José Oliveira Martins

José Oliveira Martins has degrees in music theory and violin performance from the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 2006), Northwestern University (M.M. 1996), and Instituto Politécnico do Porto, ESMAE, Portugal (B.M. 1992). Before joining the Eastman School of Music as Assistant Professor in the Music Theory Department, he taught at the University of Iowa, and Instituto Politécnico de Castelo Branco, ESART, Portugal.

His current research interests include: the modeling of musical systems, involving in particular medieval scale-theory and twentieth-century modality; analytical approaches to the music of Bartók, Milhaud, Kurtág, and Lutosławski; and musical structure and expression in Portuguese Fado.

Oliveira Martins spoke at a number of national and international venues including the Society for Music Theory, Music Theory Midwest, Music Theory Society of New York State, European Music Analysis Conference, Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music, Dublin International Conference of Music Analysis, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has also been invited to give lectures on Bartók and twentieth-century polymodality at the Symposium on Bartók’s String Quartets, Indiana University; the Institute of Musicology at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland; and the Encontro Música-Matemática Casa da Música/University of Porto, Portugal.

Oliveira Martins has been the recipient of the Arthur J. Komar Award (Music Theory Midwest) and the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award (Music Theory Society of New York State). He has also been a fellow at the John Clough Memorial Symposium and the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory. His current and forthcoming publications include analytical studies on Stravinsky’s neoclassical harmonic practice, on polymodality in the music of Bartók, on dual-organization spaces in the music of Milhaud, and a theoretical study on the relations between symmetrical set-classes and “affinity” spaces.

News:

• José Oliveira Martins spoke about the relevance of medieval conceptions of musical space for the analysis of twentieth-century music at the Sixth International European Music Analysis Conference, Oct.
• 2007 in Freiburg, Germany, and about the Musical Expression of ‘saudade’ in Portuguese Fado, at the conference Encompassing the Globe: Portuguese Contact, Exchange, and Heritage, April 12, 2008, at the University of Iowa.
• In Sept. 08, he has been invited to give a paper on the music of György Kurtág at the Symposium: Bartók’s String Quartet’s, Tradition and Legacy at the University of Victoria, Canada.
• He has upcoming publications appearing in the proceedings of the conference Mathematics and Computation in Music, May 07, Berlin; and a chapter on Mathematical and Computational Musicology, published by Springer.