Daniele Shlomit Sofer

• They/Them

• Ph.D., musicology (music aesthetics concentration), University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in Austria
• M.A., Music History and Theory, Stony Brook University 
• M.M., Piano Performance, Binghamton University 
• B.A., Music, State University of New York, New Paltz

• Studying Early Music with Computers, American Musicological Society, 2026
• Humanities Data: Curation, Analysis, Access, and Reuse (Managing modern data for academic research), Oxford University, 2015
• Google UX Design, Professional Certificate, 2021

My interests include electronic and computer music, and I aim to understand sociological aspects related to listening and composing music. I welcome students interested in learning how music intersects with analysis, technology (computers, video games, amplification, beat-making) and philosophy. I have a special interest in sounds of the local environment (wherever I happen to be) and aspire to work within a constellation of ethical sonic practices, including ethically engaging with music’s aural associations to gender, sexuality and race. Check out the Sounds of Dayton project with contributions from UD students enrolled in MUS 323, an advanced audio processing course.

• 2021: International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR)
• 2020: Women in Music Information Retrieval (WiMIR) 
• 2016: Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI)
• 2011: Society for Music Theory (SMT), Publications Awards Committee (2021-23)
• 2010: American Musicological Society (AMS)

• Fundamentals of Music
• Music Theory 1
• Music Theory 2
• Post-Tonal Analysis
• Introduction to Music Technology
• Advanced Music Technology
• Introduction to Musicology & Ethnomusicology
• Music and Sexuality
• Music and Identity
• Music and Meaning in the West
• Class Piano
• String Quartet

Monographs

2022: Sex Sounds: Vectors of Difference in Electronic Music, MIT Press. ISBN-9780262045193. Selected as a finalist for the 2026 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award.

Edited Volumes

In preparation: Christopher Haworth, Daniele Shlomit Sofer, and Edward Spencer, eds., Music
and the Internet: Methodological, Epistemological, and Ethical Orientations, Routledge.

2018: Christa Brüstle and Daniele Sofer, eds., Elizabeth Maconchy: Music as Impassioned Argument. Vienna – London – New York: Universal Edition. ISBN-10: 3702475621.

Edited Journal Issues (Peer-Reviewed)

2026: Commissioned Guest Editor of Special Issue, “Music’s Queering Tendings,” edited with Thomas R. Hilder, Contemporary Music Review.

2025: Editor of Colloquy response to Philip Ewell, "On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone," Journal of Musicological Research 2025/2.

Peer-Reviewed Essays

2020: “Categorizing Electronic Music,” Contemporary Music Review 39/2, Special Issue, “Contemporaneities,” ed. Patrick Valiquet, 231-251. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2020.1806628

2020: “Spectres of Sex: Tracing the Tools and Techniques of Contemporary Music Analysis,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie 17/1, Special Issue, “Music Theory and Gender Studies,” eds. Cosima Linke and Ariane Jeßulat, 31–63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31751/1029

2018: “Breaking Silence, Breaching Censorship: ‘Ongoing Interculturality’ in Alice Shields’s Electronic Opera Apocalypse.” American Music 36/2, 135-162. Recipient of subventions from the AMS and the SMT (2017), DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/americanmusic.36.2.0135

2018: “The Macropolitics of Microsound: Gender and Sexual Identities in Barry Truax’s Song of Songs.” Organised Sound 23/1, 80-90, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771817000309

Invited Articles, Essays and Notes

In progress: "Sound and Sexbots,” Music and Sound in Pornography, eds. Júlia Durand and Pascal Rudolph.“

Submitted: “Measuring Sound for the Greater Good.” Instruments, Interfaces, Infrastructures, Landon Morrison, ed., Oxford University Press.

Forthcoming: “Seattle’s Musical & Racial Schism in the Time of Personal Computing.” In
Christopher Haworth, Daniele Shlomit Sofer, and Edward Spencer, eds., Music and the Internet:
Methodological, Epistemological, and Ethical Orientations, Routledge.

2026:  “Operatic Transformations.” In Justin Vickers and Lucy Walker, Elizabeth Maconchy in Context, Cambridge University Press.

2022: “Playing by the Rules in the House of the Dead” Engaged Music Theory Blog. https://engagedmusictheory.com/2022/05/17/playing-by-the-rules-in-the-house-of-the-dead/

2021: “Le sexe comme champ d’investigation: Réévaluer les outils et techniques d’analyse de la musique contemporaine,” Circuit musiques contemporaines 31/1:, Special Issue, “Queer Speech and Music Creation,” translated by Vanessa Blais-Tremblay and Martine Rhéaume. https://revuecircuit.ca/articles/31_1/03-le-sexe-comme-champ-dinvestigation/

2018: “Death Becomes Him: Elizabeth Maconchy’s One-Act Opera The Departure,” in Elizabeth Maconchy: Music as Impassioned Argument, eds. Christa Brüstle and Daniele Sofer, Universal Edition, 180-196.

2017: “Strukturelles Hören?: Neue Perspektiven auf den ›idealen‹ Hörer,” in Geschichte und Gegenwart des musikalischen Hörens. Diskurse – Geschichente(n) - Poetiken, eds. Klaus Aringer, Franz Karl Praßl, Peter Revers und Christian Utz, Rombach Verlag, 107-132. 

2014: Review of “‘Platonic Rhizomes in Computer Music’: Concert and Keynote Speaker Panel at the 2014 joint conference of the International Computer Music Association and the Sound and Music Computing Conference,” Array: The Journal of the International Computer Music Association (2015-2016): 25. 

2014: Prefaces to study scores, “Erwin Schulhoff, Symphony No. 5,” and “Ludwig Thuille, Piano Quintet, Op. 20,” Repertoire & Opera Explorer. Munich: Musikproduction Jürgen Höflich. 

2010-14: Concert notes for “Clocks in Motion” Percussion Ensemble; Chamber Music Silicon Valley; Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra.

Reviews

2025: Review of Queer Ear: Remaking Music Theory, ed. Gavin S.K. Lee, Music Theory Spectrum 48/1.

2024: “Authentically Otherwise: Targeting Gender in the Twenty-First Century,” review of Hearing Sexism: Gender in the Sound of Popular Music a Feminist Approach by L. J. Müller, trans. Manu Reyes, Women & Music. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/939593

Conference Proceedings

2016 “Music in Transit: An Interactive Interview with Juliana Hodkinson.” The Dark Precursor: International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research, eds. Paulo de Assis and Paulo Giudici: Open-Access Rich-Media Proceedings, Ghent, Belgium. Best Presentation Award Recipient. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/237890/237891

2014 “Eroticism and Time in Computer Music: Juliana Hodkinson and Niels Rønsholdt’s Fish & Fowl.” “Music Technology Meets Philosophy: From Digital Echoes to Virtual Ethos,” proceedings of the ICMC SMC 2014: 40th International Computer Music Conference joint with the 11th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 14-20 September, Athens, Greece, volume 1: 148-153.

Reviewer of International Publications

2026 Twentieth Century Music, Cambridge University Press
2026 Journal of the American Musicological Society, University of California Press
2025 Music and Politics, University of Michigan Press
2025 Music and Social Justice series, University of Michigan Press
2025 Music Books series, Routledge
2025 Jazz Research Journal
2022 Music Analysis Journal, Society for Music Analysis
2019 Monographs on Music series, Oxford University Press
2017 Music Theory Spectrum Journal, Oxford University Press
2013 Organised Sound: An International Journal of Music and Technology, Cambridge University Press