Ryan McClelland

Biography

Ryan McClelland is Professor of Music Theory and Acting Dean at the Faculty of Music. His research interests include rhythmic-metric theory, Schenkerian analysis, and performance studies. He has published on these subjects in journals including Music Theory Spectrum and Music Analysis as well as in essay collections devoted to Brahms and to Schubert. Among the volumes to which he has contributed is Brahms and the Shaping of Time (ed. Scott Murphy), which won the multi-author collection award from the Society for Music Theory in 2019. Professor McClelland’s first book, Brahms and the Scherzo, was published in 2010. His co-authored textbook (with David Beach), Analysis of 18th- and 19th-Century Musical Works in the Classical Tradition, appeared in 2012. Most recently, he co-edited with Russell Hartenberger the Cambridge Companion to Rhythm (2020). Current projects include a book on motional qualities in the music of Brahms, articles on performance timing in Brahms’s late piano music, and a study of the scherzo across the nineteenth century. McClelland’s research has been supported by the Connaught Fund of the University of Toronto and by multiple grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Besides teaching core undergraduate music theory courses, Professor McClelland offers upper-level undergraduate electives and graduate seminars related to his research interests. A prizewinner in the Eckhardt-Gramatté National Music Competition back in the last decade of the previous century, Professor McClelland was active as a pianist, performing in numerous premieres of works by Canadian and American composers. Prior to joining the University of Toronto in 2004, he served for two years as Visiting Lecturer at Indiana University.