Erinn E. Knyt

Erinn E. Knyt is Professor of Music History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her B.A. in Music with highest honors (U.C. Davis), an M.M. in Music (Stanford University), and a Ph.D. in Music and Humanities (Stanford University).

Knyt specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, aesthetics, music history pedagogy, performance practice issues, and Bach reception, and has written extensively about Ferruccio Busoni. In discussing Busoni’s work, Knyt’s publications have intersected with topics such as, nationalism, transnationalism, concert programming, gender identity, interpretive practice, and ontology, as well as with other disciplines, including architecture, dance, literature, and visual arts. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals, including Ad parnassum, American Music, BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Bach Perspectives, Eighteenth Century Music, Journal of Musicology, Journal of Music History Pedagogy, Journal of Musicological Research, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Musicology Australia, Music and Letters, 19th-Century Music, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and Twentieth Century Music. 

Knyt's first book, Ferruccio Busoni and his Legacy (Indiana University Press, 2017), which explores Busoni’s relationship with early and mid-career composition mentees, was awarded an American Musicological Society 75 Pays Endowment Book Subvention. Knyt's work invites a reconsideration of Busoni's legacy and puts forth the notion of a "Busoni School" as one that shaped the trajectory of twentieth-century music. Knyt's second book, Ferruccio Busoni as Architect of Sound (Oxford University Press, 2023) and her third book, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” Reimagined (Oxford University Press, 2024), both received American Musicological Society subventions. The former book reveals how Busoni applied his understanding of architectural spaces to his music. In the process he inspired new trends in pitch organization, the spatialization of sound, and the expansion of formal structures. 

Knyt’s third book documents multiple ways Bach's Goldberg Variations has appeared in arrangements, transcriptions, and re-compositions from 1800 to 2020. It also expands ideas about performance practices of Bach’s music in the 21^st century. Knyt was honored with the 2018 American Musicological Society Teaching Award and in 2025 with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Spotlight Scholar Award.