Dr. James Wright
Professor, Contract Instructor
- Ph.D. (McGill University)
- Email Dr. James Wright
James Wright completed a Ph.D. in 2002 at McGill University, where his dissertation on Schoenberg and Wittgenstein was awarded the Governor-General鈥檚 Gold Medal, the first time in McGill University鈥檚 history that this distinction had been conferred upon a musicologist. Dr. Wright鈥檚 primary research areas encompass music philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, film music, 20th-century music history, post-tonal music theory and analysis, dance and music, and the history of music theory.
His first book, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle (Bern: Verlag Peter Lang, 2006, 2nd ed鈥檔 2007) received a Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society. His second book, Schoenberg鈥檚 Chamber Music, Schoenberg鈥檚 World (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2009), co-edited by 杏吧原创 Emeritus Professor Alan Gillmor, was described by reviewer Frank J. Oteri (Chamber Music America) as 鈥渁 book that reveals that Schoenberg鈥檚 legacy lives on in his chamber music; a substantive volume that fills an important void.鈥 His monograph They Shot, He Scored: The Life and Music of Eldon Rathburn (Montreal: McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 2019), examines the life and work of a fascinating and prolific Canadian composer who 鈥 in addition to producing a large catalog of orchestral and chamber works 鈥 wrote more than 275 film scores during a distinguished forty-year career as a staff composer with the National Film Board of Canada.
In 2022, James Wright celebrates the launch of a new book, co-edited by Alexis Luko (University of Victoria): Monstrosity, Identity, and Music: Mediating Uncanny Creatures from Frankenstein to Videogames (London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2022), and will host an international conference titled 鈥淢usic and Antifascism: Reflections on the Past and Possibilities in the Present鈥 (). His published compositions are listed at .
In 2019, James Wright was named the University of Toronto Louis Applebaum Distinguished Visiting Professor in Composition (/fass/2019/10/music-professor-named-the-louis-applebaum-distinguished-visitor-in-composition-2019-20-at-the-university-of-toronto/).
Courses
HUMS 3102A Western Music 1000-1850 (F)
HUMS 3103A Western Music 1850-2000 (W)
Selected Publications
Alexis Luko and James Wright (eds.), Monstrosity, Identity, and Music: Mediating Uncanny Creatures from Frankenstein to Videogames (London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2022).
James K. Wright with Allyson Rogers, They Shot, He Scored: The Life and Music of Eldon Rathburn (Montreal: McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 2019)
James K. Wright and Alan M. Gillmor, eds. Schoenberg鈥檚 Chamber Music, Schoenberg鈥檚 World (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2009).
James K. Wright, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle (Bern: Verlag Peter Lang, 2006, 2nd ed鈥檔 2007).