Dr. Peter Asimov

Biography

Peter Asimov is a musician and researcher whose interdisciplinary work focuses on the history of French musical modernism from the post-World War I avant-garde movement. His doctoral research traced the significant impacts of 19th-century racial language theories on the complexities of French musicology and composition between 1850 and 1950. Asimov's thesis, titled 'Comparative Philology, French Music, Composition Indo-Europeanism Fétis Messiaen,' was recognized with the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Musicological Society. He is currently engaged in Leverhulme-funded research that reexamines French postwar modernism by focusing on previously marginalized performers such as Yvonne Loriod, a pioneering pianist. This project aims to recover Loriod’s unpublished works and offers a musicological perspective on rhythm’s intellectual history throughout the 20th century. With degrees from the University of Oxford and Brown University, Asimov also served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and has performed internationally as a pianist and chamber musician.

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