Selected research writings of mine, with varying degrees of completion and proof reading. Some are immediately available as PDF files. If interested in the others, please contact me.

History of Music Theory >> In this area I combine the history of music and my interest and views in the history and philosophy of science. My oblique approach to the philosophical issues involved is in the main Kuhnian, although with an acknowledgment of the opposition to Kuhn in the recent history of science. The musicological reference I have to mention is Leo Treitler. On the history of the notion of 'musical period' (talk at the meeting of the AMS Allegheny chapter, 2005). Notes on the notion of Mehrdeutigkeit (projected chapter for my Dissertation on Liszt's "Bagatelle Without Tonality," 2005) On the question, and the answer, of mode (2004)

The 'Breakdown' of Tonality >> This is my main area of research, and the point of convergence of the other topics in this list. The collapse of tonality, in my view, is a particularly tantalizing and symptomatic aspect of 'Fin-de-sičcle Vienna,' and my approach stems from the philosophy of Ernest Gellner (who calls the situation 'the Habsburg Dilemma'). Caveat on the word 'breakdown:' I use here it as one of many possibilities (exhaustion, collapse, abandonment, ...), without, as far as I can see, letting it prejudge the issue. The philosophy of tonal music (projected chapter, still a draft, of my dissertation on Liszt's "Bagatelle Without Tonality", 2005) Schoenberg and the Habsburg Dilemma (a research program more than its conclusions, 2003)

Historiography >> Reflections on issues such as teleology, determinism, and the like. In the main I agree with the views of Leo Treitler, although drawing more specifically on the historiography of science, and with a more direct exploration of materialist (Darwinian) evolution, as opposed to the naive idea of a directed, endogenous progress of Lamarckian evolution. Musicology and its Other (the 'Other' is science; 2002) The arrow of change (projected chapter of my dissertation on Liszt's "Bagatelle Without Tonality", and a full, if brief, manifesto of my current historiographical views; 2005)

Music Analysis >> Liszt's "Bagatelle Without Tonality": Analytical Perspectives (analysis, Schenkerian reduction, tools inherited from tonal analysis; 2006) Analysis of Brahms's Quintet, Op.~111: II. Adagio (2003) Analysis of Schoenberg's Angst und Hoffen (2003) Remarks on two uses of passacaglia form (Lutoslawski's Piano Concerto and Schnittke's Cello Concerto No. 2; 2003) Analysis of my An Anatomy of the World (my M.A. thesis and an independent paradigmatic analysis of the piece; 2003) Analytical overview of Ben Johnston's Suite for Microtonal Piano (2002) On Bach's Sinfonias (2002) About Dallapicolla's Goethe Lied iii (2001)

Other >> The nature of Bach's Italian Concerto BWV 971 (published in Bach 36/1, 2005) Baudolino in the twilight (science, fantasy, and epistemology in Umberto Eco's fourth novel; 2004) Steinitz and the inception of modern chess (a 'scientific revolution' in the realm of chess; 2003) The quest for influence (on musical nationalism; 2002) The process of musical creation: state of research (2001)