Philip Ewell
American cellist and scholar

Philip Ewell

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American cellist and scholar
Gender:
Male
Places:
United States of America
Is:
MusicianMusic theoristCellistProfessorEducatorMusicologist
Work field:
AcademiaMusic
Birth:
16 February 1966
Star sign:
Aquarius
Education:
Stanford University
Queens College
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
Yale University
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Introduction Early life and education Career "Music Theory's White Racial Frame" Selected works
The details
Biography

Introduction

Philip Adrian Ewell (born February 16, 1966) is an American professor of music theory at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He specializes in Russian and twentieth century music, as well as rap and hip hop.

Early life and education

Phillip Adrian Ewell was born on February 16, 1966, and grew up in DeKalb, Illinois. Ewell received a BA in music from Stanford University, an MA in cello performance from Queens College (City University of New York), and a PhD in music theory from Yale University. His dissertation, Analytical Approaches to Large-Scale Structure in the Music of Alexander Scriabin, was advised by Allen Forte.

Career

Ewell's published works include a number of articles on Russian music theory. He has translated Russian writings of and interviews with Russian theorists, such as Yuri Kholopov, and musicians, such as Vasya Oblomov. He has written about Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina as well as Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. His forthcoming works include a new undergraduate music theory textbook under contract with Norton and a book entitled On Music Theory under contract with the University of Michigan Press's Music and Social Justice series.

His public intellectual work has included appearances on BBC and Adam Neely's YouTube channel. In March 2021, Ewell contributed to RILM's blog in which he wrote about his Twitter project "Erasing colorasure in American music theory" and delivered a public colloquium at Columbia University entitled "On Confronting Music Theory's Antiblackness: Three Case Studies".

"Music Theory's White Racial Frame"

On November 9, 2019, at the 42nd annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, Ewell participated in a plenary session entitled "Reframing Music Theory" which sought to "critique the confining frames within which [music theory] has been operating and explore ways in which to reframe what constitutes music theory". He presented a talk entitled "Music Theory's White Racial Frame". In his talk and in subsequent publications, Ewell argues that the "white racial frame" – a term coined by sociologist Joe Feagin – shapes knowledge practices in Western music theory and its institutions. Feagin defines the "white racial frame" as,

an overarching white worldview that encompasses a broad and persisting set of racial stereotypes, prejudices, ideologies, images, interpretations and narratives, emotions, and reactions to language accents, as well as racialized inclinations to discriminate.

Ewell's talk sparked the 2020 publication of fifteen responses in volume 12 of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. The volume's contributing authors included the journal's co-founders Timothy L. Jackson and Stephen Slottow, as well as Charles Burkhart, Richard Beaudoin (Dartmouth College, assistant professor of music), Suzannah Clark, Nicholas Cook, and Jack Boss (University of Oregon, professor of music theory and composition), as well as "An Anonymous Response to Philip Ewell", which itself drew criticism.

Ewell's work on music theory's white racial frame—and the ensuing controversy from the 2020 publication of Journal of Schenkerian Studies' twelfth volume—has received wide-ranging media attention from Alex Ross at The New Yorker, The New York Times, NPR, and Inside Higher Ed. The Society for Music Theory's executive board stated that it "condemns the anti-Black statements and personal ad hominem attacks on Philip Ewell perpetuated in several essays included in the 'Symposium on Philip Ewell's 2019 SMT Plenary Paper' published by the Journal of Schenkerian Studies".

Ewell's publication has been criticized by black linguist and instructor of music history at Columbia University John McWhorter, who published the following in Substack:

"If Ewell's claim is that music is racist when involving hierarchical relationships between elements, then we must ask where that puts a great deal of music created by non-white people. Perhaps more important, the question is: just what do these hierarchical relationships in music structure have to do with human suffering?"

Ewell's recent book On Music Theory And Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone was also criticized by John McWhorter in The New York Times and by Don Baton in the City Journal.

Selected works

Books

  • On Music Theory And Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (2023) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press

Articles

Dissertation

  • - (2001). Analytical Approaches to Large-Scale Structure in the Music of Alexander Scriabin (PhD diss.). Yale University. OCLC 49527723.

Book chapters

Edited books

  • Kaleidoscope of Cultures: A Celebration of Multicultural Research and Practice. (2010). Edited by Marvelene C. Moore and Philip Ewell. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. OCLC 405107620.