About
A brief description of who you are and what you do.
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Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.
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Research
Research interests
- Queer Music Theory
- 19th-Century European Art Song
- Theories of European Common-Practice Harmony
- Music Theory and Analysis
- Franz Schubert
Current research
David's fields of research are: (a) the theory and analysis of common-practice European music, particularly of the 19th century; and (b) queer music theory. His doctoral thesis, 'The Poetics of Schubert's Song-Forms' (University of Oxford, 2008), examined the songs of the nineteenth-century Austrian composer Franz Schubert using Schenkerian techniques and close reading, and he has since published numerous articles on this subject in Music & Letters, Music Analysis and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. He also has a keen interest in Schenker studies, having co-edited, with Ian Bent and William Drabkin, Heinrich Schenker: Selected Correspondence (Boydell & Brewer, 2014). David's more recent research, which is funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship, considers the intersection of queer theory and music theory, and asks – among other things – how a composer's sexuality may or may not be relevant to the works they compose, and the role that music analysis might play in answering this question.
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Research groups
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Research interests
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Current research
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Research projects
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Publications
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Supervision
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Teaching
David's teaching areas include music theory and analysis, European harmony and counterpoint, and 19th-century European music. He also supervises undergraduate dissertations on topics in the areas of 19th-century European music, music theory and analysis, and queer musicology.
David welcomes PhD applications from potential students with similar research interests.
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Courses and modules
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External roles and responsibilities
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Biography
David Bretherton is a music theorist and analyst, specialising in music of the European common-practice period and queer music theory. He currently holds a prestigious Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship for a project entitled 'Queer Music, Queer Theory, Queer Music Theory'. David joined the University of Southampton in 2007, initially as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow attached to several research projects, before he was promoted to Lecturer and then Associate Professor. He was a founding Trustee of the Society for Music Analysis when it relaunched as an incorporated charity in 2016, is currently a member of the Music Analysis Editorial Board, the LGBTQ+ Music Study Group, and co-leads the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Music Studies network’s Physical, Sensory and Cognitive Differences Working Group. David is actively involved in the local branch of the University and College Union, where he works on equality issues.
David is Director of Undergraduate Music Programmes for 2021-22 and Semester 1 of 2022-23.
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Prizes
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