Robert Hasegawa

Biography

Music theorist and composer ROBERT HASEGAWA joined the Eastman School of Music faculty in 2009, after completing a Ph.D. at Harvard University. His scholarly interests include the music of György Ligeti, the French “spectralist” composers Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail, transformational theory, and the history of music theory. His dissertation, “Just Intervals and Tone Representation in Contemporary Music,” explores how research on the psychology of aural perception can inform the analysis of music by composers ranging from Debussy to La Monte Young.

Robert’s training in music theory began as an undergraduate at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he studied theory and composition with Laurence Wallach. After graduating from Simon’s Rock, he earned an M.A. in music theory from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a thesis on the music of the “New Complexity” composer Brian Ferneyhough. During his doctoral studies at Harvard, he worked with David Lewin, David Cohen, Christopher Hasty, and Alexander Rehding.

Robert’s article “Gérard Grisey and the ‘Nature’ of Harmony” received the Music Analysis 25^th- Anniversary Competition Award, and was published by that journal in 2009. Other recent projects include a study of Hans Zender’s recent microtonal music (published in Perspectives of New Music), an article on atonal theory for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a chapter on extended just intonation for the forthcoming book Théorie et composition musicales au vingtième siècle, and editing a special issue of Contemporary Music Review on the American composer James Tenney. In addition to his theoretical work, Robert remains active as a composer: recent compositions include works performed by White Rabbit, cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, Stephen Drury, and the Callithumpian Consort.