Professor of Music Theory (retired)
- Ph.D., University at Buffalo; M.M., University of Connecticut; B.M., University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
- Music theory studies with John Clough, Martha Hyde, Charles Smith, Avo Somer, David Bernstein.
Timothy A. Johnson retired as Professor of Music Theory at Ithaca College in summer 2023. He taught at Ithaca College for 25 years, and previously at Mount Holyoke College for 7 years.
He has taught courses in the core theory curriculum; an Ithaca Seminar on Lin-Manual Miranda's musical, Hamilton; and Exploring the Options In addition he developed and often taught the Senior Seminar in Music, Outside Fields, and the Liberal Arts, which is the capstone for the Bachelor of Music in Combination with an Outside Field and Bachelor of Arts in Music degrees. In 2019 he received the Mary I. Arlin ’61 Award for Distinguished Teaching in Undergraduate Music Theory.
Publications
Johnson published three books and twelve articles and book chapters, and he has given 24 presentations at conferences and 25 additional presentations at other venues.
Books
- John Adams's Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives (Ashgate Publishing, 2011) ties together analytical observations about the opera with cultural, political, and historical aspects of the scenes, characters, and issues raised in the opera.
- Baseball and the Music of Charles Ives: A Proving Ground (Scarecrow Press, 2004) discusses the importance of baseball in Ives's life, including his participation during his youth as a pitcher and shortstop, his baseball-related compositions that feature musical depictions of ballplayers and baseball situations, and his use of baseball analogies in his writings. Johnson was awarded the 2004 Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award for this book.
- Foundations of Diatonic Theory: A Mathematically Based Approach to Music Fundamentals (Scarecrow Press, 2008; originally Key College Publishing, 2003), is the first introductory, undergraduate-level book published on diatonic set theory. This textbook introduces a strong link between introductory pedagogy and recent scholarship in music theory by relating concepts in diatonic set theory directly to the study of music fundamentals through pedagogical exercises and instructions. This book is part of the Mathematics Across the Curriculum project at Dartmouth College, funded by the National Science Foundation.
One-Year Visiting Endowed Chair
In 2005-2006 he was on leave from Ithaca College to teach at the University at Buffalo as the Visiting Frederick and Alice Slee Professor of Music Theory, the oldest endowed chair in the field.