Michael Weinstein-Reiman

Michael Weinstein-Reiman is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Theory at Columbia University. He holds an M.A. in Music Theory from the University of Oregon, a M.Mus. in Composition from Mannes College, and a B.A. in Music from Brandeis University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Michael’s research focuses on the history of music theory, specifically music pedagogy and its relationship to the body and the senses. His other scholarly interests include the philosophy of the European Enlightenment and Romantic periods, the history of science and technology, feminist and queer theory, as well as recent trends in posthuman studies. He has written and presented nationally and Internationally on a variety of topics, including eighteenth-century musical automata, improvisation and blindness in the late Middle Ages, piano pedagogy of the French Revolution, and the hip hop artist Nicki Minaj. His dissertation, “Touch and Modernity in French Keyboard Pedagogy, 1700–1900” seeks to unravel the concept of touch as it was deployed by music teachers and their interlocutors working in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Research for the dissertation was supported by a Georges Lurcy Fellowship from the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as well as an honorary Chateaubriand Fellowship from the Embassy of France. Michael’s writing has been published in American Music Review, Theory and Practice, and Nineteenth-Century Music Review.
A dedicated pedagogue, Michael serves on the music theory faculty at Mannes College, where he has taught harmony, counterpoint, keyboard, and musicianship courses since 2015. At Columbia, he has taught Fundamentals of Western Music and Masterpieces of Western Music (Music Humanities).