Assistant Professor of Music
John Paul Ito received an S.B. in music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.M. in viola performance from Boston University, and a Ph.D. in music theory from Columbia University, where fellowship support included the Mosenthal Fellowship from the Department of Music and the Harvey Fellowship from the Mustard Seed Foundation. His principal influences in music theory were David Epstein, Fred Lerdahl (LU '65), and Joseph Dubiel, and he studied viola for eight years with George Neikrug.
He is currently engaged in two ongoing research projects. The first, which grows out of his dissertation, suggests that performers invest physically in meter in ways that have consequences for the expressive shaping of the music. The second draws on the field of cognitive linguistics; it imports specific concepts for a study of meter and hypermeter that builds bridges between analytical and cognitive approaches, and it also draws more general methodological conclusions, both in a second study and in the work on meter. A completed project will appear in 2010 as “On Music, Mathematics, and Theology: Pythagoras, the Mind, and Human Agency” in Resonant Witness, edited by Jeremy Begbie and Steven Guthrie. He gives frequent presentations of his research, at venues that have included the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, the New England Conference of Music Theorists, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University.
In addition to teaching in the music theory core curriculum, he teaches courses on the analysis of 19th and 20th century music and on analysis and performance.
Contact by e-mail: john.paul.ito@lawrence.edu
