Publications
Forthcoming (2027): “Thinking Kaija Saariaho’s Compositional Practice Through Agential Realism.” In Diffractions: Karen Barad and Music Studies, edited by Mathew Klotz and Chris Stover. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Forthcoming (2026): “Sounding out Dystopia: Timbre and Ecological Recovery in Thom Yorke’s ANIMA (2019).” SMT-V.
Forthcoming (2026): Beal, Amy and Nathan Cobb. “Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett.” In In Search of Morton Feldman: A Portrait of the Composer at 100, edited by Benjamin Levy. Contemporary Composers Series. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Press.
2025: “Switch Up the Groove: Idiosyncratic Approaches to Form and Texture in Recent Popular Music.” Music Theory Online 31 (2).
2023: “Puissance du faux: False Memory and Death in Ingmar Bergman’s A Passion.” Criticism 65 (3).
2023: “Constructing Continuity: Early Developments in Kaija Saariaho’s Compositional Practice.” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 36 (May 2023).
2022: “La perte du temps: Michaël Levinas’ Rebonds on the Plane of Immanence.” Perspectives of New Music 60 (2): 39–67.
Manuscripts in Review
“Ideologies of the Avant-Garde: Kaija Saariaho’s Sah den Vögeln (1981) in Post-Serial Europe.”
Manuscripts in Preparation
“I have tried to write paradise”: Analogies of Color and Light in Kaija Saariaho’s Sombre (2012). To be submitted Spring 2026.
“L’étrangeté du son: Deconstructed Voices in Gérard Grisey’s Early Music.” To be submitted Summer 2026.
Book Reviews
2025: “Review of Liam Cagney, Gérard Grisey and Spectral Music: Composition in the Information Age (Cambridge University Press, 2023).” Intégral: The Journal of Applied Musical Thought 38.
Public Scholarship
2024: “Elisabeth Lutyens, String Trio, Op. 67, ii (1964).” Twelve-Tone and Serial Composition: The First 100 Years.
2021: “Johannes Brahms: String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36.” Program Note. Music Academy of the West. Performed by Takács Quartet with Academy Fellows.
2021: “Igor Stravinsky: Octet for Wind Instruments.” Program Note. Music Academy of the West. Performed by Academy Fellows.
Papers Presented
2025: “L’étrangeté du son: Deconstructed Voices in Gérard Grisey’s Student Works.” Annual meeting of the Music Theory Southeast, Greenville (March 7–8); also presented as a lightning talk at the Autographs and Archival Documents Interest Group, Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Jacksonville (November 7–10, 2024)
2024: “Staging Sound in Kaija Saariaho’s Study for Life (1980, rev. 2019).” Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Jacksonville (November 7–10)
2024: “Thinking Kaija Saariaho’s Compositional Practice through Agential Realism.” Diffractions: An International Symposium on Barad and Music Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane (September 25–28)
2023: “Confronting Serialism: Kaija Saariaho’s Early Compositional Practice.” Joint Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory, Denver (November 9–12)
2023: “Kaija Saariaho’s Rhythmic Practice, 1976–1995.” Second international conference for Rhythm in Music Since 1900, McGill University, Montréal (September 22–24)
2023: “La perte du temps: Michaël Levinas’ Rebonds on the plane of immanence.” 18th Triennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time, Yamaguchi, JP (July 2–7)
2023: “Becoming Machine Becoming Human: Unstable Interfaces in Kaija Saariaho’s Amers (1992).” Annual meeting of the West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis, University of Oregon, Eugene (April 21–22, 2023); also presented at Instruments, Interfaces, Infrastructures: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Musical Media, Harvard University (May 11–13)
2022: “After “After-the-end”: Poetics of Evaded Closure in Post-Millennial Popular Music.” Joint Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Society for Music Theory, New Orleans (November 10–13)
2022: “‘The teacher makes plans, students laugh’: Prioritizing autonomy in post-tonal curricula.” Lightning talk on the special panel “Reframing Post-Tonal Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century.” Joint Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Society for Music Theory, New Orleans (November 10–13)
2022: “Songs of Humanism: Locating the nascent temporal philosophies of Gérard Grisey and Kaija Saariaho.” Annual Research Colloquium of the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel, CH (November 3)
2022: “Sounding Out Dystopia: Timbre and Ecological Recovery in Thom Yorke’s ANIMA (2019).” Music and the Moving Image Conference XVIII, NYU Steinhardt (May 26–29); also presented at the annual meeting of the West Coast Conference of Music Theory and Analysis, UC Irvine (May 27–28) and the annual meeting of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, UK/Ireland Branch, Liverpool, EN (August 31–September 2)
2021: “‘Humanizing Academia’: Mentoring during the Pandemic.” (Co-presenter). Engaging Teaching Symposium Series, UC Santa Barbara (October 22)
2021: “Sensing Sensibility in Joni Mitchell’s Blue.” Joni Mitchell’s Blue at 50: A Celebration of Her Life and Music, University of Connecticut (April 9)
2021: “Brasilidade: bossa nova and the fabrication of Brazilian national identity.” Borders, Power, and Transgression Conference, UC Santa Barbara (April 7)
2016: “Ambiguity in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 15, Op. 28.” Annual Celebration of Scholarship Symposium, Houston Baptist University (Spring)
Nathan Cobb 