Faculty: Theory/Analysis

L. Poundie Burstein 
Associate Professor, Hunter College and the Graduate Center
(Ph.D., CUNY)



Music Department, Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-772-5121 Poundie@aol.com 

Poundie Burstein’s primary areas of interest include Schenkerian theory and analysis and form studies.  In addition to his scholarly work, he has performed extensively as a pianist for comedy improvisation groups in the NYC area.  In 1999, he was the co-chair (along with Adrienne Block) of The Music of Amy Beach: An Interdisciplinary Conference, and he was a 1995 recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the New School University.  Prof. Burstein was President of the Music Theory Society of New York State (MTSNYS) from 2003-2007, is a current member of the Executive Board of the Society for Music Theory (SMT), and is the webmaster for the website of Music Program of the CUNY Graduate Center.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS: 

“Mozart’s Recomposed Bifocal Transition Sections,” in Composition as a Problem 6 (forthcoming 2008).

“Beethoven’s Op. 31, No. 2: A Schenkerian Approach.” In Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata. Contexts of Analysis, edited by Pieter Bergé and William Caplin (forthcoming 2008).

“Conference Report for the Second Biannual Convention of the American Beethoven Society:” Eighteenth-Century Music (2008, forthcoming).

Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music, co-edited with David Gagné. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2006.

"Of Species Counterpoint, Gondola Songs, and Sordid Boons," in Structure and Meaning in Tonal Music, edited by L. Poundie Burstein and David Gagné. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2006: 33-40.

“Les chansons des fous: on the Edge of Madness with Alkan,” in Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music, edited by Neil Lerner and Joseph Straus. New York: Routledge, 2006: 187-98.

“Retransitional Revisions in Beethoven’s Op. 4,” in Journal of Musicology (2006): 62-95.

“The Off-Tonic Return in Beethoven's Op. 58 and Other Works,” in Music Analysis (2005): 1-43.

“Unraveling Schenker’s Concept of the Auxiliary Cadence,” in Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 27/2 (Fall 2005): 159-85.

Review of AP music theory texts and web sites; in http://apps.apcentral.collegeboard.com  (2004-5).

“Mozart’s Harmonic Experiments of 1784” in A Composition as a Problem, Vol. 3  (2003): 15-27.

"Human Supervision, Control, and Lack of Control in Beethoven's Op. 36," in Journal of New Music Research, Vol. 31/3 (2002): 191-99.

"Her Ways, Their Ways: Comparison of Song Settings by Clara Schumann and Other Composers," in Woman and Music, Vol. 3 (2002): 11-26.

“Devil’s Castles and Schubert’s Strange Tonic Allusions,” in Theory and Practice,  Vol. 27 (2002): 87-102.

"Interrelationships in Beethoven’s Second Symphony," in Proceedings of the Workshop in Human Supervision and Control in Engineering and Music (Kassel: University of Kassel, 2001). 

Review of Heinrich Schenker, The Art of Performance [Kunst des Vortrags], edited by Heribert Esser, translated by Irene Schreier Scott. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); in Notes (June, 2001): 933-34.

"Mozart in Medias Res," in Electronic Journal for Music Theory (April, 2001).

Conference Report for The Music of Amy Beach: An Interdisciplinary Conference (Die Musik von Amy Beach: Eine interdisziplinäre Konferenz), in VivaVoce 53 (Summer, 2000): 29-31.

"Why Bach’s Organ Had No Stops: Fatherhood and Musical Hermeneutics in Bach," in The Idler 2/122 (October, 2000).

"Comedy and Structure in Haydn’s Symphonies," in Schenker Studies 2, edited by Carl Schachter and Hedi Siegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 67-81.

"Surprising Returns: The VII# in Beethoven’s Op. 18, No. 3, and its antecedents in Haydn," in Music Analysis, Vol. 17, No. 3 (October, 1998): 295-312.

"Lyricism, Structure, and Gender in Schubert’s G Major Quartet," in Musical Quarterly Vol. 81, No. 1 (Spring, 1997): 51-63.

Review of Eugene Narmour and Ruth Solie, editors, Explorations in Music, the Arts, and Ideas (Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 1988); in Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 35, (Spring/Fall, 1991): 257-67. 

Review of Felix-Eberhard Von Cube, The Book of the Musical Artwork: An Interpretation of the Musical Theories of Heinrich Schenker, trans., with an afterword, by David Neumeyer, George R. Boyd, and Scott Harris (Lewiston/Queenston: The Edward Mellon Press, 1988), in Theory and Practice, Vol. 16 (1991): 215-19.

"More on Tristan," in Theory and Practice, Vol. 9 (July-December, 1984): 125-28.

"A New View of Tristan: Tonal Unity in the Prelude and Conclusion to Act I," in Theory and Practice, Vol. 7 (September, 1983): 15-42.