Sapphire Littler is a PhD student at the University of Leeds in the UK, supervised by Edward Venn and Luke Windsor. Her PhD, titled Compositional devices used to suggest metaphor and inform listener temporality in non-tonal art music, will musically and metaphorically analyse the works of George Crumb, Harrison Birtwistle, and Thomas Adès, through the interactions between metaphor, projective potential, and temporality.
Throughout her academic career, Sapphire has focused on the analysis of twentieth and twenty-first century music, with MA by Research analysing clarinet concerti of the past 40 years in Finland, particularly in relation to the clarinettist Kari Kriikku.
As well as an analyst, Sapphire regularly plays the clarinet in contemporary music ensembles in the UK. Her experiences as a performer informs her analysis, and her understanding of analysis informs her performance, creating a cyclical duality to better her knowledge of both.
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