Jee-Weon Cha
Jee-Weon Cha is a music theorist whose work explores the intersection of music, meaning, and human experience. His research encompasses such topics as analysis and interpretation, perception and cognition, semiotics and aesthetics, gender and sexuality studies, and the history of theory, with a particular focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century repertoires.
His scholarship bridges disciplinary boundaries to understand how music communicates beyond the limits of language. He has recently completed an essay on ineffability and queerness in listening, as well as an article on music and addiction. His publications include “Lack of Musicality? Explaining Anomalies in Some Senior Korean Christians’ Hymn Singing,” “The Takadimi System Reconsidered: Its Psychological Foundations and Some Proposals for Improvement,” “Moment and Allegory: Hearing Richard Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24,” “Music, Power, Money: Reading Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music,” “Ton vs. Dichtung: Two Aesthetic Theories of the Symphonic Poem and Their Sources,” and “Moments musicaux: Exact Imagination, or Hearing the Adornian Augenblick.” He also translated Donald J. Grout, Claude V. Palisca, and J. Peter Burkholder’s A History of Western Music, 7th edition, into Korean.
At ƽ, he teaches music theory courses (such as “Music Theory I,” “Music Theory II,” “Tonal Counterpoint,” “Advanced Tonal Theories,” and “Cognitive Theories of Music”) and interdisciplinary topics (like “Music, Mind, and Brain,” “Music and Language,” “Gender and Sexuality in Western Music,” and “Music in Interdisciplinary Conversations”). His teaching reflects a commitment to helping students engage with music as both an artistic practice and a mode of critical inquiry.
He holds a Ph.D. in Music History and Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Music Theory and Systematic Musicology from the University of Washington, and a B.M. in Music Theory and Composition from Seoul National University.