Michael Baker
Assistant Professor of Music Theory

Degrees:
Ph.D. Indiana University
M.A. University of Kentucky
B.M.E. University of Kentucky

At UK since: 2007

Phone: 859-257-1177
Email: mrbake00@uky.edu

Michael Baker holds degrees in music education and music theory from the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. in music theory from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. Prior to his appointment at UK, he held teaching posts at Western Carolina University, Grand Valley State University, and Roosevelt University’s Chicago Conservatory of Music.

His research centers on song analysis, specifically text-music relationships in the nineteenth-century German Lied. His 2007 dissertation focused on issues of text-music relationships in the solo songs of Felix Mendelssohn. He has presented papers at several regional and international conferences, and in 2005 was invited to present a paper on Schenkerian analysis at the Dublin International Conference for Music Analysis. He is the recipient of four awards for outstanding graduate student research, from the Music Theory Society for the Mid-Atlantic, the South-Central Society for Music Theory, Music Theory Southeast, and the South-Central chapter of the College Music Society. His article on Brahms’s “In der Fremde” will appear in College Music Symposium.  

At the University of Kentucky, Dr. Baker teaches classes on Schenkerian analysis, musical form, solfege and aural skills, and art song analysis.