David R. M. Irving studied at Griffith University, the University of Queensland, and the University of Cambridge. He held post-doctoral positions at Christ's College, Cambridge, and King's College London, then taught at the University of Nottingham, the Australian National University, and the University of Melbourne. Since 2019 he has been an ICREA Research Professor at the Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats, CSIC. His research interests include the role of music in early modern intercultural contact, the global history of music, and historical performance practice. He is co-editor of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music (Cambridge University Press) and co-general editor of A Cultural History of Western Music (Bloomsbury Academic). Awards include the Jerome Roche Prize (Royal Musical Association) and the McCredie Musicological Award (Australian Academy of the Humanities).
Research interests
My research stands at the nexus of historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and global history, examining the role of music in intercultural contact during the early modern period. I have worked on the musical repercussions of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and British colonialism in Southeast Asia, and the role of music in various early modern Catholic missions. I aim to develop new conceptual frameworks for global histories of music, and to explore the impact of colonialism on musical thought and practice in early modern Europe. My latest monograph, The Making of European Music in the Long Eighteenth Century, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. I am working on another book project, Transitory Sounds: Early Music, Global History, and Decolonial Praxis (under contract to University of Michigan Press). I have deep interests in early music and also serve as Chair of the International Musicological Society's Study Group "Global History of Music".
Selected publications
- Irving, DRM 2024. The Making of European Music in the Long Eighteenth Century. The New Cultural History of Music. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780197632185
- Irving DRM 2024, "Sensorial and Sonic Aspects in the Writings of the ‘English-American’ Thomas Gage (c. 1603–1656) on Mexico and Guatemala", Historia Crítica 94: 23-44.
- Irving DRM 2024, "Beethoven on an Original Fortepiano in the 1930s: Arnold Dolmetsch, Ruth Eyre and a Stodart Instrument of 1790", Eighteenth-Century Music 21.2: 233-241.
- Irving DRM 2024, "Esoteric Elements in the Early Music Revival: The Dolmetsch Circle, Marco Pallis, and Traditionalism, from Haslemere to the Himalayas", Acta Musicologica 96.1: 38–58.
Selected research activities
2024 was a busy year. A highlight was the release in September of my new book The Making of European Music in the Long Eighteenth Century by Oxford University Press. A launch took place at the IMF, CSIC, in October.
I published a number of studies related to my ongoing research on the early-music pioneer Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940) in Acta Musicologica, Eighteenth-Century Music, and The Consort. I also co-edited two issues of the journal Eighteenth-Century Music.
The AEI I+D+i project PyRCEM, on which I am co-PI, had a fruitful annual meeting at the Museo de América, Madrid, in May. My article on the English Dominican Thomas Gage (c.1603-1656) was published in the Q1 journal Historia Crítica.
The International Musicological Society Study Group “Global History of Music” held an online Study Day, “The Decolonial Potential in Global Music History”, in October. This was well attended and inspired much fruitful discussion.
In November I delivered a keynote lecture for the international symposium “The Global Musical Instrument Market: Making, Trading and Collecting in the 19th Century and the Early 20th Century” at the Musée de la Musique – Philharmonie de Paris. Throughout the year I also gave research presentations at events in the USA, Spain, the UK, France, and Sri Lanka.