Jim Samson


Thomas James Samson, FBA, commonly known as Jim Samson, is a musicologist and retired academic. Described as "a leading authority on the music of Chopin", his research extends to Romantic music, early 20th-century classical music and the music of east Central Europe in general.

Life and career

Thomas James Samson was born on 6 July 1946 in Carnlough in Northern Ireland. Educated at Queen's University Belfast and studied with Arnold Whittall at the University College, Cardiff.
Samson was appointed to a research fellowship at the University of Leicester in 1972. He moved to the University of Exeter in 1973 as a lecturer; promotions followed, to reader in 1987 and Professor of Musicology in 1992. In 1994, he was appointed Professor of Music">Professor (highest academic rank)">Professor of Music at the University of Bristol, and was then Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, between 2002 and 2011.

Honours and awards

Samson was awarded the Order of Merit by the Polish government in 1990 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy, in 2000. In 2018, he received the IRC Harrison Medal from the Society for Musicology in Ireland.

Selected publications

Music in Transition: A Study of the Tonal Expansion and Early Atonality, 1900–1920.The Music of Szymanowski.The Music of Chopin.Chopin: The Four Ballades.The Cambridge Companion to Chopin.Chopin.The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Music.Virtuosity and the Musical Work: the Transcendental Studies of Liszt.Introduction to Music Studies.