Dr. Caleb Mutch
Profil
Caleb Mutch is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Freiburg. His work focuses on the overlooked histories of fundamental musical concepts such as the cadence, the triad, and form. This research area is complemented by secondary interests in global pop music analysis and in the Digital Humanities.
Curriculum Vitae
| seit 01/2026 | Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im VolkswagenStiftungs-Projekt “Scientific Discourse in Medieval Vernacular Texts” von Prof. Dr. Racha Kirakosian am Deutschen Seminar der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg |
| 12/2020–12/2025 | Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Forschungsgruppe “Histories of Music, Mind, and Body” von Dr. Carmel Raz am Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik |
| 08/2017–05/2020 | Postdoctoral Resident Scholar und Visiting Assistant Professor an der Indiana University |
| 08/2015–05/2017 | Core Lecturer in the Humanities an der Columbia University |
| 06/2011–06/2015 | Doktorand an der Columbia University |
Publikationen
Peer-reviewed Articles
- “Early Modern Music Cognition: The Case of W. C. Printz.” Forthcoming in Journal of Music Theory 69, no. 2 (Fall 2025).
- “Against the Monochord: Numbers, String Lengths, and the History of Music Theory.” Music Theory Online 31, no. 4 (November 2025): doi.org/10.30535/mto.31.4.6
- “An Emendation to Pseudo-Aristotle, Problêmata 19.4.” Classical Quarterly 74, no. 2 (2024): 784–87.
- “Re-quantifying W. C. Printz’s Concept of Quantitas Intrinseca.” Music Theory and Analysis 11, no. 2 (2024): 172–95.
- “How the Triad Took (a) Root.” Journal of Music Theory 66, no. 1 (2022): 43–62. (Winner of the David Kraehenbuehl Prize 2022/23)
- “‘Something Else is Possible’: Transcultural Collaboration as Anti-Apartheid Activism in the Music of Juluka.” Popular Music 40, no. 3–4 (2021): 450–69.
- “Canons and Contestable Cadences in Brahms’ Op. 118, No. 4.” Music Theory and Analysis 8, no. 1 (April 2021): 143–52.
- “The Triad in Dispute: Johannes Lippius, His Audiences, and the Disputatio Genre.” Music Theory Spectrum 42, no. 2 (Fall 2020): 247–59.
- “Pedagogy and Authority in Sixteenth-Century German Music Theory Textbooks.” Theoria 26 (2020): 25–54.
- “Mathematical Approaches to Defining the Semitone in Antiquity.” Journal of Mathematics and Music 14, no. 3 (2020): 292–306.
- “The Formal Function of Fortspinnung.” Theory & Practice 43 (2018): 1–32.
- “Blainville’s New Mode, or How the Plagal Cadence Became ‘Plagal.’” Eighteenth-Century Music 12, no. 1 (March 2015): 69–90.
Book Chapter
- “From Juluka to Savuka: Johnny Clegg’s Changing Compositional Practices.” In Johnny Clegg: Critical Reflections on his Music and Influence, edited by Michael Drewett and Lucilla Spini, 209–27. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2025.
Digital Humanities
- “Pietro d’Abano on pseudo-Aristotle on Music: A Digital Critical Edition.” (Under review)
- Critical edition coded in XML following Text Encoding Initiative standards, with ability to hide and swap textual variants.
- Digital Director of Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory. (Under contract)
- Overseeing digitization of global theory materials (including western and non-western languages, audio and visual sources) and their incorporation into a database.
- “Particula XIX: De Harmonia.” In Problemata: Translatio Bartholomaei. (In preparation; expression of interest received to be published in the Aristoteles Latinus series.)
- Critical edition includes phylogenetic analysis of underlying XML data to quantify the degree of relatedness of more than fifty manuscripts.
Edited Volume in Progress
- Editor at Large of Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen, Lester Hu, and Carmel Raz