Nathan Cobb

Bio

Nathan Cobb is a Ph.D. candidate in music theory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation research draws upon archival materials housed at the Paul Sacher Foundation to trace the developing temporal philosophies of spectralist composers Gérard Grisey and Kaija Saariaho. He has presented at national and international music conferences, where his papers reflect the diversity of his research interests: including folk and electronic dance music, topic theory, post-tonal theory pedagogy, and philosophical approaches to music theory. When not working on these projects, Nathan is usually cooking, reading, or playing Hot Wheels with his toddler.

Nathan earned his B.A. in Piano Performance, summa cum laude, from Houston Baptist University in 2016 and his M.A. in Music Theory from the University of Washington in 2019. His master’s thesis, entitled Analyzing Perceived Time: A Husserlian Study of Temporal-Consciousness in Gérard Grisey’s Vortex Temporum and Morton Feldman’s Triadic Memories, explores the effects of transformational processes on the listener’s experience of temporal pacing.