David Heinsen

Educational Credentials

• Ph.D., Music Theory, The University of Texas at Austin
• M.A., Musicology, University of Georgia
• M.M., Euphonium Performance, University of Georgia
• B.M., Instrumental Music Education, James Madison University

Biography

David Heinsen is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Miami University, where he teaches multiple courses in the undergraduate music theory sequence and graduate-level analysis. Prior to this appointment, he served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University, where he coordinated the second-year undergraduate theory curriculum and taught graduate seminars.

Heinsen’s research lies at the intersection of musical analysis and historical inquiry. His work examines how historically situated listeners might have understood musical compositions from their time, grounding his analytical interpretations in archival research and contextual understanding. His current project focuses on Spanish concert music of the early 20th century, specifically addressing how composers strategically used vernacular genres like the fandango and pasodoble in their art music compositions, and how these strategies were understood relative to their contemporary social, political, and racial discourses. This work draws on topic theory, cultural studies, historiographies of flamenco, and the construction of national identities. His other active project studies common schemata in 21st-century flamenco fusion music and how the transformation of these schemata construct meaning for listeners familiar with them.

Heinsen has presented papers at several meetings of the national Society for Music Theory, regional conferences in Georgia, Texas, Colorado, and Kansas, and international symposia in Barcelona and Valladolid, Spain. He has also published articles in Bibliotheca Dantesca on narrative theory and literary hermeneutics, and Engaging Students on the integration of popular music into the aural skills classroom.