Music Theory at Eastman

03/07/2026

Congratulations to our PhD student Zekai Liu! For his paper “Keyboard Distance: An Analytical Tool for Bridging Transformational Theory and Embodied Performance in Piano Music," he was awarded the Best Student Paper (Texas Society for Music Theory) and the Dorothy Payne award (Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic). 🥳

Congratulations to Eastman PhD candidate Zekai Liu ’23E, ’25E (MM) for being a recipient of two prestigious awards in Music Theory. His paper, titled “Keyboard Distance: An Analytical Tool for Bridging Transformational Theory and Embodied Performance in Piano Music,” won Best Student Paper a...

02/13/2026

SMT has recently announced the winners of several prizes, and I'm thrilled to share that our students (as usual!) are cleaning up:

Ruixue Hu is a winner of the SMT-40 Dissertation Award, which will support the completion of ""Harmony in Diversity 和⽽不同: Theorizing Form, Performance, and Aesthetics in Traditional Qin Music."

Evan Martschenko won honorable mention for the Student Presentation Award. His winning paper, co-authored with Jacob Ludwig (CCM), is "Uncovering Howard Hanson's Proto-Set Theory Pedagogy."

Please join me in congratulating Ruixue and Evan!!

https://societymusictheory.org/announcement/smt-40-dissertation-fellowship-2026-winners-2026-02

https://societymusictheory.org/announcement/smt-2025-student-presentation-award-2026-02

Feb 09 2026 By samfalotico The 2025 Student Presentation Award winner is Rebecca Moranis. Left: Moranis. Right (top to bottom): Kushan, Ludwig, Martschenko. The Student Presentation Award Committee is delighted to congratulate our 2025 award winner and honorable mentions. Winner: Rebecca Moranis, "...

12/23/2025

FACULTY in the NEWS | We all know that one of the "hot topics" of today is AI... and WROC's Adam Chodak is digging into how this new technology impacts music.

Chodak recently interviewed Landon Morrison, Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Eastman, about the pros and cons of these tools... Morrison discusses everything from AI's democratization of music to the need for better regulations around it.

Watch the 30-minute conversation: bit.ly/4qimpbh
Learn more about studying theory with Professor Morrison: bit.ly/3Y4tRLg

11/12/2025

The SMT awards ceremony at last week's AMS-SMT meeting in Minneapolis was a showcase of achievements by Eastman theory students, faculty, and alumni.

We are thrilled to announce that Prof. Nathan Lam has been honored with both the SMT Emerging Scholar Award and a publication award from the Post-1945 Music Analysis Interest Group for his article, “Pentatonic Xuangong 旋宮 Transformations in Chinese Music,” published in MTO 30.1. Congratulations, Nathan!

In addition to Prof. Lam’s achievements, we are proud to recognize a quartet of Eastman alumni who are SMT award winners: Chris Stover (MA 2002), Guy Capuzzo (PhD 2000), Gilad Rabinovitch (PhD 2015), and Michael Dodds (PhD Musicology 1999).

Furthermore, Gabe Fankhauser’s award-winning article was published in Intégral, the journal edited by our own graduate students, with Rob Hamilton leading the effort. Sam Falotico also received recognition at the awards ceremony for his presentation, “'What’s in an OP?’: Narrative, KonoSuba, and the 3/4 Prechorus,” which received an Honorable Mention for the Best Student Presentation Award in 2024.

Please join us in celebrating these outstanding accomplishments!

11/05/2025

Eastman Theory is well represented in the upcoming AMS–SMT in Minneapolis, MN. You can catch us at:

“Contrasting Verses in Indian Popular Music.” Profs. Hanisha Kulothparan and David Temperley. Thursday, 11:45 am, Lake Bemidji.

“Uncovering Howard Hanson’s Proto-Set Theory Pedagogy.” Jacob Ludwig (University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music) and Evan Martschenko. Thursday, 4:00 pm, Lake Bemidji.

“Unified Solfège Equations.” Prof. Nathan Lam. Thursday, 5:00 pm, Lake Bemidji.

“Effort and Tension in Rebecca Saunders’s Dialogue for Viola and Percussion.” Ash Mach. Thursday, 7:15 pm, Mirage (Performance and Analysis Interest Group).

Panel on “Methods and Ethics in Music Copyright Analysis.” Prof. John Covach. Friday, 1:45 pm, Skyway A-B.

“Coloring Sound: Intertextual Expressions of Music, Meaning, and Identity in Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's Music Videos.” Sam Falotico. Friday, 7:30–9:30 pm, Lake Bemidji (Film and Multimedia Interest Group poster session).

“Listening to ‘Machine Listening’: Resistance and Reification in Contemporary Music Practice.” Prof. Landon Morrison. Saturday, 9:00 am, Greenway Ballroom D-G.

“… and my (trans?) gender analysis.” Maeve Gillen. Saturday, 9:00 am, Boundary Waters Ballroom A-B.

“From End Credits to Endless Loops: Intermedial Palimpsests of Momoiro Clover Z’s “Nippon Egao Hyakkei.” Sam Falotico. Saturday, 10:45 am, Lake Bemidji.

“Imagining Posthumanist Musical Agency with George Crumb’s Music for a Summer Evening.” Ryan Jones. Saturday, 11:15 am, Regency.

Lightning talk at “Bad Instructions? Anarchy, Excess, and Scarcity in Music Notation.” Ruixue Hu, 12:30 pm, Greenway Ballroom C-H.

“First Time Hearing: YouTube Reaction Videos and the Commodification of the Inexpert Listener.” Lauren Irschick. Sunday, 9:30 am, Regency.

“Participatory Covers, Audience Choirs, and Jacob Collier's Public Music Theory.” Prof. Ben Baker. Sunday, 10 am, Regency.

“Playing with the Net Down: Formalism and Dialectics in Helmut Lachenmann’s Music and Thought.” Prof. Zack Bernstein. Sunday, 11:15 am, Greenway Ballroom E-F.

Also, a warm reminder: we would love to see you at the Eastman party on Friday night (November 7), from 8–10 pm. We'll meet at Brühaven, a bar just around the corner from the conference hotel. All are welcome: we'd love to connect with alumni, prospective students, old friends, and anyone else who would like to come by.

We look forward to seeing you there!

A craft beverage company with something for everyone; beers, non-alcoholic options, adaptogen beverages & so much more. Visit the taproom downtown Minneapolis.

10/31/2025

Congratulations to Dr. Andrew Blake, who recently defended his dissertation titled “Complexity in Jazz Improvisation: Trajectories and Tradeoffs.” The photo shows Andrew with members of his committee (Prof. Davy Temperley and Prof. Ben Baker) and the defense chair, Prof. Jean Pedersen. Andrew currently teaches music theory at The Hochstein School, and recently joined as an instructor of music cognition for Berklee Online.

10/16/2025

Are you attending this year’s AMS-SMT joint conference? If so, we would love to see you at the Eastman party, which will be on Friday night (November 7), from 8–10 pm. We'll meet at Brühaven, a bar just around the corner from the conference hotel. All are welcome: we'd love to connect with alumni, prospective students, old friends, and anyone else who would like to come by.

A craft beverage company with something for everyone; beers, non-alcoholic options, adaptogen beverages & so much more. Visit the taproom downtown Minneapolis.

10/06/2025

We are pleased to share that Eastman Theory is welcoming applications for two graduate programs. The first is our long-established MA in Pedagogy of Music Theory. The second—which is being newly revived for the first time in several decades—is a standalone MA in Music Theory. Here’s a bit more about each degree:

The MA in Pedagogy of Music Theory prepares students for a career of teaching success. With pedagogical coursework and opportunities to teach at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum, students graduate from the program with the experience and skills to teach college-level theory independently. The MA in Pedagogy of Music Theory is often pursued jointly with graduate study in performance and composition.

The MA in Music Theory prepares students to embark on careers as music-theoretical researchers and pedagogues. With coursework that introduces students to advanced analytical approaches to a range of repertoires, guidance in original research, and opportunities to teach within the undergraduate curriculum, students will graduate from the program ready for doctoral study at top music theory PhD programs.

Applications for both degrees are due December 1.

Unfortunately, this year we are not accepting applications for the PhD program. The Provost recently instituted a new stipend minimum, and the School is pausing PhD admissions for a year as it absorbs these new expenses. We will accept PhD applications in Fall 2026 for admission in Fall 2027.

You can learn more about the Eastman Theory Department, including our remarkable record of alumni success, at our department website: https://www.esm.rochester.edu/theory/. Please also feel free to reach out to our department chair, Zack Bernstein ([email protected]), if you or your students have any questions.

A comprehensive program in theory and musicianship contributes to the education of every undergraduate Eastman student, with courses for the well-rounded musician, including analysis, style composition, improvisation, and music making. Graduate students engage in advanced study with a world-class fa...

09/29/2025

Yale professor Richard Cohn, an Eastman Theory Alumnus, is to lead the University of Coimbra’s MusicAnalytica, a € 2.5 million interdisciplinary project aiming to bridge music, mathematics, anthropology, computing, and neuroscience to explore the nature of musical time. The project was created by José Oliveira Martins, a former Eastman faculty member who now serves as the coordinator of the project.

Having taught at Yale and the University of Chicago for the past 40 years, Cohn shares that he became increasingly interested in the intersections of music and language. In this project, Cohn aspires to “begin building a research infrastructure for people interested in musical time.” To learn more, click on the link below for the coverage in Publico, the national "paper of record" in Portugal, and an English translation.

09/18/2025

With great sadness, we share the passing of
Professor Robert Gauldin (1931–2025).

Robert (Bob) Gauldin ’56E (MM), ’59E (PhD), Professor of Music Theory Emeritus at the Eastman School of Music, passed away on September 14, 2025, at the age of 94. A distinguished scholar, teacher, and composer, Gauldin taught at Eastman from 1963 until his retirement in 1997. His widely used textbooks—including Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music—and numerous publications established him as a leading voice in the field.

A graduate of North Texas State University and Eastman, Gauldin’s early career included teaching at William Carey College, which later awarded him an honorary doctorate. His honors include the BMI Award, the Berkshire String Quartet Prize, and a Ford Foundation grant supporting contemporary music at Eastman. He also held appointments at Oxford University’s Worcester College as the R.T. French Visiting Professor and served as president of the Society for Music Theory. In recognition of his contributions, Eastman established the Gauldin Acquisition Fund for Rare Books in Music Theory at the Sibley Music Library.

“When I was a student at Eastman in the 1980s, I took counterpoint and pedagogy of theory with Bob Gauldin,” recalled Minehan Family Professor Emerita of Music Theory Betsy Marvin ’81E (MA), ’89E (PhD). “In the counterpoint class, we used typescripts of what was to become his influential textbook. Most classes had us gathered around the piano singing and playing our work while he critiqued our technique—later handing it back with a big black Flair marker. He also had a sense of humor. Bob influenced generations of students at Eastman through his teaching, textbooks, and research.” His legacy endures in the countless musicians and scholars he inspired.

07/18/2025

We’re excited to announce that Professors John Covach and Matthew BaileyShea, both holding appointments in the Music Theory Department at the Eastman School of Music and the Arthur Satz Department of Music at the University of Rochester, have been appointed to named professorships by the University.
Professor John Covach has been named the Arthur Satz Professor of the Humanities, while Professor Matthew BaileyShea has been named the Dean’s Professor of Music. Both prestigious named professorships recognize the extraordinary contributions of Professors Covach and BaileyShea as researchers, scholars, and teachers.

07/10/2025

David Beach (1938-2025), Professor of Music Theory at Eastman from 1974–1996, and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Rochester from 1994–1996, died surrounded by love, family, and music on June 20. Following his distinguished scholarly career at Eastman and the University of Rochester, David served as Dean of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. His publications, mainly in the areas of Schenkerian theory and analysis and eighteenth-century music theories (especially those of Johann Phillip Kirnberger) included six books, four edited collections, and numerous articles and book chapters, and his scholarly productivity continued unabated through his retirement. David served as chair of the Eastman music theory department from 1981–1990, and advised numerous Ph.D. and M.A. students who themselves went on to eminent careers in music theory. His knowledge of, and commitment to, the classical and romantic canon was deep, with special focus on the instrumental music of Mozart and Schubert. His scholarly and pedagogical legacy, and his commitment to supporting younger scholars, are a model for all who knew him.

Emerita Prof. Betsy Marvin adds the following reminiscence: “Under David Beach’s leadership, the Theory Department increased in size and prominence, with important faculty hires and an expanded PhD program and curriculum. Given the later trajectory of his career, some may be surprised to learn that in the late 1970s, Beach taught not only Schenkerian analysis but also post-tonal theory and analysis. His teaching inspired me to change my major to music theory, and he later advised my masters’ thesis on orchestral pieces by Webern—a chapter of which became my first publication. David Beach was an encouraging mentor and colleague, and he will be missed.”