University of Oregon School of Music and Dance: About Us: Steve Larson

BROWSE ABOUT US

  About the School
  Construction Information
  Directory
  Facilities
  Faculty & Staff
  General Information
  Gig Book
  Jobs
  Living in Eugene
  Maps and Directions
  Mission Statement

Email Questions to: mushelp@uoregon.edu

Translate this page

(back to faculty list)

Steve Larson
(541) 346-5651
steve@uoregon.edu

Steve Larson is the Robert M. Trotter Professor of Music at the University of Oregon, where he teaches undergraduate courses in basic musicianship and graduate seminars on a variety of topics; he is also a member of the UO Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences. In the School of Music, he leads THEME, a group of faculty and graduate students interested in music research.

Larson has two degrees from the University of Oregon: a B.A. in music from the Honors College, and an M.A. in music theory. He also has a Ph.D. in music theory from the University of Michigan, where his dissertation, "Schenkerian Analysis of Modern Jazz," was supported by a Rackham Fellowship and was nominated for an Outstanding Dissertation Award. In 1992–93 and again in 2002–03, Larson was a Visiting Faculty Research Associate at Douglas Hofstadter's Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition of Indiana University. He has also taught at the University of Washington (1994–96) and Temple University (1987–92).

Larson's publications, presentations, performances, and recordings reflect his interests in music theory, cognitive science, and jazz. Larson's publications in journals, books, and conference proceedings deal with Schenkerian theory, performance and analysis, jazz, the pedagogy of musicianship, and music cognition. His articles appear in leading journals of music theory and in journals of other disciplines: American Music, Annual Review of Jazz Studies, College Music Symposium, In Theory Only, Indiana Theory Review, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Journal of Music Theory, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Metaphor and Symbol, Music Analysis, Music Perception, Music Theory Spectrum, Perspectives of New Music, Theory and Practice, Dutch Journal of Music Theory, and Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature.

He has contributed material to a number of books: The New Grove Dictionary of American Music; The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz; Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style; Music, Gestalt, and Computing: Studies in Cognitive and Systematic Musicology; and Schenker Studies III: A Festschrift for Carl Schachter. Prentice-Hall will publish his Schenkerian Analysis—Pattern, Form, Expressive Meaning, and Pendragon Press will publish his Analyzing Jazz—A Schenkerian Perspective.

A sought-after speaker, Larson has made dozens of presentations to universities throughout the United States and to scholarly conferences in Europe and North America. His recordings include a jazz compact disc titled Portfolio, to which he contributed compositions, arrangements, and piano improvisations. As a countertenor, he has performed with various early-music ensembles, including Ars Musica. As a jazz pianist, Larson performs as a soloist and as a member of a number of groups including the Jazz Piano Collective and The Steve Larson Trio.

Steve Larson
(Robert M. Trotter Professor of Music)
B.A., 1979, M.A., 1981, Oregon
Ph.D., 1987, Michigan
(1993)

AUDIO CLIPS
(Requires Real Audio)
• Blue Monk (5:41.3); Thelonious Monk

PUBLICATIONS
IN PRESS
• Analysis of Jazz -- a Schenkerian Approach. Pendragon Press.
• Schenkerian Analysis -- Pattern, Form, and Expressive Meaning. Prentice
Hall.
• Architectural Metaphors in Music Discourse and Music Experience. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature.
• Rhythmic Displacement in the Music of Bill Evans. Schenker Studies III: A Festschrift for Carl Schachter, edited by David Gagne and Poundie Burstein. Pendragon Press.

2004
• Musical Forces and Melodic Expectations: Comparing Computer Models with Experimental Results. Music Perception. 21/4, 457-498.

2003
• Recapitulation Recomposition in the Sonata-Form First Movements of Haydn¹s String Quartets: Style Change and Compositional Technique. Music Analysis. 22/1-2, 139-177.
• [with Mark Johnson] Something in the Way She Moves. Metaphor and Symbol. 18/2, 63-84.
• What Makes a Good Bridge? Tijdschrift voor Muziektheorie /Dutch Journal of Music Theory 8/1, 1-15.

2002
• Musical Forces, Melodic Expectation, and Jazz Melody. Music Perception 19/3, 351-385.

2001
• Dear Emmy: A Counterpoint Teacher's Thoughts on EMI's Two-Part Inventions. In David Cope, Virtual Music: Computer Synthesis of Musical Style. MIT Press, 237-262.

1999
• Swing and Motive in Three Performances by Oscar Peterson. In "Analysis Form" on Cole Porter's "Night and Day." Journal of Music Theory 43/2 283-313.
• Reviews of Allen Forte, The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950; Steven Gilbert, The Music of Gershwin; and Henry Martin, Charlie Parker and Thematic Improvisation. Music Theory Spectrum 21/1, 110-121.

1998
• Schenkerian Analysis of Modern Jazz: Questions About Method. Music Theory Spectrum 20/2, 209-241.

1997-98
• Musical Forces and Melodic Patterns. Theory and Practice 22-23, 55-71
• Triple Play: Bill Evans' Three-Piano Performance of Victor Young's "Stella by Starlight." Annual Review of Jazz Studies 9, 45-46. Response to Forte's Questions, 105-107.

1997
• The Problem of Prolongation in Tonal Music: Terminology, Perception, and Expressive Meaning. Journal of Music Theory 41/1, 101-136.
• Continuations as Completions: Studying Melodic Expectation in the Creative Microdomain Seek Well. A chapter in Music, Gestalt, and Computing: Studies in Cognitive and Systematic Musicology, edited by Marc Leman. Berlin and Heidelberg, GERMANY: Springer-Verlag, 321-334.

1996
• The Art of Charlie Parker's Rhetoric. Annual Review of Jazz Studies 8, 141-166.
• Seek Well: A Domain for Studying Melodic Expectation. Proceedings of the Joint International Conference of the Fourth International Symposium on Systematic Musicology and the Second International Conference on Cognitive Musicology. College of Europe at Bruges, Belgium, 144-151. Available (from Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition; 510 North Fess; Bloomington, IN 47408) as CRCC Technical Report #110.
• 'Strict Use' of Analytic Notation. Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 10, 31-71.
• Expert Expectations: Professional Theorists' Continuations Compared with a Computer Model of Musical Forces. Presentation for the Society for Music Theory.

1995
• 'Integrated Music Learning' and Improvisation: Teaching Musicianship and Theory Through 'Menus, Maps, and Models'. College Music Symposium 35, 76-90.

1994
• Review (of Mira Balaban, Kemall Ebcioglu, and Otto Laske, Understanding Music with AI: Perspectives on Music Cognition). Music Perception 12/1, 147-156.
• Musical Forces, Step Collections, Tonal Pitch Space, and Melodic Expectation. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Liége, BELGIUM, 227-229. Available (from Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition; 510 North Fess; Bloomington, IN 47408) as CRCC Technical Report #111.
• Another Look at Schenker's Counterpoint. Indiana Theory Review 15/1, 35-52.

1993
• The Value of Cognitive Models in Evaluating Solfege Systems. Indiana Theory Review 14/2, 73-116.
• Scale-Degree Function: A Theory of Expressive Meaning and Its Application to Aural-Skills Pedagogy. Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy 7, 69-84.
• On Rudolf Arnheim's Contributions to Music Theory. Journal of Aesthetic Education 27/4, 97-104.
• Modeling Melodic Expectation: Using Three 'Musical Forces' to Predict Melodic Continuations. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Boulder, CO). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 629-634. Available (from Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition; 510 North Fess; Bloomington, IN 47408) as CRCC Technical Report #70.
• Dave McKenna's Performance of 'Have You Met Miss Jones?'. American Music 11/3, 283-315.
• Computer Models of Melodic Continuation and Key Determination. Available (from Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition; 510 North Fess; Bloomington, IN 47408) as CRCC Technical Report #77.

1992
• Scale-Degree Function: Cognition Research and Its Application to the Teaching of Aural Skills. Available (from Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition; 510 North Fess; Bloomington, IN 47408) as CRCC Technical Report #67.

1991
• Review (of Wallace Berry, Musical Structure and Performance. Journal of Music Theory 35, 298-309. [Jointly authored with Cynthia Folio]

1990
• The Future of Theory: Questions. Indiana Theory Review 10, 86-90.

1987
• Questions About the Ursatz: A Response to Neumeyer. In Theory Only 10/4, 11-31.
• C. P. E. Bach: Kurze und leichte Klavierstuecke mit veraenderten Reprisen (1766), No. 1, Allegro (a translation of Schenker's Tonwille article). In Theory Only 10/4, 5-10.
• A Tonal Model of an 'Atonal' Piece: Schoenberg's Opus 15, Number 2. Perspectives of New Music 25, 418-433 [and performance on accompanying cassette tape].

1983
• On Analysis and Performance: The Contribution of Durational Reduction to the Performance of J. S. Bach's Two-part Invention in C Major. In Theory Only 7/1, 31-45 and appendix.

1982
• “Yellow Bell” and a Jazz Paradigm. In Theory Only 6/3, 31-46.
• Comment (on David Epstein, Beyond Orpheus: Studies in Musical Structure). In Theory Only 6/2, 31-39.

Steve Larson performs with
The Jazz Piano Collective

UO Homepage • Dance Department • Contact Us • Home

1225 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1225, Phone: (541) 346-3761, Fax: (541) 346-0723
NOTE: The SOMD does not accept unsolicited advertisements at any of its facsimile numbers.
The University of Oregon is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Music.
Photographic snapshots on this site courtesy of: Scott Barkhurst, Pamela Gifford, Laura Littlejohn, Jack Liu, and Juretta Nidever.