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Past Publication Awards

The Society for Music Theory awards recognition for significant contributions to music theory, analysis, or history of theory. Eligibility extends to books and articles in English, published between January 1 and December 31 for three years prior to the year of the award. To nominate a publication for a 2017 Publication Award, please see the a Publication Award Nomination page on this web site. Past recipients are listed below.

  • The Wallace Berry Award is given for a distinguished book by an author of any age or career stage.
  • The Outstanding Publication Award is given for a distinguished article by an author of any age or career stage.
  • The Emerging Scholar Award (Article) is given for an article published no more than seven calendar years after the author’s receipt of the Ph.D. (or, in the case of someone who does not hold a Ph.D., before the author reaches the age of forty).
  • The Emerging Scholar Award (Book) is given for a book published no more than seven calendar years after the author’s receipt of the Ph.D. (or, in the case of someone who does not hold a Ph.D., before the author reaches the age of forty).
  • The Outstanding Multi-Author Collection is given for a distinguished multi-author collection.

2019

  • Wallace Berry Award: Jason Yust, Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018).
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Jennifer Iverson, “Invisible Collaboration: The Dawn and Evolution of elektronische Musik,” Music Theory Spectrum 39, no. 2 (October 1, 2017): 200–222.
  • Emerging Scholar Award (book): Edward Klorman, Mozart’s Music of Friends: Social Interplay in the Chamber Works (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
  • Emerging Scholar Award (article): Chris Brody, “Parametric Interaction in Tonal Repertoires,” Journal of Music Theory 60, no. 2 (October 1, 2016): 97–148.
  • Outstanding Multi-Author Publication Award: Scott Murphy, ed., Brahms and the Shaping of Time (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2018).
  • Citation of Special Merit: Richard Ashley and Renee Timmers, eds., The Routledge Companion to Music Cognition (Routledge, 2017).

2018

  • Wallace Berry Award: Steven Vande Moortele, The Romantic Overture and Musical Form from Rossini to Wagner. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Anna Zayaruznaya, “Intelligibility Redux: Motets and the Modern Medieval Sound.” Music Theory Online 23/2 (2017).
  • Outstanding Multi-Author Collection: Markus Neuwirth and Pieter Bergé, eds. What is a Cadence? Theoretical and Analytical Perspectives on Cadences in the Classical Repertoire. Leuven University Press, 2015.
  • Emerging Scholar Award (article): Bryan J. Parkhurst, “Making a Virtue of Necessity: Schenker and Kantian Teleology.” Journal of Music Theory 61/1 (2017): 59–109
  • Emerging Scholar Award (book): Andrew Hicks, Composing the World: Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos. Oxford University Press, 2017.

2017

  • Wallace Berry Award: Daniel Harrison, Pieces of Tradition: An Analysis of Contemporary Tonal Music. Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Vasili Byros, “Prelude on a Partimento: Invention in the Compositional Pedagogy of the German States in the Time of J. S. Bach.” Music Theory Online 21/3 (2015). http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.15.21.3/mto.15.21.3.byros.html
  • Emerging Scholar Award (article): Matthew Boyle and Paul Sherrill, “Galant Recitative Schemas.” Journal of Music Theory 59/1 (2015): 1–61.
  • Emerging Scholar Award (book): Seth Monahan, Mahler’s Symphonic Sonatas. Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Carl Schachter, The Art of Tonal Analysis: Twelve Lessons in Schenkerian Theory. Edited by Joseph N. Straus. Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • Outstanding Multi-Author Collection: Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, eds. Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers (Concert Music, 1960–2000). Oxford University Press, 2016.

2016

  • Wallace Berry Award: Ruth DeFord, Tactus, Mensuration, and Rhythm in Renaissance Music. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Catherine Losada, “Complex Multiplication, Structure, and Process: Harmony and Form in Boulez’s Structures II.” Music Theory Spectrum 36/1 (2014): 1-35.
  • Emerging Scholar Award (article): Robert Hasegawa, "Clashing Harmonic Systems in Haas’s Blumenstück and in vain." Music Theory Spectrum 37/2 (2015): 204-23.
  • Emerging Scholar Award (book): Roger Mathew Grant, Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era. Oxford University Press, 2014.
  • Citation of Special Merit: David Lewin, untitled essay on Morgengruß, in David Schwarz and Richard Cohn, eds., David Lewin's Morgengruß: Text, Context, Commentary. Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Citation of Special Merit: John Rothgeb, ed., Beethoven's Last Piano Sonatas: An Edition with Elucidation. Vols. 1–4. Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • Outstanding Multi-Author Award: David Beach and Yosef Goldenberg, eds. Bach to Brahms Essays on Musical Design and Structure. University of Rochester Press., 2015.

2015

  • Wallace Berry Award: Jack Boss, Schoenberg's Twelve-Tone Music: Symmetry and the Musical Idea. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Joseph N. Straus, "Harmony and Voice Leading in the Music of Stravinsky." Music Theory Spectrum 36/1 (2014) 1-33.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Seth Monahan, "Action and Agency Revisited," Journal of Music Theory 57/2: 321-71.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Danuta Mirka, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

2014

  • Wallace Berry Award: Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2013.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Nathan Martin, "Rameau's Changing Views on Supposition and Suspension." Journal of Music Theory 56 (2012) 121-67.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Benjamin Steege, Helmholtz and the Modern Listener. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

2013

2012

  • Wallace Berry Award: Janet Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Peter Franck, "'A Fallacious Concept': Invertible Counterpoint at the Twelfth within the Ursatz," Music Theory Spectrum 32/2 (Fall 2010): 121-44.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Steven Rings, Tonality and Transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Edward Gollin and Alexander Rehding, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Riemannian Music Theories. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

2011

  • Wallace Berry Award: Danuta Mirka, Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787–1791. Oxford University Press, 2010.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Joseph Straus, "Voice Leading in Set-Class Space," Journal of Music Theory 49.1 (2005): 45–108.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Benjamin Levy, "Shades of the Studio: Electronic Influences on Ligeti’s Apparitions," Perspectives of New Music 47.2 (2009): 59–87.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Maureen Carr, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella: A Facsimile of the Sources and Sketches. A-R Editions, 2010.

2010

  • Wallace Berry Award: Nicholas Cook, The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Dora Hanninen, "Associative Sets, Categories, and Music Analysis," Journal of Music Theory 48/2 (2004), 147–218.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Michiel Schuijer, Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Evan Jones, editor: Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String Quartet, 2 vol., ed. Evan Jones. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2009.

2009

  • Wallace Berry Award: Robert Gjerdingen Music in the Galant Style. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Ian Quinn, "General Equal-Tempered Harmony (Introduction and Part I)," Perspectives of New Music 44/2 (2006), 6–50, and “General Equal-Tempered Harmony: Parts II and III," Perspectives of New Music 45/1 (2007) 114–58.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Scott Murphy, "On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms’s Op. 25,” Music Analysis 26/3 (2007), 323–52.

2008

  • Wallace Berry Award: James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy Elements of Sonata Theory: Norms, Types, and Deformations in the Late-Eighteenth-Century Sonata. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: L. Poundie Burstein, "The Off-Tonic Return in Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58, and Other Works," Music Analysis 24/3 (2005), 1–43.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Su Yin Mak, "Schubert's Sonata Forms and the Poetics of the Lyric," Journal of Musicology 23/2 (2006), 263–306.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Canons and Canonic Techniques, 14th–16th Centuries: Theory, Practice, and Reception History, Katelijne Schiltz and Bonnie J. Blackburn Peeters, editors. Leuven and Belgium: Peeters, 2007.

2007

  • Wallace Berry Award: David Huron, Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Elizabeth Eva Leach, "Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone: Fourteenth-Century Music Theory and the Directed Progression” Music
    Theory Spectrum     28/1 (2006), 1–21.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Matthew Bribitzer-Stull, "The A-flat–C–E Complex: The Origin and Function of Chromatic Major Third Collections in Nineteenth-Century Music," Music Theory Spectrum 28/2 (2006), 167–90.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Deborah Stein, editor: Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis, ed. Deborah Stein. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

2006

  • Wallace Berry Award: Anna Maria Busse Berger, Medieval Music and the Art of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Anthony Pople, "Using Complex Set Theory for Tonal Analysis: An Introduction to the Tonalities Project, Music Analysis.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: David Carson Berry, "The Meaning(s) of ‘Without': An Exploration of Liszt's Bagatelle ohne Tonart," 19th-Century Music 27/3 (2004), 230–62.
  • Citation of Special Merit: David Lewin, Studies in Music with Text. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Milton Babbit, The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, edited by Stephen Peles, with Steven Dembski, Andrew Mead, and Joseph Straus. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

2005

  • Wallace Berry Award: Marc Perlman, Unplayed Melodies: Javanese Gamelan and the Genesis of Music Theory. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Michael Klein, "Chopin's Fourth Ballade as Musical Narrative," Music Theory Spectrum 26/1 ( 2004): 23–55.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Julian Hook, "Uniform Triadic Transformations," Journal of Music Theory 46/1–2 (2002), 57–126.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Claude Palisca, editor and translator: Vincenzo Galilei, Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music, trans., ed., and introduction by Claude Palisca. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Heinrich Schenker, Der Tonwille, 2 vols., edited by William Drabkin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–05.

2004

  • Wallace Berry Award: Lawrence Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Alfred Cramer, "Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie: A Principle of Early Atonal Harmony," Music Theory Spectrum 24/1 (2002), 1–34.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Ian Quinn, "Listening to Similarity Relations," Perspectives of New Music 39/2 (2001). 108–58.

2003

  • Wallace Berry Award: Fred Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: David E. Cohen, "The Imperfect Seeks its Perfection: Harmonic Progression, Directed Motion, and Aristotelian Physics," Music Theory Spectrum 23/2 (2001), 139–69.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: David Temperley, The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, edited by Thomas Christensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

2002

  • Wallace Berry Award: Harald Krebs, Fantasy Pieces: Metric Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: David Huron, "Tone and Voice: A Derivation of the Rules of Voice-Leading from Perceptual Principles," Music Perception 19/1 (Fall 2001). 1–64.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Martin Scherzinger, "Negotiating the Music-Theory/African-Music Nexus: A Political Critique of Ethnomusicological Anti-Formalism and a Strategic Analysis of the Harmonic Patterning of the Shona Mbira Song 'Nyamaropa'," Perspectives of New Music 39/1 (2001). 5–117.

2001

  • Wallace Berry Award: Cristle Collins Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory: Hearing with the Eyes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Robert Morris, "Voice-Leading Spaces," Music Theory Spectrum 20/2 (1998), 175–208.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Channan Willner, "Sequential Expansion and Handelian Phrase Rhythm," in Schenker Studies 2, Carl Schacther and Hedi Siegel, editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999: 192–221.

2000

  • Wallace Berry Award: Thomas Mathiesen, Apollo's Lyre. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

1999

  • Wallace Berry Award: William Caplin, Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Charles J. Smith, "Musical Form and Fundamental Structure: An Investigation of Schenker's Formenlehre," Music Analysis, 15/2-3 (1996), 191–297.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Norman Carey and David Clampitt, "Regions: A Theory of Tonal Spaces in Early Medieval Treatises," Journal of Music Theory 40/1 (1996), 113–47.
  • Emerging Scholar Award: Cristle Collins Judd, "Josquin's Gospel Motets and Chant-Based Tonality," in Tonal Structures in Early Music, edited by Cristle Collins Judd. New York: Garland, 1998: 109–54.

1998

  • Wallace Berry Award: Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Naomi Cumming, "The Subjectivities of 'Erbarme Dich,'" Music Analysis 16/1 (1997), 5–54.
  • Young Scholar Award: Robert Snarrenberg, Schenker’s Interpretive Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

1997

  • Wallace Berry Award: Allen Forte, American Popular Ballad. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995.
  • Wallace Berry Award: Robert Hatten, Musical Meaning in Beethoven. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1994.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Richard Cohn, "Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions," Music Analysis 15/1 (1996): 9–40.
  • Young Scholar Award: Leslie David Blasius, Schenker’s Argument and the Claims of Music Theory. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1996.

1996

  • Wallace Berry Award: Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Carl Schachter, “The Triad as Place and Action,” Music Theory Spectrum 17/2 (1995): 149–69.
  • Young Scholar Award: Joel Galand, “Form, Genre, and Style in the Eighteenth-Century Rondo,” Music Theory Spectrum 17/1 (1995): 27–52.
  • Young Scholar Award: Brian Hyer, “Reimag(in)ing Riemann,” Journal of Music Theory 39/1 (1995): 101–38.

1995

  • Wallace Berry Award: Warren Darcy, Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Oxford and New York: University of Oxford Press, 1993.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: John Roeder, “Interacting Pulse Streams in Schoenberg’s Atonal Polyphony,” Music Theory Spectrum 16/2 (1994): 231–49.
  • Young Scholar Award: Daniel Harrison, Harmonic Function in Tonal Music, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Ian Bent, editor. Music Analysis in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1994

1994

  • Wallace Berry Award: Thomas Christensen, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1993.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: Richard Cohn, "Transpositional Combination of Beat-Class Sets in Steve Reich’s Phase-Shifting Music" Perspectives of New Music 30/2
    (1992): 146–77.
  • Young Scholar Award: V. Kofi Agawu Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1991.

1993

  • Wallace Berry Award: Joel Lester, Compositional Theory in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge MA: University of Harvard Press, 1992.
  • Outstanding Publication Award: John Clough and Jack Douthett, "Maximally Even Sets" Journal of Music Theory 35 (1991): 93–173.
  • Young Scholar Award: Richard Kurth, “Mosaic Polyphony: Formal Balance, Imbalance, and Phrase Formation in the Prelude of Schoenberg's Suite, Op. 25,” Music Theory Spectrum 14 (1992): 188–208.
  • Young Scholar Award: Elizabeth West Marvin, “The Perception of Rhythm in Non-Tonal Music," Music Theory Spectrum 13 (1991): 61–78.

1992

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Wallace Berry, Musical Structure and Performance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
  • Young Scholar Award: Joseph Dubiel,"Three Essays on Milton Babbitt": [I] "Thick Array/Of Depth Immeasurable"; [II] "For Making This Occasion Necessary"; [III] "The Animation of Lists," Perspectives of New Music 28/2–30/1 (1990–1992).
  • Citation of Special Merit: Michael Friedman, Ear Training for 20th-Century Music. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

1991

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Joseph N. Straus, Remaking the Past. Cambridge MA: University of Harvard Press, 1990.
  • Young Scholar Award: Kevin Korsyn, “Schenker and Kantian Epistemology," Theoria 3 (1988): 1–58.
  • Citation of Special Merit: David Damschroder and David Russell Williams, Music Theory from Zarlino to Schenker. Stuyvesant NY: Pendragon Press, 1990.

1990

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Pieter C. van den Toorn, Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
  • Young Scholar Award: William Rothstein, Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music. New York: Schirmer, 1989.
  • Citation of Special Merit: Calvin Bower, translator: Boethius’s Fundamentals of Music, trans. Calvin Bower, ed. Claude Palisca. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

1989

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Lee Rothfarb, Ernst Kurth as Theorist and Analyst. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
  • Young Scholar Award: Andrew Mead, “Some Implications of the Pitch Class/Order Number Isomorphism Inherent in the Twelve-Tone System,” Perspectives of New Music36/2–27/1 (1988–1989).
  • Citation of Special Merit: John Rothgeb and Jürgen Thym, translators: Heinrich Schenker, Counterpoint, trans. John Rothgeb and Jürgen Thym. New York: Schirmer, 1987.

1988

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Robert Morris, Composition with Pitch Classes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
  • Young Scholar Award: Jonathan Bernard, The Music of Edgard Varèse. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

1987

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Robert Cogan, New Images of Musical Sound. Cambridge MA: University of Harvard Press, 1984.
  • Young Scholar Award: David Neumeyer, The Music of Paul Hindemith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.

1986

  • Outstanding Publication Award: Wayne Slawson, Sound Color. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
  • Young Scholar Award: Stephen V. Peles, “Interpretation of Sets in Multiple Dimensions,” Perspectives of New Music 22 (1983–1984).