Staff profile

Professor Horton completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he also held a Research Fellowship. He has been Associate Professor and Head of School at University College Dublin, and has also taught at King’s College, London. His research focuses on the analysis and reception of nineteenth-century instrumental music, with special interests in the music of Bruckner and Brahms, the analysis of sonata form, and the theory of tonality. He is author of Bruckner’s Symphonies: Analysis, Reception and Cultural Politics (Cambridge University Press 2004) and Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83: Analytical and Contextual Studies (Peeters 2017), editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony (2013) and Schubert (Routledge 2015), co-editor with Lorraine Byrne Bodley of Schubert’s Late Music: History, Theory, Style (Cambridge University Press 2016) and Rethinking Schubert (Oxford University Press 2016), with Gareth Cox of Irish Musical Studies, Vol.11: Irish Musical Analysis (Four Courts Press 2014), and with Jeremy Dibble of British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought 1850-1950 (Boydell 2018). His article 'John Field and the Alternative History of Concerto First-Movement Form' (2011) was awarded the Westrup Prize of the Music and Letters Trust. He was President of the Society for Music Analysis between 2014 and 2019, and has also served on the councils of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Royal Musical Association. In 2016, he was appointed Music Theorist in Residence to the Netherlands and Flanders. In 2019, he was made a Corresponding Member of the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

Authored book

• Horton, Julian (2023). Schumann: Piano Concerto Op. 54. Cambridge University Press.
• Horton, Julian (2017). Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83: Analytical and Contextual Studies. Leuven: Peeters.
• Horton, Julian (2004). Bruckner's Symphonies: Analysis, Reception and Cultural Politics. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter in book

• Horton, Julian (2022). 'First-Theme Syntax in Brahms's Sonata Forms'. In Rethinking Brahms. Grimes, Nicole & Phillips, Reuben Oxford University Press. 195-228.
• Horton, Julian (2020). Syntax and Process in the First Movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio, Op. 66. In Rethinking Mendelssohn. Taylor, Benedict Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Horton, Julian (2018). 'Textual Evidence and Musical Analysis: Once More on the First Movement of Beethoven's Tempest Sonata, Op. 31, No. 2'. In The Life of Texts: Evidence in Textual Production, Transmission and Dissemination. Caruso, Carlo Bloomsbury. 176-190.
• Horton, Julian (2018). 'Analysis and Value Judgement: Schumann, Bruckner and Tovey's Essays in Musical Analysis'. In British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought, 1850-1950. Dibble, Jeremy & Horton, Julian Boydell and Brewer. 123-153.
• Horton, Julian (2017). The Musical Novel as Master-Genre: Schumann's Szenen aus Goethes Faust. In Music in Goethe's Faust: Goethe's Faust in Music. Byrne Bodley, Lorraine Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. 117-136.
• Horton, Julian (2015). Formal Type and Formal Function in the Postclassical Piano Concerto. In Formal Functions in Perspective: Essays on Musical Form from Haydn to Adorno. Vande Moortele, Steven, Pedneault-Deslauriers, Julie & Martin, Nathan Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, Boydell & Brewer. 77-122.
• Horton, Julian (2014). Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century. In The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory. Mirka, Danuta Oxford: Oxford University Press. 642-664.
• Horton, Julian (2014). Dialectics and Musical Analysis. In Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Perspectives. Downes, Steven Routledge. 111-143.
• Horton, Julian (2013). The Later Symphonies. In The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams. Frogley, A. & Thomson, A. J. Cambridge University Press. 199-228.
• Horton, J (2013). Tonal Strategies in the Nineteenth-Century Symphony. In The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony. Horton, J Cambridge University Press. 232-267.
• Horton, Julian (2013). Cyclical Thematic Processes in the Nineteeth-Century Symphony. In The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony. Horton, Julian Cambridge University Press. 190-231.
• Wingfield, Paul & Horton, Julian (2012). Norm and Deformation in Mendelssohn's Sonata Forms. In Mendelssohn Perspectives. Grimes, N. & Mace, A. R. Ashgate. 83-112.
• Horton, J (2010). Symphonism and the Rehabilitation of Classical Form in the First Movement of Brahms' Piano Concerto no.2 Op.83. In Musicology without Frontiers: Essays in Honour of Stanislav Tuksar. Cavallini, I & White, H Croatian Musicological Society. 471-512.
• Horton, Julian (2004). 'Bruckner and the Symphony Orchestra'. In The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner. Williamson, John Cambridge University Press. 138-169.

Edited book

• Dibble, Jeremy & Horton, Julian (2018). British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought 1850-1950. Music in Britain, 1600-2000. Boydell & Brewer.
• Byrne Bodley, Lorraine & Horton, Julian (2016). Rethinking Schubert. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Byrne Bodley, Lorraine & Horton, Julian (2016). Schubert's Late Music: History, Theory, Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Horton, Julian (2015). Schubert. The Early Romantic Composers. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate.
• Cox, Gareth & Horton, Julian (2014). Irish Musical Analysis. Irish Musical Studies, 11. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• Horton, J. (2013). The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge University Press.

Journal Article

• Horton, Julian (2021). Rethinking Sonata Failure: Mendelssohn's Overture Zum Märchen von der schönen Melusine. Music Theory Spectrum 43(2): 299-319.
• Horton, Julian (2021). Beethoven's Error? The Modulating Ritornello and the Type-5 Sonata in the Post-Classical Piano Concerto. Music Analysis 40(3): 353-412.
• Horton, Julian (2020). On the Musicological Necessity of Music Analysis. Musical Quarterly 103(1-2): 62-104.
• Horton, Julian (2018). 'Form and Orbital Tonality in the Finale of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony'. Music Analysis 37(3): 271-309.
• Horton, J. (2017). Criteria for a Theory of Nineteenth-Century Sonata Form. Music Theory and Analysis (MTA) 4(2): 147-191.
• Horton, Julian (2014). Stasis and Continuity in Schubert's String Quintet: Responses to Nathan Martin, Steven Vande Moortele, Scott Burnham and John Koslovsky. Music Analysis 33(2): 194-213.
• Horton, J (2011). John Field and the Alternative History of Concerto First-Movement Form. Music and Letters 92(1): 43-83.
• Horton, Julian (2007). Analysis, Philosophy and the Challenge of Critical Theory. Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 3: 63-95.
• Horton, Julian (2006). The Symphonic Fugal Finale from Mozart to Bruckner. Dutch Journal of Music Theory 11(3): 230-246.
• Horton, Julian (2005). Bruckner's Symphonies and the Theory of Sonata Deformation. Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland 1: 1-13.
• Horton, Julian (2005). Schoenberg and the 'Moment of German Music'. Music Analysis 24(1-2): 235-262.
• Horton, Julian (2004). Recent Developments in Bruckner Scholarship. Music and Letters 85(1): 83-94.