MIRIAM PIILONEN
Miriam Piilonen is a music theorist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Western Massachusetts. She teaches music theory and aural musicianship at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Miriam’s primary research examines ideas about music’s evolutionary origins, with emphasis on the rise of music evolutionism in nineteenth-century Britain. She is the author of Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human (Oxford University Press, 2024). She has presented at national and international conferences, including the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, and American Comparative Literature Association. Additional work is 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.
Miriam received her PhD in Music Theory and Cognition from Northwestern University, MS in Human Development from Virginia Tech, and BM in Composition from the New England Conservatory.
Miriam’s primary research examines ideas about music’s evolutionary origins, with emphasis on the rise of music evolutionism in nineteenth-century Britain. She is the author of Theorizing Music Evolution: Darwin, Spencer, and the Limits of the Human (Oxford University Press, 2024). She has presented at national and international conferences, including the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, and American Comparative Literature Association. Additional work is 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.
Miriam received her PhD in Music Theory and Cognition from Northwestern University, MS in Human Development from Virginia Tech, and BM in Composition from the New England Conservatory.
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