Music Theory

Graduate Studies in Music Theory

Graduate courses  Undergraduate courses

news events

Faculty 

Joseph Dubiel

Professor of Music & Director of Undergraduate Music Theory (Fall 2017)

Ellie M. Hisama

Professor of Music & Area Chair, Music Theory Area (Fall 2017) 
(On leave Spring 2018)

Mariusz Kozak

Assistant Professor of Music
(On leave 2017–18)

Benjamin Steege

Assistant Professor of Music 

(On leave Fall 2017)

Programs Offered

  • PhD

 Graduate Students 

Recently Defended Dissertations

  • Maeve Sterbenz, "Moving with Music: Approaches to the Analysis of Movement-Music Interactions" (2017)
  • Orit Hilewicz, "Listening to Ekphrastic Musical Compositions" (2017)
  • Benjamin Hansberry, "Phenomenon and Abstraction: Coordinating Concepts in Music Theory and Analysis" (2017)
  • Caleb Mutch, "Studies in the History of the Cadence" (2015)
  • Max Schmeder, "Thirty-Three Miniature Dialectics: Hegelian Philosophy vis-à-vis Beethoven’s 'Diabelli' Variations, Op. 120" (2014)
  • Kate Heidemann, "Hearing Women's Voices in Popular Song: Analyzing Sound and Identity in Country and Soul" (2014)
  • Scott Gleason, "Princeton Theory's Problematics" (2013)
  • Victoria Tzotzkova, “Theorizing Pianistic Performance: Tradition, Instrument, Performer” (2012)
  • Justin Hoffman, "Listening with Two Ears: Conflicting Perceptions of Space in Tonal Music" (2011)

PLACEMENT

Columbia theorists currently hold positions at Washington University (Paul Steinbeck, PhD ’08), Rutgers University (Christopher Doll, PhD ’07), University of Alberta (Maryam Moshaver, PhD ’06), Kunitachi College of Music (Cathy Cox, PhD ’06), Carnegie Mellon University (John Ito, PhD ’04), University of Arkansas (Elizabeth Margulis, PhD ’03), Hong Kong University (Youn Kim, PhD ’03), Cleveland Institute of Music (Diane Urista, PhD ’01), New York University (Martin Scherzinger, PhD ’01, and Marilyn Nonken, PhD ’99), Tamagawa University (Akira Takaoka, PhD ’99), National Taiwan University (Yuh-Wen Wang, PhD ’98), UC Santa Cruz (Paul Nauert, PhD ’97), Eastman School of Music (David Temperley, PhD ’96 and Orit Hilewicz, PhD '17), University of Western Ontario (Kevin Mooney, PhD ’96), and elsewhere.

Recent Graduate Seminars

  • Advanced Analysis
  • Analysis of Popular Music
  • Debussy and Modernism
  • Gender/Sexuality/Music
  • Hip-Hop
  • Interdisciplinary and Humanistic Approaches to Music Theory: Representations of the Listener
  • Interdisciplinary and Humanistic Approaches to Music Theory: Semantics and Pragmatics of Analytical Description
  • Introduction to History of Theory
  • Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis
  • Introduction to Set Theory
  • Proseminar in Music Theory
  • Ruth Crawford Seeger
  • Theorizing Musical Temporality