About Dr. Miller
Bio
Thornton Miller is a music historian studying the use of music in cultural diplomacy between the Soviet Union and Britain during the Cold War. He focuses on the positionality of different actors within these relations—which include composers, concert agents, performers, publishers, and government officials—and how their goals may or may not align with their governments’ projection of soft power. His research in Britain and Russia has been supported by the Fulbright Fellowship, the Linda Shaver-Gleason Award, and Title VIII.
Dr. Miller has contributed chapters and articles to the collected volumes Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art, Opera and Aesthetics II, and Elisabeth Maconchy in Context as well as the journals Art of Music: Theory and History and British Music. He has presented his work at the national conferences of the American Musicological Society; the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; the North American British Music Studies Association (NABMSA); and the Royal Musical Association. He has also written reviews for Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, NABMSA Reviews, and Slavic Review.
Dr. Miller has taught music history; popular music; global music; and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies courses at the University of Illinois, Illinois State University, the University of Houston, and at Bradley University. He has also served as the editor of NABMSA Reviews.
Education
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; PhD of Musicology
University of Houston; MM of Music Literature, and MM of Applied Music
University of Missouri; BM
Research and publications
Selected publications
Diverging Diplomacies: Individual Agency and the State in Anglo-Soviet Musical Exchange, prospective publisher, Clemson University Press, 2026.
“British Music in the Interwar Period.” A chapter in Elizabeth Maconchy in Context, edited by Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2026.
“Uncertainty and the Taboo in Biographical Research: On the Backlash to Britten’s Syphilitic Heart,” British Music 43 (2021): 41–62.
“Incompatible Interpretations of Operatic Realism: Rockwell Kent and the Kirov Theater’s Production of Peter Grimes.” Искусство музыки: теория и история (Art of Music: Theory and History) 22/23 (2020): 254–79.
개인이 우선인가, 사회가 우선인가? 브리튼의 <피터 그라임스> (“Is the Individual or the Collective First and Foremost in Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes?’”). In 오페라 속의 미학 II (Aesthetics in Opera II), edited by Lee Yong-Sook and Hee Sook Oh, translated by Mingyeong Son, 141–60. 모노폴리 (Monopoly), 2019.
“Striking a Compromise: Britten, British Publishers, Soviet Theaters, and the Premieres of Peter Grimes and The Prince of the Pagodas.” In Benjamin Britten Studies: Essays on An Inexplicit Art, edited by Justin Vickers and Vicki Pierce Stroeher, 377–401. Boydell & Brewer, 2017.