Overview
I study the interrelations of music, mind, and body during the emergence of modern European musical cultures. How did the field of music cognition develop from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century? How did Enlightenment neurophysiology influence Romantic music? Many insights yielded by experiments in psychology for us today were available in early musical writings that prioritized introspection as method. I draw out from these writings—especially those that may be dismissed as merely speculative, amateurish, or effusive—the paradigms that also produced the most respected psychological, physiological, and philosophical treatises of their day. My book, (Oxford University Press, 2025), sheds new light on the history of music perception by focusing on music theory in the Scottish Enlightenment.
My current book project, “Art does not deliberate”: A History of Habit and Musical Performance, argues that, at least until the nineteenth century, musical performance was conceptualised as automatic and non-cognitive, and that this aspect of its history has been overshadowed by the Romantic view of musicians as inspired vessels for the conveyance of sublime—or devilish—experience. Surveying Medieval commentators, Renaissance heretics, Enlightenment physiologists and Romantic mesmerists (accompanied by ouds, kitharas, vielles, and keyboards), it demonstrates how the complex yet seemingly automatic behavior exhibited in musical performance has long provided thinkers a suggestive example by which to explore various conceptions of what it is to be human.
My other research interests include historical theories of attentive listening, a topic I explore together with Francesca Brittan in an edited collection entitled The Attentive Ear: Sound, Cognition, and Subjectivity (forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press), and the history of music theory in a global perspective, the subject of a major anthology I am co-curating together with Thomas Christensen and Lester Hu, entitled , (forthcoming with the University of Chicago's ).
Before coming to Cornell, I spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Columbia Society of Fellows, followed by six years as the Leader of the at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. My research has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Baden-Württemberg Landesstiftung, the Max Planck Gesellschaft, and the University of Chicago Neubauer Collegium. Recent prizes include a 2024 emerging scholar award (article) from the Society for Music Theory, the 2025 Society for Music Theory's Diversity Syllabus award, and the 2025 Diana McVeagh Prize for Best Book on British Music from the North American British Music Studies Association.
In my early twenties, I was concertmaster of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and a member of the and the , touring under the batons of Boulez, Barenboim and Abbado. I also enjoyed improvising, and collaborated with Jason Lindner, Omer Avital, Eran Zur, Victoria Hanna, and Yoyo Ma's Silk Road Project among others, at festivals including the Winter Jazz Fest, the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, and the BRIC Jazz Festival. Various aspects of these experiences inspired my academic path and continue to inform my research interests.
Research Focus
- History of music cognition
- Attention / distraction
- Music and habit
- Music and medicine
- Global histories of music theory
Publications
Books
- Oxford University Press, 2025. 296 pp. Open Access.
- with Thomas Christensen and Lester Hu, eds. . Under contract, University of Chicago . Open Access.
- with Felix Wörner and Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann, eds. Lexikon Schriften über Musik III: Musikästhetik in globaler Perspektive. Under contract, Bärenreiter Verlag.
- with Francesca Brittan, eds. The Attentive Ear: Sound, Cognition, and Subjectivity, 1800-1930. Forthcoming, the University of Pennsylvania Press. Open Access.
- with James Grande, eds. . Cambridge University Press, 2023. Open Access.
- 2025 Diana McVeagh Prize for Best Book on British Music, NABMSA
Peer-Reviewed Articles
- with David E. Cohen, “Exertion, Expectation, Synthesis: Aspects of Aural Perception in Descartes’s Compendium musicae.” Journal of Music Theory 69.2 (2025): 241–61.
- “.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 75.1 (2022), 1–37.
- “.” Music Theory Spectrum 44.1 (2022): 141–54.
- Society for Music Theory emerging scholar award, 2024
- “.” Journal of Musicology 38.2 (2021), 230–59.
- “.” Music Theory & Analysis 8.2 (2021), 327–340.
- “.” Journal of Sound Studies 6.2 (2020): 239–56.
- “” In colloquy, “Attention, Anxiety, and Audition’s Histories.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72.2 (2019), 552–557.
- “.” Journal of Music Theory 62.2, October (2018): 205–48.
- Finalist, Society for Music Theory emerging scholar award, 2019
- “.” SMT-V 4.3 (2018).
- “.” SMT-V 4.2 (2018).
- “.” Special issue, “Italian Music & the Medical 鶹Ƶ,” Laboratoire italien 20.2 (2017).
- “.” 19th-Century Music 38.2 (2014): 115–44.
- “” Current Musicology 97 (2014): 37–59.
- “.”&Բ;Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie 9.2 (2012): 227–43.
- “.”&Բ;Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies 4.2 (2011): 91–107.
Book Chapters
- with David E. Cohen and Nori Jacoby, “Consonant / Contingent: Five Case Studies on Musical-Cultural Diversity.” In Neurosciences of Music: Interdisciplinary Insights, ed. Jessica Grahn & Jonathan de Souza. Forthcoming, Oxford University Press.
- “At Adama: A Musical Vignette.” In , ed. Malcolm Miller. University of Rochester Press, 2025, 331–50.
- “‘Ossianic Sounds’: Berlioz on Memory.” In , ed. Francesca Brittan and Sarah Hibberd. Chicago University Press, 2024, 49–70.
- “Of Sound Minds and Tuning Forks: Neuroscience’s Vibratory Histories.” In , ed. Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Psyche Loui, & Deirdre Loughridge. MIT Press, 2023, 115–129. [Featured on The MIT Press Reader, June 2023]
- With James Grande, “Introduction.” In . Cambridge University Press, 2023.
- “Operatic Fantasies in Early Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry.” In , ed. David Trippett & Benjamin Walton. Cambridge University Press, 2019, 63–83.
- with Stanley Finger, “Musical Glasses, Metal Reeds, and Broken Hearts: Two Cases of Melancholia Treated by New Musical Instruments.” In , ed. Penelope Gouk, Jacomien Prins, Wiebke Thormaehlen, & James Kennaway. Routledge, 2018, 77–92.
- “Tafillalt’s ‘Soulmate’ and the Israeli Piyyut Revival.” In , ed. Ruth F. Davis. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, 165–80.
Special Issues
- with Caleb Mutch and David E. Cohen, eds. Special issue on the pre-history of music cognition, forthcoming, Journal of Music Theory 69.2, Fall 2025.
- with Francesca Brittan, eds. Colloquy on “,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72.2 (2019), 541–80.
Introductions
- with Francesca Brittan, “Sound Attentions.” In The Attentive Ear: Sound, Cognition, and Subjectivity, 1800–1930. In production, the University of Pennsylvania Press.
- with Caleb Mutch and David E. Cohen, “Towards a Pre-History of Music Cognition.” Introduction to special issue on the prehistory of music cognition. Journal of Music Theory 69.2 (2025): 207–11.
- with James Grande, “Introduction.” In . Cambridge Studies in Romanticism Series, Cambridge University Press, 2023.
- with Francesca Brittan, to colloquy on “Attention, Anxiety, and Audition’s Histories.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 72.2 (2019): 541–46.
Reviews
- “.” Music & Letters 99.1 (2018): 126–28.
- Social History of Medicine 29.3 (2016): 638–39.
- “Ossian’s Folk Psychology,” by John Savarese [English Literary History 80.3.” Journal of Literature and Science 7.2 (2014): 90–91.
- “.” Asian Music 45.2 (2014): 132–33.
Encyclopedia Entries
- Entries in New Grove / Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press
- “Walter Young,” 2025
- “John Holden,” 2025
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.13200 - “Anne Gunn,” (with Brianna Robertson-Kirkland), 2025
- “Walter Young,” 2025
- Entries in Thinking Music, ed, Thomas Christensen, Lester Hu, & Carmel Raz
- “Anne Young’s Musical Games (1801)”
- “John Holden’s Essay towards a Rational System of Music (1770)”
- Entries in Lexikon der musikalischen Schriften II, ed. Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann & Felix Wörner. Bärenreiter Verlag, 2022.
- “John Holden, ‘Essay towards a Rational System of Music,’” pp. 388–390.
- “James Beattie, ‘On Poetry & Music, As They Affect the Mind,’” pp. 92–94.
- “Christian Conrad Moritz, ‘Die Wirkungen der äußern Sinne in psychologischer Rücksicht: Über das musikalische Gehör’” (with David E. Cohen), pp. 605–607.
Public Writing
- &Բ;“” JStor Daily, November 2025
- “.” Public Domain Review, May 16, 2019.
- “.” (with David E. Cohen, Roger M. Grant, Andrew Hicks, Nathan J. Martin, Caleb Mutch, Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann, Felix Wörner, and Anna Zayaruznaya). IMS Blog: Musicological Brainfood 3.1 (2019).
- “.” Musicology Now, October 2015.
