Current students

Mr Dominic Wells

Biography

Having been awarded a choral scholarship at Royal Holloway, University of London, Dominic studied for his B.Mus there, graduating with 1st class honours. He was then a recipient of an AHRC award, funding a further year at the same institution to work for his M.Mus in Historical Musicology. After a brief year away from academia, as cathedral intern at Westminster Cathedral, he was awarded a Doctoral Fellowship by Durham University, where he is now in the final year of his PhD. His research focuses on the music of James MacMillan, exploring issues of modernism and postmodernism, as well as politics and religion in this composer's music. Dominic's interests include twentieth and twenty-first century music, sacred music, and music and politics, and he is currently working on articles focusing not only on MacMillan but also composers such as David Lang and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Recent public papers include topics such as MacMillan's mass settings, given at a conference held in Lithuania, and MacMillan's involvement with Liberation Theology, presented at a Music and Communism conference at the British Academy in January 2011. He is supervised by Prof. Max Paddison.

Research Interests

• Music of James MacMillan
• Twentieth and twenty-first century music
• Sacred music
• Music and politics