Reuben Phillips is a musicologist with research interests in Austro-German music and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His current book project examines the library that belonged to the composer Johannes Brahms – a notable collection of books, manuscripts, and printed music that is preserved today in the archive of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.
Reuben is the author of articles published and forthcoming in the Journal of Musicology, 19th-Century Music, Music & Letters, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, and Musical Quarterly, and served as co-editor (with Nicole Grimes) of the Oxford University Press volume Rethinking Brahms. He holds a PhD from Princeton University and has been the recipient of awards and research grants from the British Academy, the American Brahms Society, the DAAD, the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung in Berlin, the British Library, and Edinburgh University’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.
In the Faculty of Music and at St Hugh’s College Reuben’s teaching has included MSt seminars, undergraduate lectures, and tutorials in music history, aesthetics, and analysis. During the academic year 2022–2023 he was affiliated to the Institute for Musicology of the University of Vienna, supported by a supplementary research grant from the Österreichischer Austauschdienst. He has delivered conference papers and guest lectures internationally in English and German. Recent writings for non-specialist audiences include programme notes for the Castalian Quartet concerts in Oxford and the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.
