James Hepokoski earned his Masters and PhD in Music History from Harvard University and has been professor at the Yale Department of Music since 1999. Before that, he taught at the University of Minnesota and at Oberlin.

He is best known for his writing on sonata form

Sonata form

Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

 and its relation to the works of Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 and Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...

, as well as examinations of the symphony tradition and Verdi's

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...

 late operas. He has recently published, with Warren Darcy, a work titled Elements of Sonata Theory

Sonata Theory

Sonata Theory is an approach to the description of sonata form in terms of individual works' treatment of generic expectations. For example, it is normative for the secondary theme of a minor-mode sonata to be in either the key of III or v. If a composer chooses to break this norm in a given...

which makes a large-scale argument about the relation of genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

 to musical structure and choices, and which was the recipient of the Society for Music Theory's 2008 Wallace Berry Award. He is the author of the entry on Jean Sibelius in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

External links

• Faculty profile at Yale University