On March 23–24 2023, Visiting Scholar Researcher Liza Sirenko (Ukraine) co-organized “Fresh Science,” 17th International Youth Scientific and Practical Online Conference. The conference featured a number of scholars from around the world, including a number of DMA and PhD students from the Graduate Center CUNY. One of keynote talks was given by Prof. Joseph Straus. […]
Archive | Music Theory Research Highlights

Prof. Joseph Straus’s Rite of Spring project
Prof. Joseph Straus’s produced a series of 18 analytical videos about the Rite of Spring (roughly twelve hours of video), which are now available through the website http://riteofspringproject.org . The analyses are presented in a way that might be of interest to people who are not professionals, as well as by music professionals. Prof. Straus […]

Prof. William Rothstein publishes a new book on Italian opera
Prof. William Rothstein’s long-awaited book, The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–1859, has been published by Oxford University Press. Taking an eclectic analytical approach in examining works by Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi and, Meyerbeer, Rothstein uses ideas originating in several centuries, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first, to argue that operatic music can […]

Book by CUNY graduate wins 2022 SMT the Outstanding Multi-Author Collection Award
Philip Stoecker (CUNY 2003) received the Outstanding Multi-Author Collection Award for co-editing (with Edward Venn) the book Adès Studies (Cambridge: CUP, 2021). Among other essays, this book features the article “Sonic Allegory in Adès’s The Exterminating Angel” by CUNY professor Yayoi Uno Everett.

Article by CUNY graduate wins 2022 SMT the Outstanding Publication Award
Noriko Manabe (CUNY 2009) received the SMT 2022 Outstanding Publication Award for her article “We gon’ be alright? The ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s protest anthem,” Music Theory Online, 25(1).

Alice Xue, Music Theory
Alice Xue will present her essay “The Nostalgic Modernists: Tradition and Pop in Por Por Music of Accra, Ghana” at the Society of Music Theory’s (SMT) 2022 Annual Meeting on Saturday, November 12. This is Alice’s first presentation ever at a national conference! Alice hopes that she does well and makes her advisor professor Kofi […]

Rebecca Moranis, Music Theory
Rebecca Moranis was chosen to participate in a graduate student workshop at the Society for Music Theory annual meeting in November 2022 in New Orleans. The workshop is led by Professor Nancy Rogers (Florida State University) and is titled “Intersections of Music Cognition and Music Theory Pedagogy.” The goal of this workshop is to use […]
Events of special interest to music theorists held at the CUNY Graduate Center
Events of special interest to music theorists held at the CUNY Graduate Center During the semester, the Music Department presents a number of formal and informal events, meetings, and guest lectures that are available to students of the Music Theory program at the CUNY Graduate Center. These events include: Theory Group meetings: informal gatherings where […]

Two GC Theory Alumni Offered Tenure-Track Positions!
Please join us in congratulating one recent and one soon-to-be alum on the following: (1) Dr. Noel Torres-Rivera, who completed his dissertation a few months ago, was offered a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). (2) Michèle Dugay (who will defend her dissertation in July) was offered a tenure-track Assistant Professor […]

GC Professor Philip Ewell Presents on UNC Symposia in Music and Culture Series
On April 9th, Professor Ewell presents the James W. Pruett Lecture in Music and Culture on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Symposia in Music and Culture Series. An associate professor and performing cellist at the Hunter College at CUNY, music theorist Philip Ewell’s work centers on critical race theory, harmony and mode in […]

GC Professor Philip Ewell: “On Confronting Music Theory’s Antiblackness: Three Case Studies”
On Friday, March 26, 2021 – 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., GC Professor Philip Ewell will present a talk, “On Confronting Music Theory’s Antiblackness: Three Case Studies” on the Columbia University Music Colloquium Series. Abstract: The Summer 2020 controversy over Vol. 12 of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies has changed the course of American music theory in ways not seen […]
How to Analyze 18th Century Music Using the Right Metaphors
Check out this story about GC Professor Poundie Burstein’s new book, Journeys Through Galant Expositions: How to Analyze 18th Century Music Using the Right Metaphors