Caitlin Martinkus

Caitlin Martinkus is assistant collegiate professor of Music Theory at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include musical form in the nineteenth century, historical and contemporaneous theories of musical form, nineteenth-century improvisatory practices, and the role of improvisation in music theory pedagogy. She has presented research on these subjects at the annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, the European Music Analysis Conference, Music Theory Mid-Atlantic, Music Theory Midwest, and the Canadian University Music Society. Caitlin completed her PhD in Music Theory at the University of Toronto in November 2017. Her dissertation, “The Urge to Vary: Schubert’s Variation Practice from Schubertiades to Sonata Forms,” reveals the many and nuanced ways in which elements of variation permeate Schubert’s idiom. Her most recent publication in Music Theory & Analysis considers his use of variation techniques in the introduction and subordinate theme complex of Schubert’s C Major Symphony (D. 944/i).

Before coming to Virginia Tech, Martinkus taught at the University of Notre Dame and Georgia State University as a lecturer of music theory. She is an affiliate of the Centre for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Music at the University of Toronto, and her research has been supported by the Ontario provincial government (OGS) as well as the University of Toronto (Waters Graduate Fellowship).