RESEARCH


My interest in music history began with a simple question: how did music notation, a tool created to preserve and communicate sound, come to be adopted by musicians throughout the world?



As an avid pianist who spent much of her teenage years immersed in the music of Chopin, I gave little thought to the history of notation until I learned that the system we use today originated in medieval Europe. That discovery transformed the way I thought about music. Rather than viewing notation as a neutral technology, I became fascinated by the intellectual traditions that shaped it and by the musicians who developed theoretical language through which music was understood.

My primary area of research investigates medieval music theory through treatises written in England at the turn of the fourteenth century. My book, Sweet Consonance: Musical Discourse in England, 1280–1370 (forthcoming, Spring 2027) offers the first critical study for how English theorists came to understand the third as a consonant interval through a largely localized conversation. Music theory is seldom explored through a historiographical lends; when it is, the focus often remains on theoretical principles alone, while the original point of debate takes a back seat. This approach essentially eliminates the very human interaction of deliberation and cross-examination that compelled medieval authors to write treatises in the first place. Throughout my book, I challenge prevailing methodologies on the study of theory for theory's sake and argue that medieval music theory—especially medieval English music theory—must be understood within its own period and unique geographic needs. I focus on a select group of individuals who, during the opening decades of the fourteenth century, began to justify how singers might continue to sing in thirds by legitimizing the 5:4 major third in musical practice, thereby providing the first sustained account of a discourse we have long known existed but never fully understood.

Archival Research, Padua, Italy

Sweet Consonance did not originate with the intention of solving unanswered questions about the origins of Western European music. Instead, I take a fresh look at individual authors, their views, and their perspectives as a historiographic starting point and focus on how their world views were shaped. I show that they provided new solutions based on the music that surrounded them, demonstrating that medieval music theorists unmistakably understood that theoretical rules were not fixed. They understood their roles as individual contributors to an ongoing and continuous discourse that at times needed modification. Central to an English musical debate was the idea that music theory could be flexible. I examine their unique usage of terminology, invention of new rationales, and a previously overlooked toleration of new logical and theoretical solutions that could be applied to uncharted musical practices.

Broadly, my first monograph provides a new historical framework and methodology for the study of medieval music theory by arguing that music theoretical traditions are best understood through localized investigations of specific communities and periods. Rather than viewing medieval music theory as a succession of abstract innovations or search for singular points of origin for changes in harmonic taste, I show that new theoretical concepts emerged in writing because musicians and theorists needed to reconcile an established practice with inherited theoretical frameworks. By reconstructing the intellectual and musical environment of fourteenth-century England, I show that speculative writings were deeply influenced by local concerns and written primarily for practicing musicians.

In emphasizing that Western music theory was never fixed but remains fluid and changeable, Sweet Consonance presents the earliest formations of Western European music as part of an evolving musical tradition. The implications of this viewpoint extend beyond medieval music. Historically, musicological claims for the superiority of Western harmony relied on misconceptions about its supposedly ancient origins and simplistic appeals to the natural overtone series. I demonstrate instead that musical thought has always been shaped by debate, adaptation, and, above all, changing cultural preferences. We know that there was no one moment when European classical music became what it is today. Rather, my first book demonstrates that musical communities continued to rely on theoretical innovation in response to their practical needs and tastes. What I learned from my extensive work on medieval music theory is that musical values are in continual negotiation, and, when understood as transformative, become a vital part of a centuries-long process of music making. 

c. 1989 Kindergarten Winter Dance Recital

A second strand of my research examines the history of Western music in Japan and the global circulation of European musical traditions. I was born and raised in Japan and speak Japanese fluently and my interest in this field grew from a formative experience as an undergraduate having just arrived to the United States after growing up in rural Nagano. While preparing for my senior piano recital, I asked whether I could include a work by a Japanese composer alongside the European repertoire I had studied. Unable to suggest one, my teacher instead recommended Claude Debussy's Pagodes from Estampes—a work inspired by Indonesian gamelan—as the closest approximation of an "Asian" musical voice. Not having the authority to say that I was referring specifically to Japanese composers, I reluctantly agreed to perform it though the experience underscored how little space composers from East Asia occupied within the traditional Western canon. 

That moment helped shape the questions that continue to guide my research and teaching today. I seek to place Japanese and other East Asian composers within the broader global history of twentieth-century Western music, not as peripheral figures but as active participants in its development. During my sabbatical from teaching across the 2026-2027 academic year, I am conducting archival research on this subject to collect materials for my second monograph project.