Barbara Kelly

Barbara L. Kelly is Director of Research and Professor of Music at the Royal Northern College of Music.  She is also a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association.  She is a leading expert on French music between 1870 and 1939.  She has published widely on Debussy, Ravel and Les Six, including two books: Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus, 1913-1939 (Boydell, 2013) and Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud, 1912-1939 (Ashgate, 2003). She has also published three edited collections: French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939 (Rochester, 2008), Berlioz et Debussy: Sources, Contexts and Legacies (Ashgate, 2007) with Kerry Murphy, and most recently, Music Criticism in France, 1918-1939: Authority, Advocacy, Legacy (Boydell) with Christopher Moore.  She is currently writing about the singer, Jane Bathori, who promoted the music of Debussy, Ravel, Satie and Les Six during the Great War.  She is also working on a wider study of musical performance in France and Britain in war and peace (1914-1929).  She makes regular appearances on BBC radio, including Music Matters, Opera on 3 and Tales from the Staves (Radio 4, May 2018).