Barbara Lucy Kelly (born 2 June 1966)^[1] is a musicologist specializing in 19th- and early 20th-century French music, an area in which she is widely regarded as a leading authority. She has dual UK and Irish citizenship. She is the Head of School of Music and Professor of Music at the University of Leeds and is currently the first female President of the Royal Musical Association (2021–2023).^[2][3]

Kelly was born in Edinburgh, the youngest of four children of parents of Irish and Scottish heritage. Her father's family came from Galway and Dublin, and her mother's came a generation earlier from County Mayo. A talented child singer who sang a solo before Queen Elizabeth II on her silver jubilee visit to Edinburgh in 1977, Kelly entered St Mary's Music School where she started with the violin, followed by four years in the junior department of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow. From the age of 15, she sang with the National Youth Choir and played with youth orchestras.^{[citation needed]}

From 1984 to 1988, Kelly studied music and English at the University of Glasgow,^[2] where she developed a love for Fin de siècle and early 20th-century French and Russian music. This motivated her to study with French music experts, initially with David Grayson at the University of Illinois (Master's in Musicology, 1992), and subsequently with Robert Orledge at the University of Liverpool (PhD, 1994), writing her thesis on Darius Milhaud and the French Musical Tradition.^[2]

In September 1993, Kelly was appointed Lecturer in Music and Senior Course Tutor at University College Scarborough (today part of the University of Hull). In January 1995, she became Lecturer in Music at Keele University^[2] where she was promoted to Senior Lecturer (2002–8), Programme Director for Music (2007–11), and finally Professor of Music in March 2008. In addition, she was Head of Humanities Research at the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2012–4) and Faculty Research Director, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2014–5) at Keele.^[2] Remaining a Visiting Professor at Keele, Kelly was then appointed Director of Research at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester in April 2015.^[2] In November 2022, she took up the post of Head of School of Music and Professor of Music at the University of Leeds.^[4]

Among her external activities, in 2016, she was a "Professeur invité" at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne.^[3] Kelly has been a regular external examiner at Liverpool Hope University College (1999–2003), the University of Limerick, Mary Immaculate College (2004–8), and the University of Leeds (2005–9), and acted as a Specialist Postgraduate External at the RNCM (2007–13). Other doctoral examining roles have led her to a wide range of universities in Australia, Canada, France, England, and Malta. She is a member of a number of research groups, including the international steering group of France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789–1918^[5] and Music and Nation (Musique et nation);^[6] she is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IReMus).^[3][7]

In October 2020, Kelly was elected to the Academia Europaea.^[8]

Kelly specializes in late 19th- and early 20th-century French music and cultural history. She has published on composers including Darius Milhaud, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Igor Stravinsky as well as on issues such as music and war, national and religious identity, and anti-Semitism in France.^[2]

Based on her 1994 doctoral thesis and subsequent research, her first monograph, Tradition and Style in the Works of Darius Milhaud (1912–1939) (2003), was preceded by a number of articles in books and journals, not least important biographical entries in the 2001 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, including the one on Ravel. The study covers the musical development and aesthetics of Milhaud between 1912 and the composer's emigration at the outbreak of World War II, with insights into his early works, national and religious influences, and rarely performed compositions.^[2] The book has been hailed as "a magnificent contribution to the study of the work and aesthetics of Darius Milhaud, and [...] enlarging it in concentric circles, it helps to better understand the group Les Six, the emergence of neoclassicism in France, and the music of the inter-war period".^[9]

Kelly's second monograph, Music and Ultra-Modernism in France: A Fragile Consensus (1913–1939) (2013), deals with three generational groupings of French composers: Ravel and his circle, Les Six in the 1920s, and La Jeune France (founded 1936).^[2] The book has been lauded for the attention it pays to composers beyond the Debussy–Ravel–Satie narrative, including, beyond the members of those groups, Georges Migot.^[10] By also including the views of opinion-leading music critics of the period, the "book provides a detailed survey of how French music was presented in the press. By interrogating the contemporaneous discourse, including writing by composers, Kelly adds to the dynamic understanding of the period".^[11]

In three (co-)edited volumes, Kelly has further strengthened her research profile. Together with Australian musicologist Kerry Murphy, she produced a 2007 publication comparing the impact of Berlioz and Debussy.^[2] 2008 saw the publication of French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870–1939, including twelve essays in three sections resulting from a conference she had organized at Keele University, described as "a distinguished collection of essays that will support and influence research on the fin-de-siècle for some time".^[12]

In Music Criticism in France: Authority, Advocacy, Legacy (1918–1939) (2018), edited by Kelly together with Canadian musicologist Christopher Moore, the various authors describe how the reception of composers like Charles Koechlin, Arthur Honegger, Nadia Boulanger, or Erik Satie was shaped by contemporary and near-contemporary music critics. The volume was welcomed as "the first detailed study of its kind [...] a thought-provoking and highly variegated impression of the roles and activities of French music criticism in the 1920s and 30s".^[13]

As a form of public engagement, Kelly is also active as a radio broadcaster in programmes for the BBC focusing on French art music.