Michael Spitzer

Michael Spitzer is Professor of Music and Head of School. He leads the Department's work on Classical music. A music theorist and musicologist, he is an authority on Beethoven, with interests in aesthetics and critical theory, cognitive metaphor, and music and affect. Professor Spitzer was President of the Society for Music Analysis for many years, and also chairs the Editorial Board of Music Analysis journal. He founded the series of International Conferences on Music and Emotion, and organised the International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music (Liverpool, 2013).

Professor Spitzer is interested both in how music works as an object of expression and reflection, and how musical materials are grounded in the everyday world of human embodiment, affect, and ideas. His favourite composers, towards which his research repeatedly turns, are Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert.

Professor Spitzer's teaching focuses on Western Classical music, as well as theory & analysis.