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Dr. Nicole Grimes

Dr. Nicole Grimes

Associate Professor, Music


Biography

Dr Nicole Grimes is Associate Professor in Music at Trinity College Dublin. Her research focuses at the intersection between German music criticism, analysis and aesthetics from the late eighteenth century to the present. She is currently working on a multi-year project called "The Expansive Canvas: Large-Scale Form in the Music of Women Composers." She is the General Editor of the New Cambridge Music Handbooks; a member of the editorial boards of Music Analysis (since 2015) and the Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland (since 2024); and a member of the advisory boards of the Women in Global Music Network (WIGM), Irish Musical Studies, and the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research. Her monograph Brahms's Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth-Century German Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2019) was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Danijela Kulezic-Wilson Book Prize of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, and was one of nine Notable Music Books of 2019 selected by Alex Ross of the New Yorker. For full details of her books and other publications, see nicolegrimes.org A graduate of Trinity College Dublin (PhD in Historical Musicology, 2008, "Brahms's Critics: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Critical Reception of Johannes Brahms"), Nicole also studied historical musicology at Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, and Humboldt University, Berlin. She joined Trinity in August 2024 to take up a post as Associate Professor of Music. Before then, she served on the faculty at the University of California, Irvine (2016-2024), and earlier on the faculties of University College Dublin, Keele University, and Royal Holloway, University of London. Nicole is passionate about uncovering the music of women composers that has been lost to history, an enterprise that is central both to her teaching and her research. She welcomes queries from those wishing to pursue postgraduate and postdoctoral research in this area.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

  • Nicole Grimes, Brahms's Elegies: The Poetics of Loss in Nineteenth Century German Culture, Cambridge University Press, 2019Book, 2019, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, Reuben Phillips, Rethinking Brahms, Oxford University Press, 2022, 1 - 584ppBook, 2022, URL
  • Nicole Grimes and Angela Mace, Mendelssohn Perspectives, United Kingdom, Ashgate, 2012, 1 - 392ppBook, 2012, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, Siobhán Donovan, Wolfgang Marx, Rethinking Hanslick: Music, Formalism, and Expression, University of Rochester Press, 2013, 1 - 374ppBook, 2013, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, The Socio-Political Faces of Clara Schumann on German Film, 1944"2008, Nineteenth Century Music Review, 21, (1), 2024, p110 - 137Journal Article, 2024
  • Nicole Grimes, "`An die Hoffnung": A Musical Footnote to Ali Smith"s Spring, Musicological Austriaca: A Journal for Austrian Music Studies, 2021Journal Article, 2021, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, Review article: Lee Rothfarb and Christoph Landerer (trans.), Eduard Hanslick"s Vom Musikalisch Schönen, Musicological Austriaca: A Journal for Austrian Music Studies, 2021Journal Article, 2021
  • Nicole Grimes, Brahms"s Ascending Circle: Hölderlin, Schicksalslied, and the Process of Recollection, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 11, (1), 2014, p1 - 36Journal Article, 2014, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, The Schoenberg/Brahms Critical Tradition Reconsidered, Music Analysis, 31, (2), 2012, p127 - 175Journal Article, 2012, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, Brahms"s Poetic Allusions through Hanslick"s Critical Lens,, American Brahms Society Newsletter, 29, (2), 2011, p5 - 9Journal Article, 2011, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, A Critical Inferno? Hoplit, Hanslick, and Liszt"s Dante Symphony, Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 7, (1), 2012, p3 - 22Journal Article, 2012, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, `Come Rise to Higher Spheres! Tradition Transcended in Brahms's Violin Sonata in G Major, Op. 78, Ad Parnassum: A Journal of Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, 6, (11), 2009, p129 - 152Journal Article, 2009
  • Nicole Grimes, In Search of Absolute Inwardness and Spiritual Subjectivity? The Historical and Ideological Context of Schumann"s 'Neue Bahnen', International Review for the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 39, (2), 2008, p139 - 163Journal Article, 2008
  • Manifestations of Death in the Music of Johannes Brahms in, editor(s)Wolfgang Marx , Music and Death, New York, Boydell, 2023, pp93 - 109, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2023, URL
  • Giving Voice to Spectralism in the Music of Donnacha Dennehy in, editor(s)Amy Bauer, Liam Cagney, and Will Mason , Oxford Handbook to Spectral and Post-Spectral Music, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2021, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2021, URL
  • Hearing Rihm hearing Brahms: Symphonie `Nähe fern" and the Future of Nostalgia in, editor(s)Nicole Grimes and Reuben Phillips , Rethinking Brahms, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp375 - 395, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2022, URL
  • Formal Innovation and Virtuosity in Clara Schumann"s Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17 in, editor(s)Joe Davies , Clara Schumann Studies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp141 - 166, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2021, URL
  • Musical Romanticism as a Historiographical Construct in, editor(s)Benedict Taylor , The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp327 - 342, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2021, URL
  • Introduction" Rethinking Brahms in, editor(s)Nicole Grimes and Reuben Phillips , Rethinking Brahms, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2022, pp1 - 6, [Nicole Grimes and Reuben Phillips]Book Chapter, 2022, URL
  • Ueber Religionsverschiedenheiten. The Role of Religious Difference in the Music Criticism of Eduard Hanslick in, editor(s)Alexander Wilfing , Christoph Landerer , Meike Wilfing-Albrecht , Eduard Hanslick im Kontext. Perspektiven auf die Ästhetik, Musikkritik und das historische Umfeld von Eduard Hanslick, Vienna, Hollitzer Verlag, 2020, pp193 - 204, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2020, URL
  • Brahms as a Vanishing Point in the Music of Wolfgang Rihm. Reflections on Klavierstück Nr 6 in, editor(s)Lorraine Byrne Bodley , Music Preferred: Essays in Musicology, Cultural History, and Analysis in Honour of Harry White, Vienna, Hollitzer Verlag, 2018, pp512 - 547, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2018, URL
  • Philosophy in, editor(s)Katy Hamilton, Natasha Loges , Johannes Brahms in Context, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp277 - 285, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2019, URL
  • The Sense of an Ending. Adorno, Brahms, and Music"s Return to the Land of Childhood in, editor(s)Gareth Cox, Julian Horton , Irish Musical Analysis, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2014, pp104 - 124, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2014, URL
  • German Liberalism, Nationalism, and Humanism in Hanslick"s Writings on Brahms in, editor(s)Nicole Grimes, Siobhán Donovan, Wolfgang Marx , Rethinking Hanslick: Music, Formalism, and Expression, Rochester NY, University of Rochester Press, 2013, pp160 - 184, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2013, URL
  • Wordless Judaism, Like the Songs of Mendelssohn"? Hanslick, Mendelssohn and Cultural Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna in, editor(s)Nicole Grimes, Angela Mace , Mendelssohn Perspectives, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2012, pp49 - 62, [Nicole Grimes]Book Chapter, 2012, URL
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of The Songs of Clara Schumann, by Stephen Rodgers , Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 2024Review
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall: Between Public and Private Performance, by Katy Hamilton and Natasha Loges (eds) , Music and Letters, 2016Review
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of Brahms Among Friends: Listening, Performance, and the Rhetoric of Allusion, by Paul Berry , Music and Letters, 2016Review
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of Free but Alone. A Life for Poetic Music, by Constantin Floros , Nineteenth Century Music Review, 9, (2), 2012, p341"46Review
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of Eduard Hanslick zum Gedenken. Bericht des Symposiums zum Anlass seines 100. Todestags, by Theophil Antonicek, Gernot Gruber, Christoph Landerer (eds) , Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 7, 2012, p67-76Review
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of Brahms and His World, by Walter Frisch, Kevin C. Karnes (eds) , Music Analysis, 31, (1), 2011, p140"150Review
  • Nicole Grimes, Review of Music Criticism and the Challenge of History. Shaping Modern Musical Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century Vienna, by Kevin C. Karnes , Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 4, 2009, p79-83Review

Research Expertise

Women and music in the European art music tradition. Music of the German-speaking 18th & 19th centuries. Music analysis. Cultural history. Issues of gender in music history and music theory. The intersection between music, literature, and philosophy. Music aesthetics. German Studies. The history of ideas.

Recognition

  • Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship, European Commission ID 274448, €226,024 2011-2014
  • Lloyd Hibberd Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation publication subvention for Brahms's Elegies 2019
  • Trinity College Dublin, Taylor Bequest 2005
  • Danijela Kulezic-Wilson Book Prize, Society for Musicology in Ireland, 2022, Honorable Mention for Brahms's Elegies 2022
  • Alex Ross (The New Yorker), Nine Notable Music Books of 2019 listed Brahms's Elegies 2019
  • Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin 2007-2008
  • Peer Reviewer, Cambridge University Press
  • Peer Reviewer: Music Theory Spectrum
  • Expert Reviewer:Austrian Science Fund/Österreiscischer Wissenschaftsfond
  • Peer Reviewer: "Ethnomusicology Ireland" journal
  • Peer Reviewer, Oxford University Press
  • Expert Reviewer: Austrian Academy of Sciences/Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaft
  • Peer Reviewer, "Musicologica Austriaca" journal
  • Peer Reviewer, "Music & Letters" journal