The Dorothy Payne Award is given each year for the best student paper presented at a MTSMA conference. The award was established in 2003 in honor of Dr. Dorothy Payne, Professor Emerita of Music Theory and former Dean of the School of Music at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Payne was co-author of Tonal Harmony, a seminal theory text, and was well regarded for her teaching.
Recipients of the award receive a small cash prize.
For the purposes of this award, student status ends with the receipt of a terminal degree or employment in a full-time position. Previous winners of the Dorothy Payne Award are not eligible.
Award Winners
| Year | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Ruixue Hu | Theorizing Phrase Structure in Guqin Music |
| 2023 | Ryan Galik | Don’t Pop the Bubble: Intersections of ambient music, attention, expectation, and flow in Tim Hecker’s Virgins |
| 2022 | Sylvie Tran | Constructing an Idealized American West Through Folk Sources |
| 2021 | Alexandrea Jonker | Keeping the Earin Ear Training: Incorporating Blind Hearingfor Improved Aural Skills Pedagogy |
| 2020 | Matthew Kiple | Collection Space: Systematizing Parsimonious Transformations in French Scalar Tonality |
| 2019 | Nathan Pell | Tempo as Form: Orchestral Recordings from 1910–1940 in Light of Earlier Sources |
| 2019 | Jeremy Tatar | Metric Transformations in Hip-Hop and R&B Sampling Practice |
| 2018 | Nathan Lam | Relative Diatonic Modality in English Pastoral Music: A Dorian Case Study |
| 2017 | John Lawrence | Hearing Voices in Their Hands: Performing and Perceiving Polyphony |
| 2016 | Nathaniel Mitchell | The Volta: A Galant Gesture of Culmination |
| 2016 | Joshua Mills | Timbre, Harmony, Orchestration, and Analysis, and Rautavaara’s Symphony No. 8, “The Journey” |
| 2015 | Aaron Grant | “Promissory Note” Narrative Strategies in Schubert’s Three-Key Expositions |
| 2015 | Olga Sanchez-Kisielewska | Menuets Vicieux, Z Figures, and Sonic Analogues: Embodied Meanings of Hypermeter in Haydn and Mozart’s Symphonic Minuets |
| 2014 | Aaron Grant | Exploring Polyscalarity in the Music of Igor Stravinsky: Discerning Surface- and Deeper-Level Scalar Collections |
| 2014 | Janet Bourne | Playing With Schemata |
| 2013 | Michael McClimon | Jazz Harmony, Transformations, and ii-V Space |
| 2012 | Drew Nobile | Reconsidering the Notion of “Cadence” Based on Evidence from Pop-Rock Music |
| 2011 | ||
| 2010 | Michael Callahan | Improvisational Memory, Formula, and the Pedagogy of Extemporized Binary-Form Dance Movements |
| 2009 | Jeff Yunek | Illuminating Micropolyphony: Biblical Allusions Communicated through Manipulations of Pitch Space and Text in Sandström’s Agnus Dei |
| 2008 | Phil Duker | Resulting Patterns, Palimpsests, and “Pointing Out” the Role of the Listener in Reich’s Drumming |
| 2007 | Melissa Hoag | Multiply-Directed Moments in Brahms’s Schönwar, das ich dir weihte… (Op. 95, no. 7) |
| 2006 | Matthew Boyer | Topical Pairing as Compositional Strategy in Mozart |
| 2005 | Michael Baker | Transformational vs. Prolongation in Brahms’s In der Fremde |
| 2004 | Danny Beard | From Landfill Management and Wastewater Treatment to Mozart: Using Multiple Linear Regression to Model Musical Contour |
| 2003 | Michael Berry | A Modular Space Approach to Voice Leading in Atonal Music |