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Vincent Benitez
Maureen A. Carr
Thomas Cody
Taylor Greer
Steve Hopkins
Eric McKee
Vincent Benitez joined the Penn State School of Music faculty in 2005 and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music theory and analysis. Prior to his appointment at Penn State, he taught music theory and analysis at Eastern Michigan University and Bowling Green State University, and organ and music theory at Wartburg College and Lyon College, where he was also College Organist. He holds the Ph.D. degree in music theory from Indiana University, where he wrote his dissertation on Olivier Messiaen's opera Saint Francois d'Assise, and the D.M.A. degree in organ performance from Arizona State University, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on an analysis of the musical-rhetorical figures in J. S. Bach’s Orgelbuchlein and their implications for performance. He also holds the M.M. degree in music theory and composition from Arizona State University, and the B.M. and M.M. degrees in organ performance from the University of North Texas.
His current research focuses on the music of Olivier Messiaen. He is writing a bio-bibliography on Messiaen (Olivier Messiaen: A Guide to Research) that will be published by Routledge Publishing in early 2007. He has published articles on Messiaen in the Journal of Musicological Research, the fourth volume of the Poznan Studies on Opera (Theories of Opera), Music Theory Online, and the College Music Symposium, and reviews of books devoted to Messiaen in MLA NOTES and the Indiana Theory Review. Benitez has presented his research on Messiaen at national and international music conferences, which include papers delivered at the Fourth Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England; the Dublin International Conference on Music Analysis, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; the Fourteenth Nordic Musicological Congress, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland; OXMAC 2000, University of Oxford, Oxford, England; the Third Annual Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey; and the National Meeting of the College Music Society, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Benitez has additional research interests in the analysis of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, the history of music theory, and popular music. He has published articles and reviews on these topics in The American Organist, BACH, Diapason, GAMUT, and the Indiana Theory Review. Benitez has studied organ with Marilyn Keiser, Larry Smith, Michael Corzine, Robert Clark, Charles S. Brown, and Donald Willing and has played recitals throughout the country. He has also studied composition with Randall Shinn, Glenn Hackbarth, William Latham, and Merrill Ellis.
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Maureen A. Carris a Professor of Music and teaches undergraduate and graduate Music Theory. She has a B.A. from Marywood College; an M.F.A. from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
During the summer of 2005, she studied the collaboration between Stravinsky and Picasso for Pulcinella (1920) in the archives of Paris, London, and Basel. In support of this project, she received a travel grant from the College of Arts and Architecture Committee on Creative Accomplishment and Research. In the fall of 2005, she was a scholar-in-residence at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State. Her most recent sabbatical (2006-2007) enabled her to do research at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland (her tenth visit to this archive) on “Stravinsky: the Path to Neoclassicism from 1914 – 1926” a project that she plans as her fourth book on the music of Igor Stravinsky.
Carr has presented papers on her Stravinsky research at the International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music at Goldsmiths, University of London (2001); the Congress of the International Musicological Society at Katholieke Univeriteit Leuven (2002); the Society for Music Theory in Columbus (2002); the Society of Musical Analysis and the Royal Music Association (2004); the Bristol Institute of Hellenic and Roman Studies, University of Bristol (2004); the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Bruno Walter Auditorium), Lincoln Center, New York (2004); the Dublin International Conference of Music Analysis (2005); and the American Musicological Society in Washington, D.C. (2005); the Congress of the International Musicological Society at the University of Zurich (2007). She participated in the International Orpheus Academy for Music Theory in Ghent, Belgium (2003, 2004).
She is chair of the Committee on Professional Development for the Society for Music Theory (SMT) and serves on the National Council of the American Musicological Society (AMS) and has served as a member of the board of directors of the Music Theory Society of New York State, as a member of the SMT Committee on the status of Women, and as a member of the SMT Executive Board. She has also served as a member off the Undergraduate Commission of the National Association of Schools of Music, secretary of the College Music Society, and secretary of the Music Theory Society of New York State.
Carr received an Outstanding Teaching Award from the Penn State College of Arts and Architecture (1995) and was named a Distinguished Alumna by the School of Music at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1998). She was a recipient of the Marywood University Alumni Association's Business/Professional Achievement Award (2004) and the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for the Arts and Humanities (2005).Click here for more on Maureen Carr's publications
Thomas Cody teaches freshman and sophomore music theory and aural skills. He holds a Bachelors of Music in Guitar Performance and a Masters of Music in Music Theory and Composition, both from Youngstown State University. He is currently finishing the requirements for a Ph.D. in Music Theory from The Ohio State University. His dissertation focuses on Denis Delair's accompaniment treatise of 1690 and the development of harmonic theory that is implied in the text and musical examples of practical French accompaniment treatises from 1660-1733. While at OSU, Thomas received awards for outstanding teaching and scholarship. He also taught music theory for one year at Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center--a high school for the performing arts located in Columbus, Ohio. His research interests include: History of Music Theory, Music Theory Pedagogy, Performance Practice, Music for the Guitar and for the Lute, and Arranging.
Taylor A. Greer is an associate professor and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music theory and analysis. Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, he received a bachelor of arts in music and philosophy from Yale College, a master of music from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in music theory from Yale University. He joined the Penn State faculty in 1987.
Much of his research has focused on the thought of Charles L. Seeger, the twentieth-century American composer, theorist, and philosopher, for which he was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 1991. In his book, A Question of Balance: Charles Seeger's Philosophy of Music (University of California Press, 1998), he argues that Seeger's aesthetic philosophy served as the seed from which his writings in music compositional theory, criticism, and musicology all grew. Greer also contributed an essay on Seeger's theory of criticism for the collection Understanding Charles Seeger: Pioneer in American Musicology, ed. Bell Yung and Helen Ries (University of Illinois Press, 1999). In addition, he has published essays and reviews in Journal of Music Theory, Theory and Practice, and In Theory Only, and has delivered papers at the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the Modernist Studies Association.
His recent research is focused on Charles T. Griffes, the turn-of-the-century American composer whose works form a unique synthesis of the late nineteenth-century romantics and the French and Russian modernists. Other research interests include turn-of-the-century French art song, early modernism, and Schenkerian theory.
Greer is currently a member of the program committee for the Society for Music Theory 2004 Annual Meeting, and in 2005 will serve as chair of that committee.
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Music theorist, composer, and performer, Steve Hopkins is an Assistant Professor of Music at Penn State University. Before his arrival at Penn State in 2003, Hopkins served as Music Director at North Florida Community College for six years. He holds masters and Ph.D. degrees in music theory from Florida State University, where he was the recipient of a University Fellowship. His undergraduate degree is from the College of William and Mary.
Dr. Hopkins is a founding member of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, and was appointed Secretary Pro Tempore for the society's founding meeting. His research interests include the music of Scriabin and Messiaen, as well as jazz. His most recent paper, read at the Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities in January 2007, is “Herbie Hancock’s Collaboration with Sting in a Performance of ‘Sister Moon’: A Renewal of Art Song in the Twenty-first Century.”
Hopkins’ compositions have been performed by various soloists, and vocal and instrumental ensembles in Florida, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and—most recently—Hawaii, where the composer performed his recent album of solo piano compositions, Meditations in Blue. Performances of Hopkins’ works at Penn State University include his anthem, “And the Glory of the Lord Filled the Temple,” performed by the University Choir in March 2006. In March 2007 Hopkins’ jazz tune, “Second Spring,” was performed by Professor of Saxophone David Stambler’s jazz sextet during the Penn State School of Music’s 2007 Jazz Festival, with guest artists Dick Oatts on alto saxophone and Jim McFalls on trombone.
Eric McKee, Associate Professor of Music Theory, joined the Penn State faculty in 1992 and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in music theory. He received his doctorate from The University of Michigan, where he served as editor of the music theory journal, In Theory Only.
Besides numerous presentations at national conferences in the United States, McKee has presented his research in England, Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Canada. His articles have appeared in such journals as Music Theory Spectrum, Music Analysis, In Theory Only, and Theory and Practice.
McKee's research projects have explored the musical depictions of death and spirituality in 18th and 19th century music, Schenkerian approaches to tonal form, phrase rhythm in the music of Mozart, and the minuets of Bach and Mozart. His current research, for which he was awarded a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, focuses on the influence of the dance in Chopin's music.