopher Brent Murray, Le Modèle et l’invention: Messiaen et la technique de l’emprunt (Lyon: Symétrie, 2017), Vol. 23, No. 10 (January 2023), H-France Review: https://h-france.net/vol23reviews/vol23_no10_Sholl.pdf

    Improvisation: ‘The Unmasking scene’, The Phantom of the Opera dir. Rupert Julian (1925), recorded 16 July 2023 at Tempo Rubato, Melbourne:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nuVKFRU_Cc

    Edited book: Messiaen in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Three articles: “Introduction: The Image of Messiaen,” “Oliver Messiaen and Jacques Charpentier,” “Olivier Messiaen: Surrealist.” French - English translations of three other articles.

    Article: “Jean Louis Florentz and Spectralism,” The Oxford Handbook to Music and Spectralism, ed. Amy Bauer, Liam Cagney and Will Mason (New York: Oxford University Press).

    Article: “Olivier Messiaen: Spectralist,” The Oxford Handbook to Music and Spectralism, ed. Amy Bauer, Liam Cagney and Will Mason (New York: Oxford University Press).

    Improvisations: With Caroline Ledoux (bruiteuse) and Anna McCready (vocals): 

    2021

    Edited book: The Feldenkrais Method in Creative Practice: Dance, Music and Theatre, Introduction: “Towards an Ability Studies,” 1-14; Article: “Feldenkrais, Freud, Lacan and Gould: How to Love thyself for thy Neighbour,” 38-54 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).

    2020

    Article: “James Sibley Watson’s The Fall of the House of Usher: Surrealism - improvisation – complementary serendipities,” Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter 2020), 23-69, and based on an improvisation (recorded at Arundel Cathedral). View "The Fall of the House of Usher - Organ Improvisation by Robert Sholl" on YouTube.

    Edited Book: James MacMillan Studies, ed. George Parsons and Robert Sholl, Introduction (with George Parsons), 1-9, and Article: “Exquisite Violence: Imagery, Embodiment and Transformation in MacMillan” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 87-110.  

    2019

    Guest Editor: International Feldenkrais Federation Journal of Creative Practice, Vol. VI, published via the Feldenkrais Research Journal website.

    Article: “Feldenkrais’s Touch, Ephram’s Laughter, Gould’s Sensorium: Listening and Musical Practice between Thinking and Doing,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 144, No. 2, 397-428. 

    Article: “Inscapes of Musical Listening: Sensing/Feeling/Imagining,” available online via the Naxos Musicology website.

    2017

    Article: “Pärt and the sound of one hand clapping,” Arvo Pärt’s White Light: Media, Culture, Politics, ed. Laura Dolp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 47-73.

    Edited Book: Contemporary Music and Spirituality, ed. Robert Sholl and Sander van Maas (London and New York: Routledge, 2017). Introduction (with van Maas): “What is a Contemporary Spiritual Music,” 1-14, and Article: “Searching for the Elusive Obvious: Memory, Forgiveness, Catharsis,and Transcendence in Contemporary Spiritual Music,” 229-57 (on Adams, Birtwistle and Ferneyhough).

    2014

    Article: “Stop it, I like it! Stop it, I like it! Masochism, Embodiment, and Listening for Traumatic Pleasure,” Thresholds of Listening, ed. Sander van Maas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014), 153-74.

    2012

    Article: “Arvo Pärt and Spirituality,” The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt, ed. Andrew Shenton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 140-58.

    Review: "Stephen Schloesser, Jazz-Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris 1919-1933", Music and Letters, Vol. 93, No. 1 (February 2012), 106-10.

    Review: "Marcel Cobussen’s Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality Through Music", Music and Letters, Vol. 93, No. 1 (February 2012), 90-3.

    2011

    Article: “The Shock of the Positive: Olivier Messiaen, St Francis and Redemption through Modernity,” Resonant Witness: Conversations between Music and Theology, ed. Jeremy Begbie and Steve Guthrie (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 162-89. (also published in De Gids below).

    2010

    Article: “Olivier Messiaen and the Avant-garde poetics of the Messe de la Pentecôte,” in Olivier Messiaen The Theologian, ed. Shenton (Ashgate, 2009), 199-222.

    2008

    Article: “De schok van het positieve,” in Hemel en Aarde: special edition of De Gids for the Holland Festival 2008, 640-65.

    2007

    Editor: Messiaen Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Article: “Love, Mad Love, and the Point Sublime: The Surrealist Poetics of Messiaen’s Harawi,” 34-62.

  • Conferences

    2024. Papers: (concerning CD Les ombres du Fantôme): UWL (London, May), RMA (London, September), City University: “The Pipe organ as a Site for Music and Technological Innovation” (London, September).

    2024. Radio Interviews: 3MBS FM (with Jess Carrascalão Heard), June 2024.

    2024. Paper: “Switched on Messiaen: what affordances might CEMIs offer to deliver an alternative sonic manifestation of the stymied aspirations of the proto-spectralist movement?” with Charlie Norton, Justin Paterson, and Anna McCready, Centre of 21st Century Music Practice network event, September 2024 (using sound recordings from Sherbrooke Forest, Victoria, Australia, text by Cécile Sauvage, Messiaen’s Mother, and synthesisers from the Pete Townshend collection, UWL).

    2024. Paper and roundtable: “Olivier Messiaen: Writing an Old life anew,” (with Roderick Chadwick, Julian Anderson, and student performances), Royal Academy of Music (October).

    2022. Paper. César Franck, the choral and its legacy, César Franck and his Legacy Symposium, Royal College of Music.

    2019. Paper. Jean-Louis Florentz: Ethiopian Music into Spectralism, AMS Conference, Boston.

    2019. Paper. Spectral Music in Nordic Noir, Spectralisms Conference, IRCAM, June 2019.

    2018. Paper and Improvisation: The Unmasking Scene: Improvisation in Context, Phantoms of the Opera: Music and performance on screen conference, Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

    2018. Masterclass and workshop: Exhibiting the Phantom: Improvisations for an unmasking, Session concentrating on The Phantom of the Opera (1925) led by Robert Sholl, at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Phantoms of the opera: Music and performance on screen conference, Guildhall Shool of Music and Drama, 15 June.

    2018. Paper: Messiaen and Surrealism: ethnography and the poetics of excess Surrealism and Music in France, 1924-1952: Interdisciplinary and International Contexts. June 8.

    2017. Artistic Director: Royal College of Organists Forum: ‘Olivier Messiaen: A Celebration’, Paper: Olivier Messiaen and Charles Tournemire: the organ as the voice of God.

    2017.  Lecture recital with Improvisation to silent film: James Sibley Watson’s The Fall of the House of Usher: improvisation – images - complementary serendipities. Royal Academy of Music, Duke’s Hall.

    2017. Invited Lecture-recital: Messiaen and Pärt, Belmont Abbey, Hereford, Monastic Musicians Conference

    2017. Conference Organiser: Arvo Pärt: Sounding an Icon, IAMS, Senate House, University of London September 11, 2017 in association with IAMS, the Estonian Embassy, and the Arvo Pärt Foundation.

    2017. Paper: Jean-Louis Florentz: Hospitality and Spectralism, Oxford Spectralism Conference and EUROMAC 9.

    2017. Paper:  James Sibley Watson’s The Fall of the House of Usher: improvisation – images - complementary serendipities Surrealism at 100 conference, McGill University.

    2017. Paper: Arvo Pärt and Sheridan Tongue’s Music for Silent Witness, with the participation fo Sheridan Tongue, New York, Sounding the Sacred conference.

    2017. Conference Organiser: ‘New Beginnings – Beginning again: The Feldenkrais Method in theory and Creative Practice’ UWL, March 2017.

    April 2016. Convenor: Making the Impossible Possible: The Feldenkrais Method and Musical Performance. Conference at UWL.

    March 2016. Paper: Hospitality and translation in Florentz’s work, Lyon International Florentz conference.

    September 2015. Convenor: RMA conference session on Arvo Pärt, Paper: 'Arvo Pärt and Interiority: inside the mirror'.

    June 2015. Paper: Lacan, Feldenkrais and Gould: how to love thyself, but not as thy neighbour, (Re-)storing performance conference, Bath Spa University.

    May 2015. Paper: Arvo Pärt and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Oxford University.

    March 2015. Programme note: Westminster Abbey performance for Arvo Pärt’s Passio.

    February 2015. Recital: Improvisations to Films by James Sibley Watson (Ealing Film Festival).

    2014. Jury Member: University of Aix-en-Provence.

    2014. Paper: On the organ as God’s Mouthpiece (AMS Milwaukee).

    2014. Interviewed for BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature: Educating Isaac.

    2014. Paper: How do you like your counterpoint, Sir? Music pedagogy beyond therapy, Leuven EUROMAC conference.

    July 2014. Conference Organiser: 'Jean-Louis Florentz: visions d’ailleurs', IMR, University of London. Paper: 'Jean-Louis Florentz: spectral musician of an imaginary organ'.

    March 2014. Conference Organiser: Visions of the Beyond: French organ music around Olivier Messiaen Southbank centre, March 29, 2014. Paper: Olivier Messiaen and Jean-Louis Florentz: vibrations harmoniques.

    November 2013. Lecture-recital: Olivier Messiaen: the organ as the God's mouthpiece, RAM Dukes hall.

    March 2013. Conference Organiser: Music and Pedagogy, Conference atInstitute of Musical Research, London University. (HEA and RAM funding awarded).

    February 2013. Paper: Catholicism and Catharsis: The Sublime, the Apocalyptic and Ecstasy in the Music of Charles Tournemire and Olivier Messiaen, FMCS Conference, Yale University. (RAM and UWL funding awarded).

    March 2012. Paper: Arvo Pärt: Embodiment - Enchantment - Transcendence, Music and the Body Conference at Hong Kong University. (RAM funding awarded).

    September 2011. Conference Organiser: Pierre Boulez in Context, Southbank Centre. Paper: ‘Rites of Passage: Messiaen and Boulez on Le Sacre du Printemps’.

    June 2011. Paper: D’Après Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre: Opera, satire and Cultural Cannibalism, Harvard Screen-Satires conference (dept of Comparative Literature), (RAM funding awarded).

    September 2010. Conference Organiser: Arvo Pärt: Soundtrack of an Age, Southbank Centre. Paper: Pärt’s Soundtrack of an Age: Diagnosis, Post-Mortem and Obituary of Modernity.

    March 2010. Paper: Minimalism, Icons and Interiority, paper at the Boston International Arvo Pärt conference, (RAM funding awarded).

    October 2008. Paper: Representation and Naïveté in Messiaen’s Première Communion de la Vierge, paper at the Messiaen Conference at the RAM.

    June, 2008. Paper: The Avant-garde and Beauty: Messiaen’s theological aesthetics in the Messe de la Pentecôte (Birmingham International Messiaen conference, June, 2008).

    May 2008. Paper: Olivier Messiaen: Church Musician, given at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music.

    February 2008. Conference organiser: Contemporary Music and Spirituality, London Southbank Centre (February 1-2, 2008).  Participant in a roundtable discussion at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Quatuor pour la fin du Temps, 3 February 2008.

    October 2007. ‘Olivier Messiaen, the Avant-garde, and the Messe de la Pentecôte’, Boston University Messiaen Project Conference.
    The Shock of the Positive: Olivier Messiaen, St Francis, and Redemption through Modernity, Cogut Centre for the Humanities, Brown University (FRC funding awarded). Paper read at KCL in March, 2008.

    June 2007. Searching for the Elusive Obvious: Memory, Forgiveness, Transcendence, Catharsis, and Redemption, Contemporary Music and Spirituality Conference, University of Amsterdam

    January 2007. The Shock of the Positive: Olivier Messiaen, St Francis, and Redemption through Modernity, The Royal College of Music.

    November 2005. Making the Invisible Visible: The Culture, Theology, and Realisation of Olivier Messiaen’s Improvisations, AMS Washington DC.

    June 2005. Staticism and ‘Tonality’ in the Music of Olivier Messiaen, Dublin International Music Analysis Conference.

    May 2005. Music and Faith in the Age of Aquarius, Chair of a Seminar at the London Festival of Contemporary Music (May 2005).

    February 2005. Messiaen, St Francis and Redemption through Modernity, FMCS conference at Princeton University.

    October 2004. Making the Invisible Visible: The Culture, Theology, and Realisation of Olivier Messiaen’s Improvisations, RMA/AHRB Study Day on Musical Improvisation at SOAS, University of London.

    July 2004. The Surrealist poetics of Messiaen’s Harawi, International Symposium on French Music at Melbourne University.

    Nov. 2002. Organiser of conference/workshop on Music and Health at King’s College, London.

    June 2002. Olivier Messiaen and Redemption through Modernism, International Messiaen conference (Sheffield University).

    September 2001. Organiser of a Conference at King’s College London on the Music of Charles Tournemire. Paper: Messiaen, Tournemire and the Culture of Redemption through Modernism.

  • Research degree supervision

    PhD completions:

    Principal Supervisor

    • Contemplative Synthesis: Sounding Mind and Body in Contemporary Electronic Music. 
    • An enlightened conversation: Understanding the interaction between musical spaces and creativity in ensemble jazz improvisatory performance. Winner of PhD student of the year at UWL 2023-24. 
    • Discovering The ‘Uncanny’ Canon in Music (1920-1950). 
    • Opera as VR: audiences’ interaction and gender. 
    • A Technique of Language: Modernist Aesthetics and Carnatic Music as a Syncretised Approach to Music Composition. 
    • A study of the model choice of closed-end wind instruments for conservatoire education. 

Courses taught on