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Michael R. Dodds is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His callings as scholar, artist, and teacher are united by a life-long fascination with the conceptualization of tonal structures, especially in the contexts of sacred music. The story of Dodds as an artist is the subject of the 2023 documentary Blessed Unrest: A Composer's Awakening.
Michael Dodds offers an ambitious and wide-ranging account of one of the most vexing problems in the history of Western music, the shift from mode to key. Dodds brings unparalleled knowledge of musical repertories and theoretical thought to illuminate pivotal moments. Disentangling diverse strands of thought he offers a three-fold model to explain change based on the dynamic interplay among three historical-conceptual layers. From Modes to Keys becomes the starting point for all future investigations of mode. * Jessie Ann Owens, Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus, UC Davis * The historical path leading from modality to tonality has long been a confounding and contentious subject for musicologists. In his brilliant new study, Michael Dodds may well have written the definitive account of this epic story. We learn how the familiar major and minor key system emerged not through any direct evolution from the set of eight Ecclesiastical modes, rather through a radically new theoretical conception of tonal space catalyzed by the introduction of keyboard instruments in the church service. A landmark book. * Thomas Christensen, Avalon Foundation Professor of Music and the Humanities, The University of Chicago * Well produced with print that is easy on eyes of all ages, this is a deeply learned study. * Choice * This text is highly accessible to a wide range of musical audiences, who are curious about the history, development and reasoning behind the system of tonality we employ today. * Kymani Armstrong-Williams, Physics Book Reviews *
