Nathaniel Mitchell

• Professional Track Faculty
• Music Theory

Dr. Mitchell comes to CVPA from Temple University where he has been Adjunct Professor of Music Theory. He has also held professional appointments at the University of Delaware and Princeton University in the area of Music Theory.

Mitchell’s research focuses on the cognitive foundations of musical creativity in a variety of genres, including opera, bluegrass, and video games. His research has appeared in Music Theory Spectrum (“The Volta: A Galant Gesture of Culmination”), the Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory (“/r/musictheory: Making Music Theory on Reddit.com”), and SMT-Pod (“Moderating Musical Discussions on Reddit: An Interdisciplinary Conversation”), and a video essay on the Animal Crossing video game series is forthcoming in SMT-V.

Mitchell received his PhD in Music from Princeton University, where his dissertation on musical form in eighteenth-century opera was awarded the Holmes/ D’Accone Dissertation Fellowship from the American Musicological Society. He also holds an MM in Music Theory from Indiana University as well as a BM in Piano Performance and Music Theory from Furman University.