Ben Winters read music at Christ Church, University of Oxford, completing his BA in 1997 and his MSt in 1998. He returned to Christ Church in 2002 to read for a DPhil in musicology (supervised by Prof. Peter Franklin), completing it in 2006 with the aid of a University Graduate Studentship, a Halstead Scholarship, and a Wingate Fellowship. From 2006 to 2008 he was University Research Fellow in Music at City University, London, and from 2008 to 2009 he was an Early Career Research Associate at the Institute of Musical Research, University of London.
From 2009 to 2011, when he took up his position at the Open University as Lecturer in Music, Ben was a college lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford. He has also taught at Oxford Brookes, Bristol, and Surrey Universities, at Royal Holloway University of London, and at City University, London. At the Open University, Ben is on the module teams for AA100 and A224, and is involved in writing the department’s new level 3 course and MA.
Ben’s primary area of research is in the area of film music, though he also has research interests in Viennese modernism and orchestral music of the late 19th century. His book, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s The Adventures of Robin Hood: A Film Score Guide (Scarecrow Press, 2007) was described as by Janet Halfyard as an example of ‘outstanding documentary research…meticulously scholarly’ while Jack Dubowsky noted that ‘Winters capably wears all the hats of critical theorist, historian, musicologist and compositional analyst.’ He has published on film music in a number of journals, including Music & Letters, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Brio,and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, and has contributed essays to a number of edited volumes. Ben is currently working on another film-music monograph to be published by Routledge.
He would welcome expressions of interest from potential research students in the areas of film music (of all kinds), the music of E W Korngold, Viennese modernism of the fin-de-siècle, and orchestral music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Ben is also a conductor and a violinist, performing regularly with the Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra in Bristol. As a conductor, he has worked with the composers Thomas Hyde, Paul Patterson, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, conducting a gala concert in the presence of Max in honour of his 70th Birthday.
Follow this link for details of Ben Winters’ publications
