Kyle Hutchinson

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Kyle Hutchinson

Visiting Assistant Professor of Music

Department/Office Information

Music
  • M 11:10am - 1:00pm (Charles Dana Arts Center)
  • W 11:10am - 12:10pm (Charles Dana Arts Center)
  • R 9:40am - 10:05am (Charles Dana Arts Center)

Contact

Kyle’s research interests include the psychoacoustics of chromatic tonality in the music of composers such as Richard Strauss, both Gustav and Alma Mahler, and Florence Price. He is also interested in intersections of analysis and ethnography in Price’s music, theorizing the role of melody in form-functional theory, and intersections of narrative and musical structure in Broadway musicals.

Kyle’s first monograph, titled Processual Tonality and the Psychoacoustics of Chromaticism, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press, and his research has been published in leading journals in both North America and internationally.  He is currently working on several other book projects, including an edited volume on contemporary approaches to chromatic harmony, and two further monographs: one on the instrumental music of Florence Price, the other on musical structure in contemporary Broadway musicals.

Kyle's article “Chromatically Altered Diminished-Seventh Chords” (published in Music Analysis) was the recipient of the Society for Music Theory’s 2024 Emerging Scholar Award, and his work on chromatic harmony has also received the Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award from the Music Theory Society of New York State in 2020, and the George Proctor Prize from the Canadian University Music Society in 2018. Kyle has also received the University of Toronto faculty of music’s award for outstanding Teaching Assistant in 2017, and an award for distinguished service to the faculty of music in 2020.

Kyle is currently co-editor of the journal Theory and Practice,  a member of the Publication Awards Committee (books) for the Society for Music Theory, and he served on the 2023-2024 program committee, and as a Board member, for the Music Theory Society of New York State.

  • Chromatic Harmony, Models of Pitch Relationships, and Tonal/Formal Structure in Early-to-mid Twentieth-Century Tonal Music (Richard Strauss, Alma Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Florence Price)
  • Psychoacoustics and Phenomenology of Tonality and Querying Eighteenth-Century Tonal Models
  • Theories of Formal Functions and the Role of Melodic Structure
  • Tonal Structure, Syntax, and Narrative in Contemporary Broadway Musicals
  • Intersections of Analysis, Ethnography, and Intertextuality in the music of Florence Price

Books

Processual Tonality and the Psychoacoustics of Chromaticism. Forthcoming. Oxford University Press.

Articles

“Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tonal Structure in Musical Theatre: Plagal and Authentic Conflict in Jesus Christ Superstar.” Journal of Music Theory (forthcoming).

“Pendular Thirds and Pentatonic Parallelisms: Intersecting Black Folk and neo-Romantic Idioms in the Second Movement of Florence Price’s Piano Sonata in E minor.” Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought 36 (2023): 163–174.

“The Predominant Six-Four in the Late Music of Richard Strauss.” Music Theory Spectrum 45/1 (2023): 20–41.

“Cadential Melodies: Form-Functional Taxonomy and the role of the Upper Voice.” Co-authored with Matthew Poon. Music Theory Online 28/2 (2022).

“Chromatically Altered Diminished-Seventh Chords: Reframing Function Through Dissonance Resolution in Late Nineteenth-Century Tonality.” Music Analysis 41/1 (2022): 94–144.

“Retrospective Time and the Subdominant Past: Tonal Hermeneutics in Contemporary Broadway Megamusicals.” Music Theory Online 26/2 (2020).

“Chasing a Chimera: Challenging the Myths of Augmented-Sixth Chords.” Theory and Practice 45 (2020): 93–126.

“From a Certain Point of View: Learning to Hear Consonance as Dissonance in Late Nineteenth-Century Tonality.” Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award. Theory and Practice 45 (2020): 127-152.

2024 Society for Music Theory Emerging Scholar Award (Article), for “Chromatically Altered Diminished-Seventh Chords: Reframing Function Through Dissonance Resolution in Late Nineteenth-Century Tonality” (published in Music Analysis)

Patricia Carpenter Emerging Scholar Award for Best Graduate Student Paper, Music Theory Society of New York State (2020)

Award to an Individual for Distinguished Service to the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto Faculty of Music Undergraduate Association (2020)

George Proctor Award for Best Graduate Student Paper, Canadian University Music Society (2018)

Award for Teaching Excellence, University of Toronto Center for Teaching Excellence (One of twelve TAs shortlisted university-wide, 2017)

Faculty of Music Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, University of Toronto (2016)

Ontario Graduate Scholarship, University of Toronto (2018, 2015)

  • “The Psychoacoustics of Chromatic Tonality in Phenomenological and Retrospective Spaces: A Dialogue,” Society for Music Theory, Jacksonville FL, Nov. 7-10, 2024. 
  • “Plagal and Authentic Conflict as Tonal and Narrative Structure in Jesus Christ Superstar,” Society for Music Theory, Denver CO, Nov. 8–12, 2023. Also given at Music Theory Society of New York State, New York, NY, April 1–2 2023.
  • "Outlander(s): Interpreting Twentieth-Century Dissonance in Nineteenth-Century Contexts,” Society for Music Theory, New Orleans, LA, Nov. 10–13, 2022. Also given at Music Theory Midwest Annual Conference, Kansas City, KS, May 5–6, 2022; Music Theory Society of New York State, Rochester, NY, April 9–10, 2022.
  • “Black Narratives in the White Racial Frame: Dialogue, Persistence, and Structure in Florence Price’s Piano Sonata in E Minor,” Society for Music Theory, Jacksonville, Fl., November 4–7, 2021 (online). Also given at the Canadian University Music Society, Online, May 31–June 4, 2021; South Central Society for Music Theory, Online, Feb. 19–21, 2021.
  • “Processual vs. Prospective Tonality in Late Nineteenth Century Harmonic Syntax,” Music Theory Midwest, Online, June 10–13 2021.
  • “Richard Strauss’s Processual Tonality: Modernism and the Case of the Dissonant Sixth,” The 21st Biennial International Conference on Nineteenth-Century Music. Vancouver, B.C. Canada, June 18–20, 2020 (paper accepted, conference cancelled owing to COVID-19); Canadian University Music Society, London ON, June 3–5, 2020 (paper accepted, conference cancelled owing to COVID-19).
  • “From A Certain Point of View: Learning to Hear Consonance as Dissonance in Late Nineteenth-Century Tonality,” Music Theory Society of New York State, Online, April 4–5, 2020.
  • “Chasing a Chimera: Challenging the Myth of Augmented-Sixth Chords,” Music Theory Society of New York State, Albany, NY, April 6–7, 2019. Also read at Music Theory Midwest, Cincinnati OH, May 10–11, 2019
  • “Music Theory, Musicology, and Cultural Hermeneutics: Revisiting the Salome Complex from an Analytic Vista,” Canadian University Music Society, Vancouver, BC, June 5–7, 2019
  • “Tristan, Liszt, and Till Eulenspiegel: Chromatically Altered Diminished-Seventh Chords and Half Enharmonic Polysemy in Late Nineteenth-Century Harmonic Syntax,” Canadian University Music Society, Edmonton, AB, May 23–25, 2018
  • “Strauss and the Supertonic: Integrating Thoroughbass Approaches with Conventional Tonal Theory in Late Nineteenth-Century Harmonic Analysis,” Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, Wayne, NJ, March 23–24, 2018.
  • “Static Tonal and Formal Structures as Depictions of Memory and Psychosis in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard,” Western University Graduate Symposium on Music, Western University, August 25–26, 2017
  • “When is a Triad not a Triad?” Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic, Washington DC, March 24–25, 2017. Also read at the Canadian University Music Society, University of Calgary, June 1–3, 2017.

  • “Florence Price: Piano Sonata in E minor.” Lecture-Recital for the University of Toronto Faculty of Music Anti-Racist Alliance BIPOC Benefit Concert (2021).
  • Pre-Opera Talks for the Canadian Opera Company: Toronto, ON, 2019–2021. (Elektra, La Bohème, Turandot, Der fliegende Holländer, Káťa Kabanová<).
  • Pre-Show Talks, Mamma Mia! Victoria College Drama Society: Toronto, ON. March 7–9, 2019.