Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory

RMSMT is the professional society for music theorists serving the Rocky Mountain region, which covers the U.S. states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Rocky Mountain Scholar's Conference 2023

Conference Dates: Friday and Saturday, March 31-April 1.  Location: Utah State University, Logan UT.

Call for Papers

PDF of Call For Papers

The Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory is pleased to announce a call for presentations for the Annual Meeting of the society on Friday and Saturday, March 31–April 1, 2023, hosted by Utah State University. The conference will be held jointly with the Southwest Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEMSW) and the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Musicological Society (AMS-RMC). We are pleased to announce that Dr. Jake Johnson of Oklahoma City University will deliver a keynote.

Utah State University is located in Logan, the heart of the scenic Cache Valley. It is well served by transportation including a connection to Salt Lake City International Airport via a frequent 1.5-hour shuttle service. Additional information about conference local arrangements, including hotel, will be available as the event draws closer.

This conference will be held in-person only. As we near the date of the conference, however, we will invite remote participation in the business meeting, at which we will (in addition to our usual agenda) discuss the possibility of future hybrid/online conferences.

The Program Committee invites proposals from scholars and students for individual papers (20 minutes in length, with 10 minutes for discussion). Proposals may address any topic related to music theory, analysis, or music theory pedagogy. Proposals should be uploaded electronically as PDFs to this Google form (preferred) or emailed to the society President according to the instructions in the form.

Instructions for proposal preparation and submission:

Submissions should comprise three elements: (1) a proposal in pdf format; (2) a second pdf with an abstract; and (3) identification information. When ready, all three elements can be uploaded at this Google form, which also has instructions for email submission if you prefer.

• Your proposal should consist of no more than 500 words, including any footnotes or endnotes. (One mathematical equation may be counted as one word). If desired, a maximum of four additional pages of supplementary materials may be appended (such as musical examples, diagrams, and selected bibliography); these pages will not be counted within the 500-word limit. The proposal should include the title of the paper but must exclude the author’s name and any other identifying information. Any references to the author’s own work must occur in the third person (Note: also ensure that any self-identification is removed from the file name and the Document “Properties” field). The entire proposal with supplementary materials should be gathered into a single pdf.
• Your abstract should consist of no more than 250 words, and should be written in a manner suitable for publication in the conference program should your proposal be accepted. (All of the same considerations regarding non-disclosure of the author’s identity must be applied). The abstract should be in a separate pdf from the proposal.
• The Google form will also request the following identificatory information: title of the proposal, author’s name, author’s address, author’s institutional affiliation or independent scholar/student status, author’s email address, any technical or audio-visual requirements, and whether you wish to be considered for the Best Student Paper Award (see below).

Labeling your electronic documents:

1. For both abstract and proposal, please include the title of the proposal in the document itself (above the main body of text).
2. For both abstract and proposal, please name the file with a short form of your title, the word “abstract” or “proposal,” and RMSMT2022. For example:

        Hexachordal_Combinatoriality_in_The_Chronic_RMSMT2022_Abstract.pdf

Please note that only complete submissions will be considered, and that submission implies intent to attend the conference if accepted. Submissions must be received no later than 5pm MST, Sunday, January 8, 2023. Any questions may be directed to Tim Chenette, timothy.chenette@usu.edu.

Best Student Paper Award:

Students who wish to be considered for the Best Student Paper Award (BSPA) must declare their interest in the Google form. The student will then be additionally required to submit an electronic copy of the paper itself—the version to be read at the conference (i.e., not an entire dissertation chapter)—along with any tables, figures, or musical examples by Wednesday, March 1, 2023 (to the same email address: timothy.chenette@usu.edu).

Information about the conference format, registration process, and donating to the BSPA will be posted on the chapter webpage (https://arts.unco.edu/music/rocky-mountain-society-music-theory/).

New Leadership 

The Rocky Mountain Society for Music Theory would also like to announce new leadership. 

Tim Chenette, President
Associate Professor of Music, Utah State University
Email:  timothy.chenette@usu.edu

Reiner Krämer, President-Elect
Associate Professor of Music Theory, University of Northern Colorado
Email:  reiner.kramer@unco.edu

Past Conferences

• 2022

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2022 Program

  2022 Best Student Paper:  Derek Myler, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”: The Phenomenology of Pedals in 1960s/70s Pop-Rock

• 2021

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2021 Program

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2021 Abstracts

  2021 Best Student Paper:  Alexandrea Jonker, "Keeping the 'Ear' in 'Ear Training': Incorporating 'Blind Hearing' for Improved Aural Skills"

• 2020

  Due to COVID19, the 2020 Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference was canceled.  We offered to make papers available here for anyone who wished to provide them.  In the very near future, this portal will contain all the papers and any audio files sent by those presenters who were not able to make their presentations due to the cancellation of the conference.

  2020 Conference Schedule - Preliminary Program

  Here are the papers from those scholar's who chose to submit their work in print format in order to share their research with the societies.

  AMS

  Karin Buer, University of Northern Colorado, "Extra-compositional References and Private Meaning in Clara Schumann’s Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 20"
  

  Buer Audio Files

  Kelsey, Smith, University of Northern Colorado, "Romantic Topics in Elgar’s Cello Concerto"

  Smith Audio Files 

  Jason Thompson, University of Northern Colorado, "The interaction of Theater and Sacred Music: Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Setting of the Dies irae" 

  Nevi L. Zerkle, University of New Mexico, "Musical Hybridity, Nostalgia, and the “Folk” Element in Pagan Folk Music"

  SEM

  Micayla Bellamy, Colorado State University, "The Challenges in Integrating Asian Choral Music in School Repertoire

  Nicholas Booker, University of Northern Colorado, "So Many Reasons for Revival: Politics and Commercialism in the Second Wave of the Folk Revival in the United States, 1958–1965" 

  Keyania Campbell, University of Arizona, "Sustainable Songs: Sound Archives in Ecologically Sustainable Musical Culture"

  Herman Luis Chavez. Colorado State University, "Bolivian Appropriation and Transformation: Ideology in the Tarijan Cueca as Popular Music" 
  
  Kelsey A. Fuller, University of Colorado, Boulder, “ 'Reindeer are better than people:' Indigenous Representation in Disney's Frozen"

  Eduardo Garcia, University of New Mexico, "(Re)sounding Identity: Visual and Musical Response to the El Paso Mass Shooting"

  Athita Kuankachorn, University of Northern Colorado, "The Evolution of Political Songs in the Development of Democracy in Thailand"

  Mario Yuzo Nieto, University of Northern Colorado, "Beyond The Canon: An Analytical Study Of Metrical Dissonances and Hypermetric Irregularity in Música Norteña/O De La Frontera" 

  Golriz Shayani, University of Texas, Austin, "Songs Woven in the Warp and Weft of Persian Rugs" 

  Brandon Stover, University of Colorado, Boulder, "Skyping Shakuhachi: How Internet Mediation Affects Transmission and Japaneseness of Shakuhachi Practice"

  Sopon Suwannakit, Western Oregon University, "The Historical Overview of Post-Ottoman Musical Influences in Jazz since the 1950s and Armenian Jazz Bands in the New York Scene since 1975" 

  Lydia Wagenknecht, University of Colorado, Boulder, " 'WE FIGHT FOR WHAT IS OURS:' DESTABILIZATION OF VOICE IN CANTATA POPULAR SANTA MARÍA DE IQUIQUE"
   

  SMT

  Owen Belcher, University of Missouri-Kansas City, "Caroline Shaw’s Musical Portraits"

  Matt Chiu, Eastman School of Music, "Putting the Math in Math Rock"

  Michael Dekovich, University of Oregon, "Bridges to Free-Standing Bridges – or – The Mutable Modular Model of Metal Music"

  Richard Lee, University of Georgia, "Trauma, Anxiety (of Influence), Belatedness, and Sonata Structure in Rochberg’s (Serial) Second Symphony"

  Tyler Osborne, University of Oregon, "Beyond Becoming: Applications of Goethe’s Progressive and Retrogressive Metamorphosis in Fanny Hensel’s Piano Sonatas"

• 2019

  2019 Conference Schedule

  2019 Conference Abstracts

  2019 Best Student Paper: Nathan Pell, "Tempo as Form:  Orchestral Recordings from 1910-1940 in LIght of Earlier Sources"

• 2018

  2018 Conference Schedule and Abstracts

  2018 Best Student Paper:  Jacy Pedersen of Texas Christian University, "A Theory of Closure in the Late Works of Sergei Prokofiev"

• 2017

  2017 Conference Schedule

  2017 Conference Abstracts

  2017 Best Student Paper:  Dale Tovar for his paper entitled "Berg's Romantic Rhetoric." Dale is a Master's student in Music Theory at the University of Oregon

• 2016

  2016 Conference Schedule and Abstracts

  2016 Best Student Paper: Jesse Kinne (University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music), "Temporalizing the Play of Recognition and Surprise in Boulez' Incises."

• 2015

  2015 Conference Schedule and Abstracts

  2015 Best Student Paper: Thomas W. Posen (University of New Mexico), "More than a Tritone: A Set Theoretic Analysis of Leonard Bernstein's 'The Rumble' from West Side Story (1957)," and Kristen Wallentinsen (University of Western Ontario), "Fuzzy Family Ties: An Examination of Familial Similarity between Contours of Variable Cardinality."

• 2014

  2014 Conference Schedule and Abstracts

  2014 Best Student Paper: Scott Schumann, "Distorted Topics in Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, Mvmt. 1 (1931)," and Gabriel Venegas, "Formal Reinterpretation in Schubert's Works for Piano Solo."