David Nicholls

He is a former editor of the journal American Music (2000–2005). Until 2000 Nicholls was also active as a composer, and his works were performed and broadcast in the United Kingdom, Europe, America, Australia, and South Africa.

Nicholls was a pupil at St. Benedict's Primary School, in Small Heath, Birmingham, and subsequently 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.

Since 1984 Nicholls has been married to the writer and educator Tamar Hodes, with whom he has two children: Benjamin (born 1987) and Daisy (born 1990). Since retiring, Nicholls has spent his time primarily engaged in activities rendered impossible during his working life: gardening, cooking, reading non-academic literature, and building a large-scale model railway.

David Nicholls (musicologist and composer) (born in 1955, Small Heath, Birmingham, United Kingdom) is a British musicologist and composer. From 2000 through 2013 he was Professor of Music at the University of Southampton. Subsequently (having become entirely disenchanted with the UK's tertiary educational system) he took early retirement and was awarded the title of Emeritus Professor of Music, though he later relinquished this post. From 1987 to 2000 he was Professor of Music and sometime Research Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Keele University. 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, USA, as Visiting Professor of Music. During his academic career Nicholls gave many presentations--both refereed and guest--in North America, France, Germany, Mexico, Australia, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.