alistair noble

Alistair Noble began his life in music as a pianist, studying with Isobel Grigor, Alan Jenkins, and Larry Sitsky. A subsequent interest in the work of Winifred Burston, a remarkable Australian pianist who had studied with Busoni in Berlin, led to a Master's Degree in historical musicology based upon extensive archival research. Alongside this historical research, Alistair found that musical analysis is a way to bring together many of his diverse interests in composition, performance, and critique of music. A PhD in this field, completed at the Australian National University, presented initial groundbreaking work on the music of American composer Morton Feldman.

Alistair taught in the School of Music at the Australian National University for some years in musicology, music theory, analysis, composition, and chamber music. He served as Head of Theory and Convenor of Graduate Studies, building up both of these areas with considerable success. As an award-winning PhD supervisor, he has enjoyed working with many graduate-level researchers in a wide range of music-related areas and also in cognate fields such as film studies. He has been a guest lecturer in many places, including the University of the Philippines, the Colloquium of the Paul Sacher Foundation, and National Taiwan University. While at ANU, Alistair served for three years as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences. 

 

In 2013, Alistair published his updated Feldman research as Composing Ambiguity: the early music of Morton Feldman (Ashgate), which has been acclaimed internationally as a fundamentally important publication in this field. 

 

In 2014, Alistair was an invited Visiting Associate Professor in the College of Music at the National Taiwan Normal University, teaching orchestration, composition, and graduate seminars in the analysis of pop music and the sociology of music. While in Taiwan, he had the opportunity to accompany colleagues on fieldwork trips to several remote indigenous villages during major festivals, in addition to experiencing first-hand a wide range of musical performances, including Beijing-style operas, Taiwanese Nanguan, and the local noise/sound-art scenes (about which Alistair subsequently published articles). 

 

Alistair has lectured on post-tonal music at the first Melbourne Music Analysis Summer Schools, held at Medley Hall, University of Melbourne. He served as Head of School, and later Dean of the Australian Institute of Music (Sydney & Melbourne), and since 2020 has been Head of School for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of New England.

 

Significant compositions include the Glasteppich series (three pieces for piano, flute, and string orchestra) premiered by Arcko Symphonic with Michael Kieran Harvey and Kim Tan in December 2014, and Hauteurs/Temps (2015) for viola and percussion,  premiered by Phoebe Green and Leah Scholes in 2016 and subsequently recorded for ABC radio.