Blair Johnston
Assistant Professor of Music (Music Theory)
Contact Information:
johnstbl
[at]
indiana [dot] edu
(johnstbl@indiana.edu)
Simon Center, M225B
Department
Education
- Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2009
Biography
Blair Johnston earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2009. His dissertation, "Harmony and Climax in the Late Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff," examines expressive strategies and chromatic structures in works from the composer's late Russian and exile periods, and develops an interpretive model applicable to a broad range of Postromantic repertory. For this work, he won the ProQuest 2009 Distinguished Dissertation Award. He was visiting assistant professor of music theory at Indiana University from 2008 to 2010 and joined the faculty as assistant professor in 2010.
Johnston has presented papers on Sergei Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, George Crumb, and the interpretation of Postromantic music at venues including the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, the Music and Numbers conference at Canterbury Christ Church University, the New England Conference of Music Theorists, and various university colloquia.
Also a violinist, Johnston studied chamber and orchestral music at Tanglewood, where he was concertmaster during the Festival of Contemporary Music. His research interests include Postromantic form and the intersection of tonal and non-tonal procedures in music from the twentieth century.