Jonathan W. Bernard

Jonathan Bernard taught at Amherst College and Yale University before joining the University of Washington School of Music faculty in 1987. He was one of two Ruth Sutton Waters Endowed Professors of Music for 2002-05.

Bernard's research interests center on the theory and analysis of twentieth-century music, particularly since 1945 and including popular music, as well as the history of theory from the eighteenth century to the present.

Bernard is the author of The Music of Edgard Varèse (Yale University Press), which won the Young Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory in 1988; the editor of Elliott Carter: Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937-1995 (University of Rochester Press); and a contributing editor to Music Theory in Concept and Practice (University of Rochester Press).

His articles on such topics as the history of French and German music theory, the music of Varèse, Bartók, Carter, Messiaen, Ligeti, Feldman, and Zappa, minimalist aesthetics and analysis, pitch-spatial theory and analysis, recent American tonal music, the history of twentieth-century compositional practice, and rock & roll of the 1960s have appeared in the Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Analysis, Music Perception, Perspectives of New Music, American Music, Musikometrika, Musical Quarterly, and Contemporary Music Review, and in edited collections from Faber & Faber, University of Rochester Press, Cambridge University Press, Schott, Routledge, Greenwood Press, and Garland Publishing.

During summer 2004, Bernard led a three-day workshop on form in late twentieth-century music at the Mannes Institute of Music Theory (Mannes College of Music, New York City); he also spent six weeks at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel studying the compositional sketches of Carter and Varèse. Among his current projects are books and essays on Ligeti, Carter, and Varèse; he is also editing a book of essays by and about Joël-François Durand, his colleague in Composition.

Bernard has served as editor of Music Theory Spectrum (1988-1991) and as chair of the Publications Committee, Society for Music Theory (1998-2001). He is currently a member of the editorial boards of Perspectives of New Music, American Music, and Twentieth-Century Music, and a member of the advisory board for the Yale University Press monograph series, Composers of the Twentieth Century (Allen Forte, general editor).

Bernard has received support in the past from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Amphion Foundation, the Paul Sacher Stiftung, and the Graduate School Fund and Royalty Research Fund at the University of Washington.

Bernard earned Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. degrees at Yale University and an A.B. degree at Harvard College.

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