Richard S. Parks

Professor
BM (Performance - Trumpet), Baldwin-Wallace College, 1964
MM (Performance - Trumpet), Northwestern University, 1965
PhD (Musicology), The Catholic University of America, 1973

The Don Wright Faculty of Music has been my university home since 1986. I was Chair of the Dept. of Theory and Composition 1989-98, and since 2002 I have served as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies and Research). University appointments before Western include Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan, USA), 1974-83, and Southern Methodist University (Dallas, Texas, USA), 1983-86. I studied music theory and analysis with Conrad Bernier and George Thaddeus Jones at The Catholic University of America, and Allen Forte at Yale U. (at an NEH Summer Seminar I attended in 1980). I am a founding member of the Society for Music Theory, and have served as first editor of its Newsletter and a member of its Executive Board. In a former life as a trumpeter in the Detroit, Michigan and Washington, D.C. areas I was a very active free-lance performer and recitalist (teachers include Bernard Adelstein, Vincent Cichowicz, Lloyd Geisler, Charles Gorham, and Frank Kaderabek).

My research interests are listed below. Currently I am working on a large project involving the role of models and analogy in music theory research, as well as a number of unrelated smaller projects, including defining and exploring chromatic and diatonic pitch-set genera, and their application in music analysis. Teaching has always been central to my interests. Recent undergraduate courses include: Music 3604, Analysis: Romantic Music; M3601, Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis; M3650, Studies in Theory VI; M3619, 18th-Century Counterpoint. Recent graduate seminars include: M9519, Introduction to Pitch-Set Theory; M9523, Special Topics: Iconic Models, and Theories of Musical Structures; M9526, Schenkerian Analysis: Small Forms; M9527, Advanced Schenkerian Analysis; M9595, Analytic Techniques for Performers. To date I have supervised dozens of theses or dissertations.

My non-music-academic interests include (but are not limited to) woodworking, travel, all construction trade skills (more a necessity than an interest), beer making, bicycling (and bicycle repair, another necessity), cooking, automobiles, swimming, animal behavior, upholstering, gardening (esp. edible plants), my hobby reading interests are promiscuously eclectic, and my driver's license carries an "M" endorsement.

 

Research Interests

Music theory, Schenkerian theory, pitch-class set theory, tonal and post-tonal music analysis, philosophy of music theory, music of Claude Debussy

 

Representative Publications

Books

  • 18th-Century Counterpoint and Tonal Structure (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983)
  • The Music of Claude Debussy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)
  • Composers of the Twentieth Century, Allen Forte, General Editor
  • Editor, Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario 13 (six articles from the conference: Music Theory Canada 1990)

Articles and Book Chapters

  • "Music's Inner Dance: Form, Pacing, and Complexity in Debussy's Music" in A Debussy Companion, Simon Trezise, Editor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003): 197-231. (To download a replacement for example 11.1 from my home page, click here)
  • "Structure and Performance: Metric and Phrase Ambiguities in the Three Chamber Sonatas." Debussy in Performance, James Briscoe, Editor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 193-224.
  • "A Viennese Arrangement of Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune: Orchestration and Musical Structure," Music and Letters, 80/1 (February 1999) : 50-73.
  • The Music and Letters Trust awarded the Westrup Prize to this article in 1999
  • "Pitch-class Set Genera: My Theory, Allen Forte's Theory." Music Analysis 17/ 2 (July 1998): 206-26; also, "Afterward" for "Pitch-Class Set Genera, A Symposium": 237-40
  • "Pitch Structure and Form in Carl Nielsen's Wind Quintet," The Carl Nielsen Companion, Mina Miller, Editor (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), pp. 541-96
  • "Tonal Analogues as Atonal Resources and Their Relation to Form in Debussy's Chromatic Etude," Journal of Music Theory 29/1 (Spring 1985): 33-60
  • "Harmonic Resources in Bartók's 'Fourths,' (Mikrokosmos, Vol. V)," Journal of Music Theory 25/1 (Fall 1981): 245-274
  • "Pitch Organization in Debussy: Unordered Sets in 'Brouillards,'" Music Theory Spectrum 2 (Spring 1980): 119-134
  • "Voice Leading and Chromatic Harmony in the Music of Chopin," Journal of Music Theory 20/ 2 (Fall 1976): 189-214

 

E-mail: rsparks@uwo.ca

 

For complete contact information, please consult the Alphabetical Directory.

 

Western provides the best student experience among Canada's leading research-intensive universities.