Former fellow wins two awards for a book written at the ISM
Former ISM fellow, Michael Dodds, has garnered top accolades from North America’s leading academic societies for musicology and music theory for his recently-published book, From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Dodds’ groundbreaking work, which he largely wrote during his fellowship at the ISM in 2015-2016, delves into the intricate transition from modality to tonality in early modern music theory—work that has earned him the Wallace Berry Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Music Theory and the Early Music Award from the American Musicological Society.
The Wallace Berry Award, the highest honor bestowed by the Society for Music Theory, recognizes exceptional books authored by individuals at any career stage. The Early Music Award commends substantial, single-author scholarly works focusing on music before 1550.
The American Musicological Society lauded Dodds’ book for its landmark contribution to early music studies:
“…Michael Dodds’s From Modes to Keys makes a landmark contribution to the study of Early Music by rethinking one of its most enduring problems: the transition from modality to tonality. Rather than repeating the familiar narrative of abrupt change, Dodds maps the complex, overlapping processes through which old ideas were reworked, adapted, and transformed. Drawing on four decades of scholarship, he traces developments from medieval tonaries to the Well-Tempered Clavier, revealing the interplay between theory, pedagogy, and practice, and between monophonic, polyphonic, and keyboard traditions. With clarity and authority, Dodds illuminates not only the ‘what’ of modal and tonal systems but also the ‘how’ and ‘why,’ showing how generations of musicians sought to classify melodic practice through scales, ladders, cycles, and circles. Bold in scope and nuanced in detail, this book establishes a new standard for understanding Early Music and the tonal systems that grew from it.”
Dodds is professor of music history at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. For more information, visit his UNCSA faculty profile or explore his book ”From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory.”