Grant Sawatzky

Sessional Lecturer, Music Theory
location_on Music Building 419
Education

PhD, University of British Columbia


About

Grant Sawatzky is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation project focuses on music in which certain harmonic or stylistic irregularities induce ‘metric multivalence’—a kind of rhythmic fluidity resulting from the co-presence of multiple metric/harmonic affordances of a passage—and shows how these multivalences complicate and enrich phrase structures in music from Bach to Bartók.

In other research Grant has considered rhythmic, harmonic, and phrase-structural complexity in un-notated, and non-Western repertoires including meter in Korean court music and in Southeast-African Mbira DzaVaNdau, as well as collage techniques and juxtaposition in sample-based musics. He presented at Analytical Approaches to World Music (AAWM) Conferences in 2012, and 2014, Society for Music Theory Conference (2013), and various other regional conferences; and has served as associate editor for the AAWM Journal since 2015. Grant’s master’s research (2013) involved mathematical clarification of Olivier Messiaen’s compositional techniques, especially his permutations of rhythmic series.

As an instructor at UBC Grant has co-taught post-tonal analysis, and aural skills courses, and he served on Aural Skills Curriculum Review Committee in 2014–16.


Grant Sawatzky

Sessional Lecturer, Music Theory
location_on Music Building 419
Education

PhD, University of British Columbia


About

Grant Sawatzky is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation project focuses on music in which certain harmonic or stylistic irregularities induce ‘metric multivalence’—a kind of rhythmic fluidity resulting from the co-presence of multiple metric/harmonic affordances of a passage—and shows how these multivalences complicate and enrich phrase structures in music from Bach to Bartók.

In other research Grant has considered rhythmic, harmonic, and phrase-structural complexity in un-notated, and non-Western repertoires including meter in Korean court music and in Southeast-African Mbira DzaVaNdau, as well as collage techniques and juxtaposition in sample-based musics. He presented at Analytical Approaches to World Music (AAWM) Conferences in 2012, and 2014, Society for Music Theory Conference (2013), and various other regional conferences; and has served as associate editor for the AAWM Journal since 2015. Grant’s master’s research (2013) involved mathematical clarification of Olivier Messiaen’s compositional techniques, especially his permutations of rhythmic series.

As an instructor at UBC Grant has co-taught post-tonal analysis, and aural skills courses, and he served on Aural Skills Curriculum Review Committee in 2014–16.


Grant Sawatzky

Sessional Lecturer, Music Theory
location_on Music Building 419
Education

PhD, University of British Columbia

About keyboard_arrow_down

Grant Sawatzky is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation project focuses on music in which certain harmonic or stylistic irregularities induce ‘metric multivalence’—a kind of rhythmic fluidity resulting from the co-presence of multiple metric/harmonic affordances of a passage—and shows how these multivalences complicate and enrich phrase structures in music from Bach to Bartók.

In other research Grant has considered rhythmic, harmonic, and phrase-structural complexity in un-notated, and non-Western repertoires including meter in Korean court music and in Southeast-African Mbira DzaVaNdau, as well as collage techniques and juxtaposition in sample-based musics. He presented at Analytical Approaches to World Music (AAWM) Conferences in 2012, and 2014, Society for Music Theory Conference (2013), and various other regional conferences; and has served as associate editor for the AAWM Journal since 2015. Grant’s master’s research (2013) involved mathematical clarification of Olivier Messiaen’s compositional techniques, especially his permutations of rhythmic series.

As an instructor at UBC Grant has co-taught post-tonal analysis, and aural skills courses, and he served on Aural Skills Curriculum Review Committee in 2014–16.