Simon Music Center, M225J
Education
- Ph.D., Columbia University, 2017
- M.Phil., Columbia University, 2014
- M.A., University of Washington, 2011
- B.A., University of Washington, 2008
Orit Hilewicz is assistant professor of music in music theory at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
She earned a Ph.D. in music theory from Columbia University in 2017. Before joining the faculty at IU in 2022, she was assistant professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music. For 2020–21, she was named an internal fellow at the University of Rochester Humanities Center.
Hilewicz’s research explores intertextuality, metaphor, and agency in Western music of the long twentieth century. Her articles, published in Music Theory Online, Music Analysis, and Perspectives of New Music, among other journals, focus on cross-modal interactions between music, visual and literary works, and films and media art.
She has presented her work in national and international conferences including the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, International Musicological Society, Music Analysis, and International Society for the Study of Time, where her paper on Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel was awarded the Founder’s Prize for New Scholars in 2013.
She served as coeditor of Theory and Practice, assistant editor of Perspectives of New Music, and editorial board member of the Music Theory Spectrum. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Perspectives of New Music and SMT-Pod. In addition, she served on the Society for Music Theory Publication Awards Committee (articles) in 2023–24 and the program committee (2025). She currently serves on the executive committee of Music Theory Midwest as Area II Representative (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin).
Selected Publications
“Experiencing Spaces through Musical Subjects in Caroline Shaw’s Plan and Elevation and Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel.” Music Analysis 44/ii (2025): 205–245. https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12248.
“Berio’s Compositional Poetics as Performance: Continuo for Orchestra and Ekphrasis (Continuo II).” Perspectives of New Music 62/1 (2024): 79–132.
“Anxiety and The Real Thing: Queer Ekphrasis, Acoustic Palimpsest, and Autistic Listening.” Kunsttexte 4 (2022): https://doi.org/10.48633/ksttx.2022.4.91645
“Schoenberg’s Cinematographic Blueprint: A Programmatic Analysis of Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene (1929–30),” Music Theory Online 27/1 2021): https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.21.27.1/mto.21.27.1.hilewicz.html
“A Film Scene for Arnold Schoenberg’s Begleitungsmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene (1929–1930),” SMT-V 7/2 (2021). Coauthored with artist and filmmaker Stephen Sewell: http://www.smt-v.org/archives/volume7.html#a-film-scene-for-schoenbergs-begleitungsmusik-zu-einer-lichtspielscene
“On the Swerve and the Flow in Thomas Adès’s Polaris, Op. 29,” Perspectives of New Music 57/1–2 (2019).
“Reciprocal Interpretations of Music and Painting: Representation Types in Schuller, Tan, and Davies after Paul Klee,” Music Theory Online 24/3 (2018): http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.18.24.3/mto.18.24.3.hilewicz.html