Jan Miyake ’96

(she/her)

  • Professor of Music Theory

Areas of Study

Education

  • Oberlin Conservatory of Music, BMus in viola performance, 1996
  • Oberlin College, BA in mathematics, 1996
  • Queens College, Aaron Copland School of Music, MA, 1999
  • CUNY, Graduate Center, PhD in music theory, 2004

Biography

Jan Miyake studies Haydn’s instrumental works using linear analysis, Sonata Theory, Formenlehre, and corpus studies. She also publishes on inclusive pedagogy, Brahms, Beethoven, and Mozart.

Miyake is active in the Society for Music Theory, most recently serving as its Treasurer (2015-19) and as chair of the Committee on the Status of Women (2021-23). She is a founding member of the Composers of Color Resource Project, which uses Humanities Commons to store, organize, and publicize its resources.

At Oberlin, Miyake serves on many committees, advises Musical Studies students and the marching band, and is involved with the Jewish and Asian-American communities. Through Oberlin’s Oberlin’s partnership with Pioneer Academics, Miyake works with talented high school students from around the world on advanced research projects in musical analysis.

Miyake is a violist and burgeoning banjo player.

Spring 2025

Aural Skills II — MUTH 102

Music Theory II — MUTH 132

Fall 2025

Music Theory I — MUTH 131

Questioning Genius — MUTH 262PT

“Implications of Thematic Reuse in Haydn’s Sonata Forms,” in The Proceedings of the 2020-21 Future Directions of Music Cognition Conference, forthcoming.

“Contouring as a Powerful Tool for Pitch Awareness” in Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, ed. Leigh VanHandel (Routledge Press: 2020), pp. 27–31.

“Writing Exams Cooperatively with Students” in Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, ed. Leigh VanHandel (Routledge Press: 2020), pp. 420–423.

“Commentary on DeSouza and Lokan (2019),” Empirical Musicology Review, 14/3–4 (2019), 144–45.

“Phrase Rhythm and the Expression of Longing in Brahms’s ‘Gestillte Sehnsucht,’ Op. 91, No. 1,” in Brahms and the Shaping of Time, ed. Scott Murphy (Rochester University Press, 2018), pp. 83–109.

“Review of Ian Bent, David Bretherton, and William Drabkin," eds. Heinrich Schenker: Selected Correspondence (Boydell Press, 2014),” Music Theory Online 21/4.

“A Mini-Flip of the Music Theory Classroom,” in Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, Vol. 2 (2014). 

“Weekly (or more) Writing in the Music Theory Classroom ,” in Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy, Vol. 2 (2014).

Review of David Damschroder, Harmony in Haydn and Mozart (Cambridge University Press, 2012). in the Newsletter of the Mozart Society of America 17 (2013), 12–14.

“Multiple Themes and Musical Space in the Dominant,” Journal of Schenkerian Studies 5 (2011), pp. 1–18.

“Middles and Muddles: Haydn’s Compositional Style and Sonata Forms,” in The Proceedings of the 2008 Joint Conference of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music and the Haydn Society of North America, ed. Sterling E. Murray (Ann Arbor: Steglein, 2010), pp. 100–114.

“Readdressing Haydn's Formal Models,” Theory and Practice 34 (2009), pp. 31–46.

“Another Recurring Pattern in Mozart's Music: Obligatory Register in Two Mozart Expositions,” in Essays from the Fourth International Schenker Symposium, ed. Allen Cadwallader (Germany: Olms Verlag, 2008), pp. 129–43.

  • Chair, 2020-2022, Division of Music Theory, Oberlin Conservatory
  • Chair, 2020-21 pedagogy and curriculum subcommittee of the Oberlin College and Conservatory Presidential Initiative on Racial Equity and Diversity.
  • Chair, 2021-23, Society for Music Theory, Committee on the Status of Women

Notes

Jan Miyake and Andrew Pau Contributed Chapters to Essay Collection

Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake and Associate Professor of Music Theory Andrew Pau have contributed chapters to Modeling Musical Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2024), a collection of essays written by minoritized scholars and designed to model analytical writing for undergraduate students. Miyake’s essay discusses the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, while Pau’s explores Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison’s 2005 opera Margaret Garner.

Jan Miyake President of the Society for Music Theory

On November 11, Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake started her two-year term as President of the Society for Music Theory.

Jan Miyake Named President-Elect of Society for Music Theory

Jan Miyake, associate professor of music theory and director for Oberlin Conservatory’s Music Theory Division, has been elected as the next president of the Society for Music Theory. The society promotes music theory as both a scholarly and a pedagogical discipline. Its members are scholars, teachers, and students of music theory, as well as performers, composers, and scholars in related areas such as musicology, ethnomusicology, philosophy, media studies, and cognitive science. 

Jan Miyake presents keynote address and research poster

On March 31, 2021, Associate Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake delivered the keynote address for Online Communities and Transformative Justice, a conversation and CORE deposit party for Michigan State University Commons, part of the Humanities Commons Network. The keynote was titled "Harnessing Good Intentions: Online Communities and Sustained Commitment to Racial Equity & Diversity.”

On March 7, 2021, Mikayke presented a poster for the Future Directions of Music Cognition conference. The poster was titled "Implications of Thematic Reuse in Haydn's Sonata Forms."

News

New Series Explores The Framing of Race

Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to identify and/or develop courses, speakers, creative work, workshops, performances, and other events that address The Framing of Race, the 2016 theme of the new Think/Create/Engage series.

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