Dr Michael John Downes

Biography

Michael is a versatile and experienced conductor and musicologist, with particular interests in opera and in music of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Michael studied English and Musicology at King’s College Cambridge, and completed a doctorate on the music of Debussy at the University of Sussex. He was Director of Music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from 2006 to 2008. Since 2008 he has been Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, where he recently led the development of the multi-award-winning Laidlaw Music Centre. Michael was awarded an OBE in the King’s 2025 Birthday Honours List for services to music and education. Michael’s new book on Wagner’s Ring cycle is published in the UK by Faber as Story of the Century and in the US by Pegasus Books as Wagner and the Creation of the Ring. It was named in the 2024 Presto Music Awards as one of the five best music books of the year, and described by Gramophone magazine as ‘the best introduction to The Ring out there’. He is currently working on a biography of Elgar focusing on his religious life, to be published in Oxford University Press’s ‘Spiritual Lives’ series.

Research Interests
Opera; music of the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries; music and religion; music and life writing