JP, MA, BMus(Oxon), ARCO, HonRCM, HonFTCL, FRSA
George Pratt is Emeritus Professor of Music in the University of Huddersfield and has been in music education for over 35 years, first in schools then in Universities. He recently relinquished headship of the Department of Music at Huddersfield and now divides his time between teaching and supervising research students at Huddersfield, adjudicating and examining (for the Associated Board), reviewing recordings (for BBC Music Magazine), and broadcasting. He has been a frequent contributor to BBC Radio's 3's 'Saturday Review' and 'Music Restor'd', and for six years has co-presented 'Spirit of the Age', Radio 3's weekly early music programme.
Over the past 25 years, he has been a member of the Arts Council Music Panel, Vice-Chairman of the Music Board of the CNAA and Chairman of West Midlands Arts from 1976 to 1980. He was a member of the National Curriculum Music Working Group, and has since set up several major research projects concerned with making the statutory requirements of the National Curriculum workable in practice. He has served on several advisory committees of the Higher Education Funding Council, including the last two RAE Music Panels, and as a TQA Assessor. He is currently Past-President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians.
He moved to Huddersfield in 1985 from Keele University where he developed particular interests in performance and directing: he conducted the the University Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, directed Keele Baroque and the Harmonie Ensemble, and ran the Keele International Chamber Music Summer School. In April 1985 he directed the revival of Handel's opera Berenice, in the European Music Year.
In his teaching and research he specialises in the development of aural skills, with the Unit for Research into Applied Musical Perception (RAMP) operating in Huddersfield - which has now become the basis for the current CALMA project. His related book Aural Awareness : Principles and Practice is published by Oxford University Press (ISBN 019879021X). Other publications include, as co-author/editor, a new book Teaching Music in the National Curriculum (Heinemann, ISBN 0435810200), The Dynamics of Harmony: Principles and Practice (Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198790201), articles on a wide range of subjects, many editions of eighteenth and early nineteenth century music, recordings and compositions.