Scott Brandon Murphy

Scott Murphy
  • Professor of Music Theory

Contact Info

785-864-2229
220 Murphy Hall
1530 Naismith Drive
Lawrence, KS 66045-3103

Biography —

From a canzona by Buxtehude to a pop-song cover in Bridgerton, Scott Murphy applies imaginative thinking to the finding of design and meaning in a wide spectrum of western musical works and styles. He has taught music theory at the University of Kansas since 2001, holding a PhD in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, and MM degrees in both Musicology and Music Composition and BM degrees in both Music Theory and Music Composition from KU. He has won three publication awards from the Society for Music Theory: two for his research on Brahms ("On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms's Op. 25", and Brahms and the Shaping of Time), and one for his research on music for the moving image (“An Eightfold Taxonomy of Harmonic Progression…”). He has won two teaching awards from the University of Rochester and three teaching awards from KU, including the Byron Shutz Award for Excellence in Teaching.

He has published articles on a variety of topics, including new approaches to works by J.S. Bach, Haydn, Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, Holst, Ives, Bartók, Myaskovsky, Klebanov, and Penderecki; to film music analysis; and to new conceptions of musical time. His research appears in the journals Intégral (26, 36); Journal of Music Theory (53/1, 67/1); Journal of the Society for American Music (20/1); Music Analysis (26/3); Music, Sound, and the Moving Image (8/2); Music Theory and Analysis (5/1); Music Theory Online (12/2,13/3, 22/3, 28/1); Music Theory Spectrum (36/2); MusMat: Brazilian Journal of Music and Mathematics (4/1, 6/2, 9); Perspectives of New Music (25/1); SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal (5/3, 8/2); Theory and Practice(44), and Twentieth-Century Music (5/2, 10/2); and in six multi-author books whose topics range from film and television music to post-1900 Russian music. He was the founding editor of SMT-V: Videocast Journal of the Society for Music Theory, and is a past president of Music Theory Midwest.

Research —

Conduct research in music theory, to be disseminated in the form of books, book chapters, journal articles, conference presentations, and invited lectures

Teaching —

Teach courses in undergraduate and graduate music theory

Selected Publications —

Murphy, S. (2025). A Rogue Note in Lars von Trier's Melancholia. SSS Lab.
Murphy, S. (2025). “Leonard Bernstein, Third Symphony ‘Kaddish’". Twelve-Tone and Serial Composition: The First Hundred Years.
Murphy, S. (2024). An Approach to Scales in Some Twenty-First Century Television Music. The Palgrave Handbook of Music and Sound in Peak TV. (pp. 221-243). Routledge.
Murphy, S. (2024). Tracking Progressions of Heroic Chord Progressions in Recent Popular Screen Media. Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score. Routledge. [978-0367430764].
Motazedian, T., Murphy, S. (2023). Holst’s Planets: Interplanetary Voyage as Intrapersonal Escape. Intégral - Volume 36.
Murphy, S. (2023). An Eightfold Taxonomy of Harmonic Progressions, and Its Application to Triads Related by Major Third and Their Significance in Recent Screen Music. Journal of Music Theory - Issue 1 | Volume 67. https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-10232093.
Murphy, S. (2022). Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema. Journal of Music Theory - Issue 1 | Volume 66. https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9534175.
Murphy, S. (2022). Clara Schumann's op. 16 no. 3 and "Fifth Above, Third Below": Discerning Inverted Canonic Potential. The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal - Issue 2 | Volume 8. https://doi.org/10.30535/SMTV.8.2.
Murphy, S. (2022). Three Audiovisual Correspondences in the Main Title for Vertigo. Music Theory Online - Issue 1 | Volume 28. https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.28.1.6.
Murphy, S. (2020). S as a Latter-Day H: Mortally Liminal SLIDEs in Recent Popular Film and Television. Theory and Practice - Volume 44.
Murphy, S. (2020). Abundant Novelty of Antitonic Harmony in the Music of Nikolay Myaskovsky. Analytical Approaches to 20th-Century Russian Music: Tonality, Modernism, Serialism. Routledge.
Murphy, S. (2020). Common Rhythm as Discrete Derivative of Its Common-Time Meter. MusMat: Brazilian Journal of Music and Mathematics - Issue 1 | Volume 4.
Murphy, S. (2019). “Fifth Above, Third Below”: Discerning Canonic Potential. The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal - Issue 4 | Volume 5. https://doi.org/10.30535/SMTV.5.4.
Murphy, S., Murphy, S. (2018). Durational Enharmonicism and the Opening of Brahms's Double Concerto. S. Murphy (Eds.). Brahms and the Shaping of Time. Univ of Rochester Pr. [9781580465977].
Murphy, S. (2018). A Remarkable Non-Duplication of Stretto in J.S. Bach's "The Art of Fugue". Music Theory and Analysis (MTA) - Issue 1 | Volume 5. https://doi.org/10.11116/MTA.5.1.3.
Murphy, S. (2017). Brahms and the Shaping of Time. Univ of Rochester Pr. [9781580465977].
Murphy, S. (2016). Cohn’s Platonic Model and the Regular Irregularities of Recent Popular Multimedia. Music Theory Online - Issue 3 | Volume 22. https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.22.3.6.
Murphy, S. (2014). A Pop Music Progression in Recent Popular Movies and Movie Trailers. Music, Sound, and the Moving Image - Issue 2 | Volume 8. https://doi.org/10.3828/MSMI.2014.9.
Murphy, S. (2014). Scoring Loss in Some Recent Popular Film and Television. Music Theory Spectrum - Issue 2 | Volume 36.
Murphy, S. (2013). Transformational Theory and the Analysis of Film Music. The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies. (pp. 471-499). Oxford Univ Pr. [9780195328493].
Murphy, S. (2013). In the Beginning of Penderecki's Paradise Lost. twentieth-century music - Issue 2 | Volume 10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572213000030.
Murphy, S. (2012). The Tritone Within: Interpreting Harmony in Elliot Goldenthal's Score for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The Music of Fantasy Cinema. (pp. 148-174). Equinox. [9781908049933].
Murphy, S. (2012). Septimal Time in an Early Finale of Haydn. Intégral - Volume 26.
Murphy, S. (2009). Metric Cubes in Some Music of Brahms. Journal of Music Theory - Issue 1 | Volume 53. https://doi.org/10.1215/00222909-2009-020.
Murphy, S., Hayward, P. (2009). An Audiovisual Foreshadowing in "Psycho". & P. Hayward (Eds.). Terror Tracks: Music and Sound in the Horror Film. (pp. 47-59). Equinox Publishing.
Murphy, S. (2008). A Composite Approach to Ives's ‘Cage’. twentieth-century music - Issue 2 | Volume 5. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572209990041.
Murphy, S. (2007). On Metre in the Rondo of Brahms’s Op. 25. Music Analysis - Issue 3 | Volume 26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2249.2008.00261.x.
Murphy, S. (2007). Considering Network Recursion and Bartók’s “Fourths”. Music Theory Online - Issue 3 | Volume 13. https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.13.3.2.
Murphy, S. (2007). A Model of Melodic Expectation for Some Neo-Romantic Music of Penderecki. Perspectives of New Music - Issue 1 | Volume 45. https://doi.org/10.1353/PNM.2007.0015.
Murphy, S. (2006). The Major Tritone Progression in Recent Hollywood Science Fiction Films. Music Theory Online - Issue 2 | Volume 12. https://doi.org/10.30535/MTO.12.2.2.
Murphy, S. The Conclusion of Liszt’s Les préludes as Precedent for Three Harmonic Strains of Post-1950 Hollywood Harmonic Heroism. Journal of the Society for American Music.

Selected Presentations —

Transforming Video Examples - Society for Music Theory National Conference. Location: Minneapolis, MN. (11-07-2025).
m9M, Fingerprint of James Newton Howard - Music and the Moving Image Annual Conference. Location: New York, NY. (5-31-2025).
Pancanonic Fugue in A Minor - Society for Music Theory National Conference. Location: Jacksonville, FL. (11-09-2024).
An Intersection between Harmonic Dualism and Corpus Tendencies in the Music of Rachmaninoff - Dan Fest: A Conference Celebrating the Career of Daniel Harrison . Location: Yale University. (9-28-2024).
Another Link Between Ethel Smyth’s Biography and a Remarkable Aspect of Her Violin Sonata - "Dame Ethel Smyth: Connections, Culture, and Context" Conference. Location: Dublin, Ireland. (7-12-2024).
M4m as Loss in Recent Entertainment and News Media - University of Iowa. Location: Iowa City, IA. (11-16-2023).
Situating Gospel's Inverted M2m - Society for Music Theory National Conference. Location: Denver, CO. (11-10-2023).
Two Shorter Lectures on Western Music and Optimization: Common Scales / Manifold Stretto - Eastman School of Music Theory Colloquium. Location: Rochester, NY. (10-13-2023).
Duplex Syncopation Classes and Spaces, and Their Application to Western Popular Song - MÚSICA ANALÍTICA: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Musical Time. Location: University of Coimbra; Coimbra, Portugal. (10-12-2023).
The Role of Screen Music in the Music Theory Classroom - Music and the Moving Image Annual Conference. Location: New York, NY. (5-27-2023).
The Conclusion of Liszt’s Les préludes as Precedent for Two Harmonic Strains of Post-1950 Hollywood Heroism, via Flash Gordon and The Lone Ranger - Society for American Music Annual Conference. Location: Minneapolis, MN. (3-11-2023).
Masterclass on Chromatic Tonal Harmony in Film Music - University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Location: Cincinnati, OH. (11-29-2022).
“Some Western Music as Economic” - McGill University. Location: Montreal, Canada. (11-22-2022).
"Negotiating Normality and Novelty on Two Levels: Model-Composition Pedagogy, Chromatic Tonal Sets, and Some Aspects of Josephine Lang’s ‘Ich gab dem Schicksal dich zurück’ (1868)" - American Musicological Society and Society for Music Theory National Conference. Location: New Orleans, LA. (11-13-2022).
“Some Early 21st-Century Television Music Through the Lens of Non-Diatonic Scales” - University of Missouri - Kansas City. Location: Kansas City, MO. (9-30-2022).
“Some Early 21st-Century Television Music Through the Lens of Non-Diatonic Scales” - Scoring Peak TV Conference. Location: Royal Northern College of Music; Manchester, England. (7-15-2022).
"Structural and Expressive Differences Between the “Tarnhelm” and the “Vader”" - Music and the Moving Image XVIII. Location: New York University. (5-27-2022).
"Three Audiovisual Correspondences in the Main Title for Vertigo" - Society for Music Theory National Conference. Location: Arlington, VA. (11-02-2018).
"Aaron Copland, James Horner, and Three Fields of Inquiry" - Music and the Moving Image Conference, New York University. Location: New York, NY. (5-27-2018).
A Wisdom of Music - The Joseph and Frances Jones Poetker Thinking About Music Lecture Series. Location: Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. (11-17-2017).
"Aaron Copland, James Horner, and Three Fields of Inquiry" - Society for Music Theory National Conference. Location: Arlington, VA. (11-05-2017).

Awards & Honors —

Outstanding Publication Award. Society for Music Theory. Received: 11-09-2024.
Outstanding Multi-Author Collection Award. Society for Music Theory. Received: 11-09-2019.
The Emerging Scholar Award. Society for Music Theory. Received: 1-01-2009.

Service —

Serve the academic institution at division, school, and university levels, and serve the discipline through adjudication of research, and leadership roles