Professional Summary
Sam Reenan, PhD, joins CCM's faculty as Assistant Professor of Music Theory in Fall 2025.
Reenan holds a PhD and MA in music theory from the Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester) and bachelor’s degrees in music theory and biological sciences from the University of Connecticut.
As an educator, Reenan strives to facilitate students’ growth as engaged musical thinkers, communicators and respectful collaborators. Prior to his appointment at CCM, Reenan served as Theory Coordinator and Director of Graduate Studies at Miami University, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses across all stages of the music theory and aural skills curriculum. As part of an interdisciplinary faculty team, he was awarded the Roger and Joyce Howe Award for Excellence in Disciplinary Writing Instruction for his role in collaboratively designing an arts writing course open to all majors. He has also previously served on the music faculty at Hamilton College.
Issues of symphonic thought, genre mixture, large-scale form and identity figure prominently in Reenan’s research program. His first book, Symphonic Spectacles: Form, Identity, and Hybridity in the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2025), explores these issues across a range of Germanic, American, and British symphonic works. This book proposes a creative analytical framework rooted in the analogy between formal hybridity and intersectional identity, which affords new interpretive possibilities that integrate formal analysis with critical consideration of compositional design, reception history, and subjectivity.
Other scholarly writings on topics including modernist music, harmony, and teacher development are published in Music Theory Spectrum, Music Theory Online, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, and Music & Letters. He has presented at scholarly conferences across Europe and North America, including in Italy, Belgium, England and France. Current research projects include several edited book chapters and articles underway concerning formal interpretation in twentieth-century music, the symphonic music of Gustav Mahler (particularly the late symphonies), intersections between new music and ecosystems ecology in the music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, and the concept of musical fluency in undergraduate pedagogy.
Education
PhD, Music Theory: Eastman School of Music
MM, Music Theory: Eastman School of Music
BM, Music Theory: University of Connecticut
BS, Biological Sciences: University of Connecticut
Publications
Peer Reviewed Publications
Sam Reenan (2024. ) Contrapuntal Parody and Transsymphonic Narrative in Mahler’s Rondo-Burleske.Music Theory Spectrum, , 46 (2 ) ,288–318 More Information
Sam Reenan (2022. ) Integration, Urbanity, and Multi-Dimensionality in Schoenberg’s First Quartet.Music Theory Online, , 28 (1 ) , More Information
Alyssa Barna and Sam Reenan (2020. ) Graduate Instructor Peer Observation in Music Theory Pedagogy .Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, , 34 ,
Graduate Instructor Peer Observation in Music Theory Pedagogy
Sam Reenan and Richard Bass (2016. ) Types and Applications of P3,0 Seventh-Chord Transformations in Late Nineteenth-Century Music .Music Theory Online, , 22 (2 ) ,
Types and Applications of P3,0 Seventh-Chord Transformations in Late Nineteenth-Century Music
Published Books
Sam Reenan (2025. ) Symphonic Spectacles: Form, Identity, and Hybridity in the Early Twentieth Century .New York, NY , Oxford University Press (Author)