About

Jenine Brown is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University. She joined the music theory department in 2015 after earning a Ph.D. in music theory from the Eastman School of Music. She also holds degrees from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. Her courses include undergraduate ear training and graduate theory seminars that explore the intersection of music cognition and music analysis, guiding students in hearing musical structure. Brown's research primarily employs an empirical approach to studying listener expectation and musical knowledge acquisition, and she has published extensively on topics such as music perception, pre-compositional structure in post-tonal music, and aural skills pedagogy. She has received numerous awards and grants, including Johns Hopkins University’s Catalyst Award and the Peabody Conservatory CARES Award. Brown has presented her research at many national and international conferences and has served in various leadership roles within professional societies, including the Society for Music Theory and the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Social psychology
• Mathematics
• Communication

Selected publications

• Implicit and Explicit Biases for Gender in Opera Roles

  Journal of Singing · 2024-02-23

  articleSenior author

  Abstract: Recent scholarship by LaBonte and Bryngelsson has illustrated an imbalance of roles composed for men and women within often-performed operas today. This study examines the possible implications of this on audience members, testing participants’ explicit and implicit biases for gender after watching scenes from an opera by Mozart, performed as written and also performed with the gender roles reversed. The experimental findings have implications for opera companies and for opera pedagogy, and we ask whether continuing to perform frequently performed operas from this era as written is propagating negative stereotypes against women, in terms of both representation and character portrayals.

  PublisherDOI

• An Analytical Dataset of Approaches to V in Mozart

  Empirical Musicology Review · 2023-03-07 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Tonal functions—tonic, pre-dominant, and dominant—are a standard feature of North American music theory. The pre-dominant (PD) encompasses the largest number of chords, varying in quality and scale degrees; unlike the tonic and dominant functions, it is primarily defined by its syntactical role, preceding the arrival of the dominant. While Western harmony textbooks consistently organize PD chords according to a regulative syntax (e.g., IV goes to ii), they differ on its rationale and are rarely explicit about the repertoire(s) on which it is based. Furthermore, while the PD is thought to be an essential element of cadential closure, the role of PDs at various formal locations is underexplored, be it in textbooks or corpus studies. To facilitate exploration of these claims for future research, we analyzed all 22 sonata-allegro movements from the Mozart piano sonatas and generated a new dataset containing every occurrence of V (including the Cad6/4), the three chords preceding each V, and their formal location.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Perceptual Attraction of Pre-Dominant Chords

  Music Perception An Interdisciplinary Journal · 2021-09-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Among the three primary tonal functions described in modern theory textbooks, the pre-dominant has the highest number of representative chords. We posit that one unifying feature of the pre-dominant function is its attraction to V, and the experiment reported here investigates factors that may contribute to this perception. Participants were junior/senior music majors, freshman music majors, and people from the general population recruited on Prolific.co. In each trial, four Shepard-tone sounds in the key of C were presented: 1) the tonic note, 2) one of 31 different chords, 3) the dominant triad, and 4) the tonic note. Participants rated the strength of attraction between the second and third chords. Across all individuals, diatonic and chromatic pre-dominant chords were rated significantly higher than non-pre-dominant chords and bridge chords. Further, music theory training moderated this relationship, with individuals with more theory training rating pre-dominant chords as being more attracted to the dominant. A final data analysis modeled the role of empirical features of the chords preceding the V chord, finding that chords with roots moving to V down by fifth, chords with less acoustical roughness, and chords with more semitones adjacent to V were all significant predictors of attraction ratings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Your Teacher Cares if you Listen! Helping Students Analyze 12-Tone Compositions Without a Score

  2021-02-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Despite the fact that 12-tone music has been described by well-known scholars of music perception as difficult to aurally comprehend, recent empirical evidence suggests that undergraduate music majors with no formal training in nontonal music can learn repetitive intervals and trichordal motives from simply listening to an unfamiliar 12-tone composition without a musical score. Attuning to these repetitive intervals can reveal a composition’s larger narrative, and sample interval-based analyses will illustrate ways to hear structure in 12-tone music. Numerous works composed by Schöenberg, Webern, and Dallapiccola, as examples, contain repetitive intervals, and focusing on these intervals can provide us with multiple insights. Before sharing this listening strategy with my undergraduate ear-training students, I begin my introduction to 12-tone music with a shortened version of the experiment described by Brown, which teaches students that there are many benefits to listening to 12-tone musical recordings without the score. In the eight-minute, in-class version of the experiment, students hear Webern’s Op. 24/iii four times and then respond to eight forced-choice questions wherein they must choose which of two trichordal motives appeared in the composition. Materials for this in-class demonstration will be shared in the chapter for other teachers to use. Lesson plans herein encourage students to actively engage with recordings of 12-tone music, namely, by attuning to repetitive intervals on the musical surface to ascertain motives, considering text/music relationships, and determining the formal design of the compositions. I argue that this approach makes more cognitive sense than hearing certain works as a series of 12-tone rows, aligning well with previous analyses of post-tonal compositions that focus upon intervals on the musical surface.

  PublisherDOI

• The Perceptual Attraction of Pre-Dominant Chords

  2021-05-13

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Among the three primary tonal functions described in modern theory textbooks, the pre-dominant has the highest number of representative chords. We posit that one unifying feature of the pre-dominant function is its attraction to V, and the experiment reported here investigates factors that may contribute to this perception. Participants were junior/senior music majors, freshman music majors, and people from the general population recruited on Prolific.co. In each trial four Shepard-tone sounds in the key of C were presented: 1) the tonic note, 2) one of 31 different chords, 3) the dominant triad, and 4) the tonic note. Participants rated the strength of attraction between the second and third chords. Across all individuals, diatonic and chromatic pre-dominant chords were rated significantly higher than non-pre-dominant chords and bridge chords. Further, music theory training moderated this relationship, with individuals with more theory training rating pre-dominant chords as being more attracted to the dominant. A final data analysis modeled the role of empirical features of the chords preceding the V chord, finding that chords with roots moving to V down by fifth, chords with less acoustical roughness, and chords with more semitones adjacent to V were all significant predictors of attraction ratings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hearing tetrachords in an atonal context

  Journal of New Music Research · 2020-04-13

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This study examines the perception of tetrachords. Musicians were divided into four groups. One group heard a Bartók composition predominated by [0167]; other groups heard it recomposed with any instance of [0167] replaced with [0148], [0268], or [0257]. Analysis of ratings before and after familiarisation suggests that participants recognized the tetrachord from familiarisation, no matter which set-class was prominent in familiarisation and despite confounds of hearing real music. Tetrachords with similar intervals to the motive were also rated higher after familiarisation. Notably, participants demonstrated ability to generalise from a melodic presentation in familiarisation to a harmonic presentation in ratings phases.

  PublisherDOI

• “Notehead Shorthand”: A Rhythmic Shorthand Method for Melodic Dictation Exercises

  Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy · 2020-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Paney and Buonviri report that high school theory teachers struggle to get adequate results on the rhythmic aspect of melodic dictations, quoting one instructor who observes that students “don’t know how to space the notes rhythmically, and they get flustered, and it ends up causing them to mess up some of the pitch parts” (2014, 405). In response to their call for improved pedagogy for rhythm, I summarize previous research on melodic dictation strategies and then introduce a new rhythmic shorthand method (“Notehead Shorthand”). Notehead Shorthand builds upon Karpinski’s protonotation (2017) by asking students to mark note onsets (rather than durations), and it provides an improved way to notate subdivisions of the beat and syncopations. Moreover, compared to the well-known slash system of rhythmic shorthand, the proposed shorthand system looks more like actual notation, making it easier for inexperienced students to use and translate to the musical staff. The system provides a method for writing the rhythm of a melodic dictation in one hearing, minimizing cognitive load for students. While students of all ages and abilities can utilize this new method, it may be especially helpful to students within first-year aural skills courses and for those preparing for the melodic dictation tasks on the College Board’s Advanced Placement Music Theory exam. I then describe pros and cons of the technique after implementing the method with undergraduate music students over the years, and I also share some modifications to the method that can be made depending upon the student’s previous experience with dictation and the level of beat that the student is internally pulsing while taking dictation (i.e., the beat, the division, or the subdivision).

  PublisherDOI

• The interaction of repetition and difficulty for working memory in melodic dictation tasks

  Research Studies in Music Education · 2019-04-22 · 10 citations

  articleSenior author

  This research examines the effect of repetition on melodic dictation tasks in an undergraduate ear-training class. A pilot group of freshman music majors ( n = 17) were asked to notate four melodies, of which two were slightly more difficult since they contained more melodic leaps. Participants heard two melodies repeated three times and two other melodies six times. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) suggests that the number of repetitions had a significant effect on participants’ dictation accuracy, both for scores on pitch and on rhythm. In addition, dictation accuracy was significantly lower when the melodies contained more leaps (controlling for other factors). Overall, we found a statistical interaction between the number of repetitions and the number of leaps in the melody, both of which factors affect the working memory load in these dictation tasks. Given the similarity of the notated melodies, these findings suggest that ear-training pedagogues must carefully select melodic dictations appropriate for student ability and control the number of melodic leaps. Furthermore, we found evidence that the variance in working memory for music among this population is wider than Karpinski (2000) hypothesizes. These findings provide pedagogues with melodic characteristics well-suited for the average incoming freshman music major. Finally, this first empirical evidence of the dictation ability of incoming undergraduate music majors invites a long-term study on the extent to which working memory and/or chunking ability may increase during the multi-semester ear-training curriculum.

  PublisherDOI

• The Perception of Frozen Intervals in Anton Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24, Third Movement

  Music Theory Spectrum · 2019-08-19 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Many have described twelve-tone music as difficult to aurally comprehend (e.g., Huron, 2006; Meyer, 1967). This study addresses such claims by investigating what listeners can implicitly learn when hearing a recording of a twelve-tone composition. Krumhansl (1990) has argued that listeners unfamiliar with a musical style attune to the distribution of pitch occurrences, with the most frequent pitch providing a reference point. However, in Anton Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24/iii, each pitch occurs nearly the same number of times. Because the distribution of pitches in this twelve-tone work is flat, this study investigates whether listeners instead perceive its recurring intervals. After passive exposure to the composition, musician participants (n = 12) with no formal training in non-tonal music theory demonstrated learning of the frequent intervals (and pairs of intervals) in both forced-choice and ratings tasks. Nonmusicians (n = 13) did not. I then use these empirical findings to inform an interval-based analytical approach to Webern’s compositions.

  PublisherDOI

• Incorporating Sight-Singing, Melodic/Harmonic Dictation, and Formal Listening Skills into a First-Semester Aural Skills Course

  Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy · 2019-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This syllabus and course outline may serve as a reference for those interested in incorporating multiple facets of the aural skills curriculum within the first semester of aural skills: sight singing exercises, melodic and harmonic dictation, and formal listening skills.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Daphne Tan

  University of Toronto

  5 shared

• David John Baker

  4 shared

• Nathan B. Cornelius

  Johns Hopkins University

  2 shared

• Roland R. Griffiths

  Johns Hopkins University

  2 shared

• Frederick S. Barrett

  Johns Hopkins Medicine

  1 shared

• Michelle I. Lin

  1 shared

• Laura Carskadden

  1 shared

• David Smooke

  Johns Hopkins University

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Department of Music Theory

  University of Rochester Eastman School of Music

  2014

Awards & honors

• Johns Hopkins University’s Catalyst Award (2023)
• COVID-19 Research Accelerator Grant (2021)
• Technology Fellowship from the Center for Educational Resour…
• Inaugural winner of the Peabody Conservatory CARES Award for…
• 2022–23 Visiting Fellow in Course and Exam Development at Co…