Michael Dodds

Michael R. Dodds is Professor of Music History at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

His book "From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory" (Oxford University Press, 2024) has garnered high honors, including the Wallace Berry Award for distinguished books from the Society for Music Theory and the Early Music Award from the American Musicological Society. Its twin, "The Organ in Baroque Office Liturgy" (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), considers the transition from modes to keys in the realm of musical practice. A third book, "Understanding Seventeenth-Century Music: From Modes to Keys in Music Analysis," is in development, completing a trilogy tracing this pivotal transformation from the complementary perspectives of theory, practice, and analysis. Together, these perspectives reflect Dodds's own multifaceted expertise as a scholar, performer, and composer.

Dodds’s research into the history of music theory, liturgical performance practice, and musical iconography has been funded by multiple fellowships, including Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts, and the McDonald Agape Foundation. Numerous articles on how Baroque musicians conceptualized tonal space have appeared in publications including the Journal of Musicology, Journal of Seventeenth Century Music, Philomusica Online, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and The Art of Musical Diagrams (Swiss Musicological Society, 2026).

After childhood and youth in the Peruvian Amazon, Dodds studied violin performance at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins before earning the M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. His dedication to public service is highlighted by his early career work with all three branches of the Federal Government in Washington, D.C., as well as for the United Nations in Vienna, Austria.

Besides his work as a scholar, Dodds has long been active as a conductor and composer. His story as an artist-scholar, culminating in his 2013 choral symphony on Psalm 145, is explored in a feature-length documentary, "Blessed Unrest," by Bonnemaison, Inc. With voice-over by legendary actress and UNCSA muse Rosemary Harris, the film has won more than a dozen awards on the international festival circuit.

Dodds will spend the 2026–27 academic year as a Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.