Professor Michael Dodds
Michael Dodds is Professor of Music History at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His book From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory (Oxford University Press, 2024) has garnered high honors including the Wallace Berry distinguished book award from the Society for Music Theory and the Early Music Award from the American Musicological Society. Its twin, The Organ in Baroque Office Liturgy (OUP, forthcoming), considers the transition from modes to keys in the realm of musical practice. A third book, Understanding Seventeenth-Century Music: From Modes to Keys in Music Analysis, is in development at Clare Hall, completing a trilogy tracing this transition from the complementary perspectives of theory, practice, and analysis. Together, these perspectives reflect Dodds’s own multifaceted expertise as scholar, performer, and composer.
Dodds’s work has been funded by multiple fellowships, including Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the McDonald Agape Foundation. Numerous articles on how Baroque musicians conceptualized tonal space have appeared in publications including the Journal of Musicology, Journal of Seventeenth Century Music, Philomusica Online, and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and The Art of Musical Diagrams (Swiss Musicological Society, 2026).
After childhood and youth in the Peruvian Amazon, Dodds studied violin performance at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music before earning the M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. His interest in public affairs is reflected by his early career work with the US. Federal Government in Washington, D.C. and the United Nations in Vienna. Besides his work as a scholar, Dodds has long been active as a church musician and composer. His story as an artist-scholar, culminating in a 2013 choral symphony, is told in a feature-length documentary, Blessed Unrest, by Bonnemaison, Inc. With voice-over by legendary actress Rosemary Harris, the film has won more than a dozen awards on the international festival circuit.
Select publications
- From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory. Oxford University Press, 2024. (OUP product page here.) Winner of the Early Music Award from the American Musicological Society and the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory, this book proposes a model for change in modal theory in Western music between the 16th and 18th centuries.
- The Organ in Baroque Office Liturgy: Performance Practices and Modal Conventions. Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2027. The twin to From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory, this book traces the transition from modes to keys in organ music from the late middle ages through the late 18th century, focusing on the role of the liturgical organ in relation to plainchant, vocal polyphony, and as solo instrument.
- “Volvelles in Baroque Music Theory.” In The Art of Musical Diagrams, ed. Daniel Muzzulini. Schweizerische Musikforschende Gesellschaft (Swiss Musicological Society) Series 2 (Bern: Peter Lang Verlag, 2026).
- “Zooming into Chroma Spaces—Experimente in und zur Geschichte der Vieltönigkeit,” with Daniel Muzzulini and Thomas Noll. Proceedings of Tonsysteme und Stimmungen: 21. Jahreskongress der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH), Musik-Akademie Basel / Hochschule für Musik (FHNW), 1–3 October 2021. Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie. https://www.gmth.de/proceedings/artikel/337.aspx
- “A Congratulatory Canon for Kerala Snyder.” Duplex canon à 8 (Os suum aperuit sapientiae) with accompanying essay and performance by the Voxtet of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. In A Festschrift for Prof. Kerala J. Snyder, ed. Ralph P. Locke, Johan Norrback, and Joel Speerstra (Gothenburg, Sweden: University of Gothenburg and Göteborg Organ Art Center, 2018–19), https://www.goart.gu.se/publications/festschrift_kjs. (Score and recording available at https://youtu.be/pdyoiVdcFG8.)
- “Organ Improvisation in 17th-Century Office Liturgy: Contexts, Styles, and Sources.” Philomusica Online 11, no. 2 (2012): “Con la mente e con le mani”: Teaching and Learning the Art of Counterpoint on the Keyboard (1585–1671). http://riviste.paviauniversitypress.it/index.php/phi/issue/view/117
Select awards
- American Musicological Society, Early Music Award, 2025
- Society for Music Theory, Wallace Berry Award, 2025
- Senior Research Fellow, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, 2015-2016
- Fulbright Research Fellow, Florence, Italy, 2002-2003
Further links
Book, From Modes to Keys: https://academic.oup.com/book/55156
Song cycle on sacred sonnets of Malcolm Guite (2025): https://youtu.be/uyioTpAVnD4?si=EYUXFgLp0ooTe4b1
Choral symphony on Psalm 145 (2013): https://youtu.be/N9e9ORJfe5E?si=Ce1eKXZXDMwzbIrr
Documentary Blessed Unrest (2023), Dodds’ story as an artist-scholar culminating in his 2013 choral symphony: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/blessedunrest.
