Kelvin H. F. Lee

music theorist / conductor / writer


I am a music theorist, conductor and writer of art music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My areas of specialism include Austro-German music at the turn of the twentieth century (especially by Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss), as well as its musical entanglements across the globe (especially Japan).

On this website you can find information about my ongoing projects, research publications and upcoming events. I have also included the more accessible concert notes I have written for different orchestras (alongside selected recordings) as listening guides to facilitate the general appreciation of art music.


Projects in Progress

The Sonata Moment

Monograph developing a dialectical theory of nineteenth-century symphonic sonata form

The Context of Musical Form

Edited volume exploring the role of context in theorising fin-de-siècle musical form

Interculturality in Japanese Symphonic Forms

Corpus study considering the impact of German-Japanese musical relations on Japanese symphonic forms