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 2026

This will be held in Spring 2026 at the University of Arizona, Tuscon, AZ.  Conference dates will be posted in the near future.

2025 Conference

The 2025 conference was a wonderful success!  We are proud to announce the winner of the best student paper:  Joey Grunkemeyer from Indiana University, "Form as Topic? Reframing Formal Deformation in Haydn's Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Hob. XV: 30."  Congratulations, Joey!

RMSMT BYLAWS

In 2023, the RMSMT approved a new set of Bylaws.  

RMSMT BYlaws

RMSMT Leadership

Jennifer Shafer England, President
Assistant Professor of Music Theory, Montana State University
Email:   jennifer.england2@montana.edu

John Muniz, President-Elect
Associate Professor of Music Theory, The University of Arizona
Email: johnmuniz@arizona.edu

Past Conferences

• 2025

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2025 Program and Abstracts

  2025 Best Student Paper:  Joey Grunkemeyer from Indiana University, "Form as Topic? Reframing Formal Deformation in Haydn's Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Hob. XV: 30."

• 2024

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2024 Program and Abstracts

  2024 Best Student Paper:  Jacob Schoenle for “Spirituality, Interspace, and the Wordless Chorus.”

• 2023

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2023 Program

  Rocky Mountain Scholars Conference 2023 Abstracts

  2023 Best Student Paper: Xiao Yun (University of North Texas), "The Ignored Modal Mixture: The Chromatic Submediant in Minor Keys"

• 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."