The Theory Department runs a weekly colloquium series on Friday afternoons. These colloquia include lectures by renowned guest speakers—recent guests include Alex Rehding, Nancy Rao, Kofi Agawu, Janet Schmalfeldt, Sumanth Gopinath, Jennifer Iverson, and Megan Long—as well as various kinds of professional development workshops, student presentations, conference paper run-throughs, and discussion forums.
Colloquium Events Spring 2025
Friday, January 31, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“How to Do Things with Words, to Words: Music Theory and Problematizing Lexicography”
Bryan Parkhurst (Oberlin College and Conservatory)
Friday, February 7, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Conference Proposal Workshop
Friday, February 14, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Canon and Symmetry”
Nathan Lam (Eastman School of Music)
Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 3PM ET in MC 1
Schenker Symposium
“The Einleitung Recapitulated: The Conclusion of Tristan und Isolde, Act One and the Double-Tonic Complex Reconsidered” – William Marvin
“Reconsidering Schenker’s Views on Mode: An Exploration of Modal-Tonal Properties in Three Fugues by Dmitri Shostakovich” – Sarah Marlowe
“Schenker’s Melodic Bass Lines and the Legacy of Caccini and Peri” – Matthew Brown
“Gradience in Prolongation” – Davy Temperley
Friday, February 21, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“A Taxonomy of Humor in Film Music and Sound”
Tahirih Motazedian (Vassar College)
Friday, February 28, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Charles Darwin vs. Herbert Spencer: Reconsidering an Historic Debate about the Evolutionary Origins of Music”
Miriam Piilonen (University of Massachusetts – Amherst)
Tuesday, March 4, 11 AM ET in Messinger Hall 1
Dissertation Defense: Lauren Irschick, “Fictional Music Theory”
Friday March 7, 1 PM ET on Zoom
Dissertation Defense: Lukas Perry, “Function in Maurice Duruflé’s Modal Harmony”
Friday, March 21, 2025 at 2-3 PM ET in MC 417
Workshop led by Robin Attas: “Possibilities for Decolonization and Indigenization of Music Theory”
Funded by Eastman Departmental Inclusion Initiative (EDII)
Friday, March 21, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“What is Music Theory?”
Robin Attas (Independent Scholar)
Friday, March 28, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Spring Conference Run-Throughs
Ruixue Hu
Ryan Galik
Friday, April 11, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Listening to ‘Machine Listening’: Resistance and Reification in Contemporary Musical Practice”
Landon Morrison (Eastman School of Music)
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Ruixue Hu Dissertation Proposal Defense
“Harmony in Diversity: Theorizing Form, Performance, and Aesthetics in Traditional Qin Music”
Friday, April 18, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Noriko Manabe (Indiana University)
Friday, April 25, 2025 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Undergraduate Thesis Presentations
Brena Zhao
Friday, May 2, 2025 at 4PM ET in ESM 305
Undergraduate Thesis Presentations
Mary Jedynak
Past Colloquium Events
Friday, December 6, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Texture as Form in Lili Boulanger’s Clarières dans le ciel“
Stephen Rodgers (University of Oregon)
Friday, November 22, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Mapping the Gamut: Solmization Pedagogy, Tonal Compass, and 16th-Century Counterpoint”
Megan Long (Oberlin College and Conservatory)
Friday, November 15, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Early Modern Tuning, Temperament, and the Natural Philosophy of Empire”
Andrew Chung (University of North Texas)
Friday, November 15, 2024 at 2 PM ET in OSL 204
Workshop led by Andrew Chung (University of North Texas) – Facilitated by ETCEI, funded by EDII
“Glimpsing Music Theory in the Archives of Colonization and Slavery”
In this workshop, participants will examine texts written by European colonizers about the musical practices and documents of listening of Amerindian societies and communities of enslaved people. We will look to catch the ways in which basic music theoretical categories like consonance/dissonance, rhythm and meter, harmony, and counterpoint bear their traces in such texts, and start to draw some inferences about the cultural, political, ethnological work these categories perform in the archives of colonial dispossession.
Friday, November 1, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
SMT Run-Throughs
Evan Martschenko, Maeve Gillen, Ryan Galik, Sam Falotico, Ruixue Hu
Friday, October 25, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Explorations in Music Theory: Harmony, Musicianship, Improvisation”
Dariusz Terefenko (Eastman School of Music) & Benjamin Wadsworth (Kennesaw State University)
Friday, October 18, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
Professional Development Workshop
Friday, October 4, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Porous Instruments: Synthesizers and the Circulation of Cultural Value”
Jennifer Iverson (University of Chicago)
Friday, September 27, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Performing Authenticity: Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Musical Expression, Style, and Identity”
Nancy Murphy (University of Michigan)
Friday, September 20, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Minimalism and Black Composers”
Sumanth Gopinath (University of Minnesota)
Friday, September 6, 2024 at 4 PM ET in ESM 305
“Four Modes of Music-Analytic Interpretation”
Jeffrey Swinkin (University of Oklahoma)
Friday, May 3, 2024 at 4PM ET in A710
Undergraduate Thesis Presentations
Zixu (Daniel) Qin, “Rachmaninoff’s Revisions: Analysis of Texture, Harmony, and Voice Leading in Two Movements from Morceaux de Fantasie, op. 3″
Jacob Hinton, “An Exploration into the Neotonal Harmonic Languages of Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, and Francis Poulenc”
Comps 1B Presentations
Maeve Gillen, “Hermeneutics of the Musical Police State: Process and Musical Collectivism in David Lang’s I fought the law”
Daniel Chang, “Sergei Taneyev’s Russian Requiem: The Apparent Infinite Canon in John of Damascus as a Commentary on History and Self”
Friday, April 19, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
“Faust’s Violin Concerto”
Janet Schmalfeldt (Tufts University)
Friday, April 12, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
“Florence Price’s Dream Variations”
Rachel Lumsden (Florida State University)
Friday, March 29, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
“New Music and the Politics of Japaneseness in Yano Akiko’s ‘Tsugaru Tour'”
Toru Momii (Harvard University)
Friday, March 22, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
Conference Paper Run-Throughs
Zekai Liu, Maeve Gillen, Ryan H. Jones, Jacob Eichhorn, Hanisha Kulothparan
Tuesday, March 19, 2024 at 9:30 AM ET in MSH 1
“Intimacy and Middleness in Post-Millenial Pop Music”
David Falterman
Dissertation Defense
Friday, March 1, 2024 at 2 PM in MC 320
“Applying Analytical Approaches to Contemporary Black Gospel Music”
M. Jerome Bell (Eastman School of Music)
Dissertation Proposal Defense
Friday, March 1, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
“George Perle’s Modal, Tonal, and Dissonant Practice”
Phil Stoecker (Hofstra University)
Thursday, February 29, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
“Theorizing Phrase Structure in Guqin Music”
Ruixue Hu (Eastman School of Music)
**Winner of the 2023 Presser Award
Wednesday February 28, 2024 at 9AM ET in ESM 305
“Form and Narrative in Kollywood Film Music”
Hanisha Kulothparan (Eastman School of Music)
Dissertation Proposal Defense
Friday, February 23, 2024 at 4PM ET in ESM 305
“Heavenly Music as Public Music Theory“
J. Daniel Jenkins (University of South Carolina)
Friday, February 23, 2024 at 10:30 AM ET in MHS 1
“Composing (with) Theories of Acoustics and Pitch Perception After 1950”
Noah Kahrs (Eastman School of Music)
Dissertation Defense
Friday, February 16, 2024 at 4PM ET in ESM 305
“A Curricular Balancing Act: Diversity and Practicality”
Melissa Hoag (Oakland University)
Friday, February 2, 2024 at 4PM ET in ESM 305
“African Art Music and the Challenge of Postcolonial Composition”
Kofi Agawu (CUNY)
Friday, January 26, 2024 at 4PM ET in ESM 305
“Cantonese Opera Aria: Considering an American Soundtrack of the Roaring Twenties”
Nancy Rao (Rutgers University)
Friday, January 19, 2024 at 4PM ET in Howard Hanson Hall
“J.S. Bach, Music Theory, and Artificial Intelligence”
Alex Rehding (Harvard University)
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