Assistant Professor of Music Theory Miriam Piilonen Releases First Book Called 'Theorizing Music Evolution'

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Miriam Piilonen, assistant professor of music theory, published her first book, "Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human" with Oxford University Press on January 16. It examines the resurgent interest in music’s evolutionary origins, a primary focus of Piilonen’s research, with emphasis on the rise of music evolutionism in nineteenth-century Britain.

In analyzing the music-evolution texts by Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Edmund Gurney, and others, Piilonen’s book reinforces music's treatment as an especially fraught subject of evolutionary thought as it relates to historical musicology as well as evolutionary biology, gender/sexuality studies, post-colonial studies, and affect theories. Jonathan De Souza, Associate Professor of Music Theory, University of Western Ontario, calls the book “brilliant (and) incisive,” while Aniruddh D. Patel, author of "Music, Language, and the Brain," commented that Piilonen “raises timely issues for contemporary research on the evolution of human musicality.” “

Piilonen’s research has also been published in Critical Inquiry, Empirical Musicology Review, Journal of Music Theory, and her chapter “Music Theory and Social Media” is in "The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory." Piilonen has presented at national and international conferences, including the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, and American Comparative Literature Association.

A special book launch and Q & A will take place at Amherst Books on Tuesday, Feb. 20, at 6 p.m.; the event is free and open to the public.