Music-Theoretical and Analytical Writings by Michael Buchler

I have written on atonal theory and analysis, pedagogy, musical minimalism, and American popular music, especially mid-century musical theater. Links (in green) to many of my works are available below.

Musical Theater and Hollywood

Modulation as a Dramatic Agent in Frank Loesser's Broadway Songs
Music Theory Spectrum, vol 30, no. 1, 2008: 35-60.

Every Love but True Love: Unstable Relationships in Cole Porter's "Love for Sale"
in PopMusicology, edited by Christian Bielefeldt and Rolf Grossmann, Lüneberg, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2008: 184-200. (ISBN: 978-3-89942-603-8)

"Laura" and the Essential Ninth: Were They Only a Dream?
Em Pauta, vol. 17, 2006: 5-25 (published March 2007).

Atonal Theory and Analysis

Understanding Ornamentation in Atonal Music
in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, Thessaloniki, Greece: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Review (article-length) of Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts by Michiel Schuijer
Journal of Mathematics and Music, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011: 141-148.

Are there any Bad (or Good) Transformtational Analyses?
Script of talk presented at the Society for Music Theory annual meeting, Indianapolis, IN, November 5, 2010. TEXT ......... EXAMPLES

Reconsidering Klumpenhouwer Networks
Music Theory Online, vol 13, no 2, June 2007. http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.07.13.2/toc.13.2.html
Eight critical responses to this article were published in the following issue (vol. 13, no. 3) and one more response was published in vol. 14, no. 1.
... and I published a rejoinder in vol. 14, no. 1:
Reconsidering Klumpenhouwer Networks One More Time: A Response to Eight Responses
Music Theory Online, vol 14, no 1, March 2008.
http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.08.14.1/toc.14.1.html

Relative Saturation of Intervals and Set Classes: A New Approach to Complementation and Pcset Similarity
Journal of Music Theory, vol. 45, no. 2, 2001: 263-343 (published November 2003).

Square Dance Moves and Twelve-Tone Operators: Isomorphisms and New Transformational Models
(co-authored with Nancy Rogers)
Music Theory Online, vol. 9, no. 4, October 2003. http://www.societymusictheory.org/mto/issues/mto.03.9.4/toc.9.4.html

Broken and Unbroken Interval Cycles and their use in Determining Pitch-Class Set Resemblance
Perspectives of New Music, vol. 38, no. 2, 2000: 52-87 (published October 2001).

Fuzzy Logic and Elemental Saturation in Musical Pitch-Class Set Theory
in Systems Research in the Arts: Volume I: Musicology, ed., George Lasker and James Rhodes, International Institute for Advanced Studies, 1999: 1-5. (ISBN: 0-921836-96-1)

Relative Saturation of Subsets and Interval Cycles as a Means for Determining Set-Class Similarity
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Rochester ,1998.

Minimalism

The Sonic Illusion of Metrical Consistency in Recent Minimalist Composition
in Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, ed., Mario Baroni, Anna Rita Addessi, Roberto Caterina, and Marco Costa, Bologna: Bononga University Press, 2006: 697-701. (ISBN: 88-7395-155-4)

Pedagogy

On American Master's Degree Programs in Music Theory
Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale (Italy), vol. 21, no. 1, 2015: 137-141.

When Rules Seem Less Than Golden
AP Central Teaching Resources, an online publication of the The College Board (published October 2005).

Review/article of Elements of Music by Joseph N. Straus
Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, vol 17, 2003: 79-90 (published October 2004).