Mark McFarland

Foundation Studies: Theory and Composition

Mark McFarland received his Ph.D. in music theory from the University of California at Santa Barbara where he studied with Pieter van den Toorn. He also studied at the Université François-Rabelais de Tours with the late Jean-Michel Vaccaro. He is currently on the advisory board of The Journal of Music Criticism and is a board member of the Centro Studio Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini. He is also a former president of the South-Central Chapter of the Society for Music Theory.

He has delivered papers on Stravinsky, Debussy, Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, Holst, Vaughan Williams, theories of musical influence and the tonal jazz repertory at regional, national and international conferences in England, Canada, Belgium, Finland, Serbia, Russia, Romania and Italy. He will next be presenting a paper on Schubert’s developing style of solo violin writing at the conference “The Early Romantic Solo Concerto” in Lovere, Italy.

His articles and reviews appear in journals including The International Journal of Musicology, Cahiers Debussy, Theoria, Music Theory Spectrum, The Journal of Music Theory, Jazz Perspectives, Music Theory Online, Notes, The Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique and Ad Parnassum. Dr. McFarland wrote the “Igor Stravinsky” entry for the Oxford Bibliography Online: Music as well as the “pianola” entries for The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia and the forthcoming Stravinsky-Handbuch from Bärenreiter/Metzler Verlag.

Dr. McFarland is the recipient of a GSU Research Initiation Grant and multiple GSU School of Music Summer Research Grants, all of which allowed him to either deliver papers at international conferences or conduct archival research on Stravinsky at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. The results of these research trips appear as articles in the journals Studi Musicali and La Revue de Musicologie. He is also the recipient of a GSU Scholarly Support Internal Grant which funded his 2024 book The Musical Relationship between Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky published by the University of Rochester Press.

Dr. McFarland presented a paper at the Steve Larson Memorial Conference. This paper appears as “Schenker and the Tonal Jazz Repertory: A Response to Martin” in the Festschrift honoring Steve Larson published in Music Theory Online. He also presented a paper at the international conference «L’héritage de Claude Debussy: du rêve pour les générations futures» that celebrated the 150th birth year of the composer. His paper was published as a chapter in the proceedings of this conference, Debussy’s Resonance. He also presented his paper “Stravinsky as Analyst: The Firebird and Petrushka” at the international conference “Rethinking Stravinsky.” This paper comprises a chapter in the proceedings of the conference, Igor Stravinsky: Sounds and Gestures of Modernism. Finally, his chapter on the relationship between Stravinsky and Boulez appears in Boulez in Context published by Cambridge University Press.

A horn player, Dr. McFarland studied with Jim Thatcher and published an interview with his former teacher in The Horn Call. He served as the music theory instructor and horn instructor during his time at Southeastern Louisiana University and has performed with the Pacific Symphony and the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra.