Assoc/Prof Nicholas Bannan

Associate Professor in Music Education/Coordinator, Postgraduate Studies
Academic Staff (Music)

Contact details

Address

Academic Staff (Music)
The University of Western Australia (M413)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia

Phone

6488 2058

Fax

6488 1076

Email

nicholas.bannan@uwa.edu.au

Qualifications

BA MA Camb., GradCertEd PhD Reading

Biography

Nicholas Bannan's earliest musical experience was as a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral. He went on to study Music at Cambridge University, where he specialised in vocal studies and composition. He has taught in several schools, including Eton College and the Yehudi Menuhin School. He was Director of Music at Desborough School, Maidenhead, where the choir he conducted was in demand to work with London orchestras and made frequent broadcasts on television and radio. He continued to develop his work as a composer, winning the Fribourg Prize for Sacred Music in 1986 and completing commissions for the Allegri and Grieg Quartets, the Guildhall String Ensemble, Cantemus Novum of Antwerp, and the Gentlemen of St Paul's Cathedral. He was for 12 years the conductor of The Esterhazy Singers, a London chamber choir that specialised in performing the music of Haydn and his contemporaries with the period instruments of the Esterhazy Chamber Orchestra. He also directed the contemporary music groups 1913 Ensemble and Act of Creation, and worked on electro-acoustic projects with the composer Rolf Gehlhaar and the Elektrodome company. He was a Winston Churchill Fellow in 1992, travelling through the USA in preparing a report on the training of choral directors and singing teachers.

His interests as an educator focused increasingly on means of releasing children's creativity, and he formed the partnership Compose Yourself! to provide workshop opportunities for pupils and in-service training for teachers. He carried out research at the University of Reading into the use of electronic resources in vocal education and the means by which vocal potential can be released in singers of all ages and abilities, and this has led to his Harmony Signing project, a new pedagogical system for developing aural sensitivity and creative potential through group singing. He has also worked with Alzheimer’s patients on the potential of singing for retaining social communication between carers and people with dementia. He was awarded his doctorate in 2002 for a study of the evolutionary origins of the human singing voice. From 1999 to 2005 he was Director of the Music Teaching in Professional Practice Initiative, a distance-learning programme leading to Diploma and Masters qualifications administered at the University of Reading.

Nicholas was founder-editor of the journal Mastersinger published by the Association of British Choral Directors, and Artistic Director of ABCD’s 1996 conference in Oxford. He co-edited the Ashgate publication The Reflective Conservatoire with George Odam, and is currently working with the archaeologist Steven Mithen on an edited book for Oxford University Press entitled Music, Language and Human Evolution. He continues to compose, and brings to his teaching the assumption that the purpose of engaging with the music of the past is to develop the confidence and fluency to enable original self-expression. He is a keen follower of cricket and rugby, both of which he played in his youth.

Key research

The evolutionary origins of music; vocalisation in song and language; music in child development; musical creativity; choral direction; musical communication and pedagogy.

Publications

(2012) 'Music, Language, and Human Evolution'. Nicholas Bannan (Editor) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

(2012) 'Introduction: Music. Language, and Human Evolution'. In Nicholas Bannan (Ed.) 'Music, Language, and Human Evolution'. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3-27.

Tran Quang Hai and Nicholas Bannan (2012) 'Vocal Traditions of the World: Towards and Evolutionary Account of Voice Production in Music'. In Nicholas Bannan (Ed.) 'Music, Language, and Human Evolution'. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 142-172.

Pedro Espi-Sanchis and Nicholas Bannan (2012) 'Found Objects in the Musical Practices of Hunter-Gatherers: Implications for the Evolution of Instrumental Music'. In Nicholas Bannan (Ed.) 'Music, Language, and Human Evolution'. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 173-198.

(2012) 'Harmony and its role in Human Evolution'. In Nicholas Bannan (Ed.) 'Music, Language, and Human Evolution'. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 288-339.

(2010) “Embodied music theory: New pedagogy for creative and aural development”: Journal of music theory pedagogy 24: 197-216.

(2009) Priming the musically instinctive: new pedagogy for creative improvisation and aural development. Musicworks, Journal of the Australian Council of Orff Schulwerk, pp. 39-52.

(2008) ‘Language out of Music: the four dimensions of vocal learning’. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 19 (3): 272-293

(2008) Bannan, N. and Woodward S., ‘Spontaneity in the musicality and music learning of children’ in Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch (Ed.s) Communicative Musicality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 465-494 [50% authorship]

(2008) Bannan, N & Montgomery-Smith, C. ‘Singing for the Brain’: reflections on the human capacity for music arising from a pilot study of group singing with Alzheimer’s patients and carers. Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health 128 (2): 73-78 [50% authorship]

(2006) A engenharia reversa na voz humana: Examinido os pré-requisitos de adaptação para canção e linguagem (trans. B. Ilari). Cognição & Artes Musicais (Brazilian Journal of Music Cognition) Vol. 1 No 1, pp. 30-39

(2006) Review of Jolyon Laycock’s " “The Changing Role for the Composer in Society: A Study of the Historical Background and Current Methodologies of Creative Music-Making” Music and Letters - Volume 87, Number 4, pp. 666-667. Oxford University Press

(2005) ‘Music Teaching without words’, in Mauricio Dottori, Beatriz Ilari and Rodolfo Coelho de Souza (ED.s) Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Cognition and the Musical Arts. Curitiba, Brazil: Universidade Federal do Paraná, pp. 400-405. ISBN 85-98826-03-9.

(2005) Odam, G. & Bannan, N. (Ed.s) The Reflective Conservatoire. London: Ashgate. ISBN: 0 7546 5415 X

Roles, responsibilities and expertise

Musical Director of The Winthrop Singers; Research Co-ordinator, School of Music

Future research

Nicholas has commenced practical and historiographic
investigation of chant in the liturgies of the Christian tradition, focusing on the regular performances of The Winthrop Singers. His existing work on the evolution of the human capacity for music illustrates that chant may be at the root of human cultural attributes, including language. He is also working with UWA performers and PhD student Rose Tan on the role of dance and emotion in liturgical music from Luther to Bach.

Honours and awards

1981 String Quartet 1 (Allegri Quartet) Radcliffe Award Commission; Horses of the Night (Collage Ensemble) Southern Arts Commission
1986 Magnificat (Chapelle Royale de Paris/Herreweghe) Fribourg Festival prize for sacred music; UK premier, the BBC Singers (1987)
1987 Round-Dance (Guildhall String Ensemble) New MacNachten Concerts Commission
1994 String Quartet 2 (Grieg Quartet of London) Holst Foundation Award
1992 Winston Churchill Fellowship, research into Choral Singing in the USA
2007 UWA Research Grant, 'Timbre and contour in the production and perception of song and language: towards an evolutionary model of human vocal communication'

Previous positions

Director, 'Music Teaching in Professional Practice' Masters programme, University of Reading, UK 1999-2005. Former Musical Director, the Esterhazy Singers.

Teaching

Supervising the PhD projects of Eva-Marie Middleton (Attitudes and values in 20th Century; performance of early choral music): Rose Tan (Martin Luther and the role of music in liturgy)
Recent MMusEd completions: Sue Varley (Australian sound surround in piano learning); Michael Newton (Y10 choice of Music in the UK)

Useful links

Winthrop Singers
http://www.winthropsingers.com/
http://thewinthropsingers.wordpress.com/

New and noteworthy

Participated with presented Rachael Kohn in ABC National radio's "The Spirit of Things" recording in UWA's Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.

Current projects

Completing follow-up work on topics emerging from "Music, Language and Human Evolution"; working on archival material relating to the role of music in the life and writing of Charles Darwin; developing a testable model of the development of the capacity for language out of an existing vocal 'song' system; evaluating the perception of meaning in song and speech; developing innovative pedagogy for aural discrimination and musicianship.

Research profile

Research profile and publications