Michael Dodds

Michael R. Dodds is Professor of Music History at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

His book "From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory" (Oxford University Press, 2024) proposes a model for change in modal theory between the 16th and 18th centuries. Its twin, "The Organ in Baroque Office Liturgy" (OUP, forthcoming 2026), considers the transition from modes to keys in the realm of musical practice. A third book, "Understanding Seventeenth-Century Music: From Modes to Keys in Music Analysis," is in development.

Dodds’s research into the history of music theory, post-Tridentine liturgical practice, musical iconography, labyrinths, and music theory’s relation to the the history of science has been funded by multiple fellowships, including Fulbright, National Endowment for the Humanities, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts. Numerous articles on how Baroque musicians conceptualized tonal space have appeared in publications including the Journal of Musicology, Journal of Seventeenth Century Music, Philomusica Online, and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

After childhood and youth in the Peruvian Amazon, Dodds studied violin performance at the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music and the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins before earning the M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology at the Eastman School of Music. With strong interests in public service, he worked early in his career for all three branches of the Federal Government in Washington, D.C., and for the United Nations in Vienna, Austria.

Besides his work as a scholar, Dodds has long been active as a conductor and composer. His story as an artist-scholar, culminating in his 2013 choral symphony on Psalm 145, is explored in a feature-length documentary, "Blessed Unrest," by Bonnemaison, Inc. The film, with voice-over by the legendary actress and UNCSA muse Rosemary Harris, has won more than a dozen awards on the festival circuit.