Bio
Marie-Ève Piché’s primary research interests include chromaticism, late-tonal harmony, and historical perspectives on music theory and analysis. She especially likes to study unusual and neglected harmonic progressions. Her current projects include a study of sequences in Medtner’s music, which features an abundance of atypical sequences that resist traditional classification, as well as research on chromatic wedge progressions in late-Romantic repertoires.
Piché earned her PhD from McGill University, where her research was funded by a grant from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She also holds a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in musicology from the University of Montréal. Piché’s dissertation focused on a previously underexplored family of augmented-sixth chords, which she terms “minorized” augmented sixths. In her thesis, she examines examples of these chords in 19th- and 20th-century repertoires, ranging from well-known composers (such as Wagner and Rachmaninoff) to their lesser-known contemporaries (such as Ture Rangström and Nikolai Myaskovsky). Her work demonstrates the ubiquity of minorized augmented sixths in late-Romantic music and systematically examines their syntax.
She has presented her work at the annual meetings of the Society for Music Theory (SMT), the Canadian University Music Society (MusCan), Music Theory Midwest (MTMW), and the New England Conference of Music Theorists (NECMT). Piché’s article on sequences in J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier was published in the Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique.
Prior to joining the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan, Piché taught music theory and aural skills at the University of Montréal, McGill University, and the École de musique Vincent-d’Indy.
