Sam Reenan

Education
Ph.D., Music Theory, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
M.A., Music Theory, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
B.M., Music Theory, University of Connecticut
B.S., Biological Sciences, University of Connecticut

Sam Reenan joined the faculty at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, as Assistant Professor of Music Theory in Fall 2021. He previously served as Lecturer in Music at Hamilton College.

Reenan is a dedicated educator and serves as the coordinator of the music theory area. He teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses across all stages of the music theory curriculum. He works closely with graduate students in Miami's innovative Master’s of Music Performance program, where he has advised several graduate research projects. A proponent of the teacher-scholar model, Reenan has participated in programs including the Miami Plan Innovation Lab (2024), Advancing Teacher Scholars faculty learning community (2023–2024), Howe Faculty Fellows program (Spring 2023), and New Faculty Teaching Enhancement Program (Fall 2021).

Issues of symphonic thought, genre mixture, large-scale form, narrative, and social identity figure prominently in Reenan’s research. His first book, titled Symphonic Spectacles: Form, Identity, and Hybridity in the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2025), examines these ideas across a range of Germanic, American, and British symphonic works. Symphonic Spectacles considers how composers in the early twentieth century combined traditional approaches to musical structure. The book’s six case studies exemplify how music analysis can tease apart the compositional process and reception of complex symphonic works that rely on multiple overlapping processes of musical form. These comprehensive analyses of musical structure integrate discussion of aspects of their composer’s identity situated within their historical contexts.

Reenan’s scholarly writings are published in major peer-reviewed journals including Music Theory Spectrum (2024), Music Theory Online (2022, 2016), Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy (2020), and Music & Letters (2019), and he is a contributor to several forthcoming edited collections on topics including musical form and the works of Gustav Mahler. Reenan has presented his research at conferences across Europe and North America, including in Italy, Belgium, England, and France.