David Nicholls (musicologist)

David Nicholls (born in 1955) is a British musicologist and composer. Biography Born in Small Heath, Birmingham, Nicholls was a pupil at St. Benedict’s Primary School in Small Heath and subsequently at the King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, in King’s Heath. He then read Music at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and graduated with a first. In 1986, he completed a Ph.D. at Cambridge, under the supervision of the distinguished British composer Hugh Wood, with a thesis on the compositional techniques of Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, John Cage, and other experimental composers. Between 1984 and 1987, Nicholls was Keasbey Fellow in American Studies at Selwyn College, Cambridge. In 1998, he spent an extended semester at The College of William and Mary in Virginia, United States, as Visiting Professor of Music. From 1987 to 2000, he was Professor of Music and sometime Research Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Keele University. From 2000 to 2013, he was Professor of Music at the University of Southampton. Subsequently he took early retirement due to disenchantment with the tertiary educational system in the UK; he was initially awarded the title of Emeritus Professor of Music, though