Byron Adams
Byron Adamsc. 2017
Born	1955 (age 69–70)
Occupation(s)	Musicologist, composer, conductor
Employer	University of California, Riverside
Awards	Delius Festival Composition Grand Prize (1977) ASCAP Raymond Hubbell Award (1984) Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship (1985) Philip Brett Award (2000)

Byron Adams (born 1955) is an Americanmusicologist, composer, and conductor.

Adams received hisbachelor of music degree fromJacksonville University, his master of music degree from theUniversity of Southern California, and his doctor of musical arts degree fromCornell University.^{[citation needed]}

Adams is a composer oftonal music. His music was performed at theWarsaw Autumn,^[1]Bargemusic,^[2] the Da Camera Society of Los Angeles,^[3] and theConservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau in Fontainebleau, France (where he taught in the summer of 1992),^[4] as well as by such ensembles asCantus,^[5] the WestVirginia Symphony Orchestra,^[6] and thePhilharmonia Orchestra.^[7]

As a musicologist, Adams specializes in British and French music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.^[8][4] His essays have been published inThe Musical Quarterly, where he served on the editorial board as an associate editor since 2009,^[9] andMusic & Letters.^[10]

In 2007, he was appointed scholar-in-residence and a member of the program committee for theBard Music Festival, for which he was the editor ofEdward Elgar and His World (Princeton, 2007). He also gave pre-concert lectures and contributed program notes.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} Other notable organizations for which he has written programs notes include thePhiladelphia Orchestra and theAmerican Symphony Orchestra, among others.^[16][17][18] In 2013, Adams was appointed one of the series editors forMusic in Britain 1600–2000, published by theBoydell Press.^[19]

Adams is distinguished professor at the music department ofUniversity of California, Riverside; he was department chair from 2002 to 2005.^[20][21]

As a composer Adams won the grand prize of the Delius Festival Composition Competition in 1977.^[22] In 1984, he was awarded anASCAP Raymond Hubbell Award for his compositions, and in 1985 he was the recipient of the inauguralRalph Vaughan Williams Fellowship.^[23] As a musicologist, he was the recipient of theAmerican Musicological Society's Philip Brett Award in 2000.^[24]

Between 2006 and 2009, Adams served as vice president, then later president of the North American British Music Studies Association. In 2020, he was inducted as a lifetime honorary member.^[25] In 2008, the association instituted the Byron Adams Student Travel Grant, a fellowship offering assistance to conference presenters.^[26]

• Vaughan Williams Essays, ed. Byron Adams and Robin Wells, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. 280 pp.^[27]
• Edward Elgar and His World, ed. Byron Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 426 pp.^[28]
• "The Dark Saying of the Enigma: Homoeroticism and the Elgarian Paradox," inQueer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitsell (University of Illinois Press, 2002).^[29]
• "Elgar's later oratorios: Roman Catholicism, decadence and the Wagnerian dialectic of shame and grace" inThe Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. Daniel M. Grimley andJulian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 81–105.^[30]
• "'Thor's Hammer': Sibelius and the British Music Critics", in the volumeSibelius and His World, ed. Daniel M. Grimley (Princeton University Press, 2011), 125–157.^[31]
• "Musical Cenotaph: Howell's Hymnus paradisi and Sites of Mourning", in the volumeThe Music of Herbert Howells (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer), 285–308.^[32]
• "Vaughan Williams' Musical Apprenticeship,"The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams, ed. Alain Frogley and Aidan J. Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).^[33]
• "Sea Change: A meditation upon Frank Bridge'sLament: to Catherine, Aged 9, 'Lusitania' 1915,"The Sea in the British Musical Imagination, ed. Eric Saylor and Christopher M. Scheer (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2015).^[34]
• "Lux aeterna: Fauré's Requiem, Op. 48,"Fauré Studies, ed. Stephen Rumph and Carlo Caballero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).^[35]
• "Scripture, Church and culture: biblical texts in the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams",Vaughan Williams Studies, ed. Alain Frogley, Cambridge University Press, 1996:99–117.^[36]
• "No Armpits, Please, We're British: Whitman and English Music, 1884–1936", in the volumeWalt Whitman and Modern Music, ed. Lawrence Kramer, Garland Press, 2000: 25–42.^[37]

• Byron AdamsArchived 2015-11-27 at theWayback Machine,University of California, Riverside
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• 21st-century American composers
• 21st-century American male composers
• 1955 births
• Living people
• Musicians from Atlanta
• Jacksonville University alumni
• USC Thornton School of Music alumni
• Cornell University alumni
• 21st-century American musicologists
• 20th-century American composers
• 20th-century American musicologists
• 20th-century American male composers

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