Dylan Principi

Dylan Principi is Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Affiliate Faculty in Musicology at FSU, where he teaches courses on musical meaning, jazz, nineteenth- and twentieth-century music, and the history of music theory. Prior to joining the FSU faculty, Principi taught as Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University and Postgraduate Research Associate at Princeton University, where he completed his Ph.D.

Principi’s primary research explores the crossover between music theory and the philosophy of interpretation, known as hermeneutics. His first book, Extramusical: Topic Theory and the Politics of Meaning is forthcoming in early 2027 with the University of California Press. The book explores how we distinguish “music itself” from everything else, tracing the intellectual history of this distinction from its inception before the dawn of Romanticism, through the growth of music analysis into an academic discipline separate from musicology, to the cultivation of present-day theories for musical meaning. Principi’s related research has appeared in 19th-Century Music, Music Theory Online, and at conferences across Europe and the Americas. His second book project will focus on the phenomenon of musical exceptionalism—the belief that music is intrinsically special—as a recurring theme in the history of Western music theory and aesthetics.

Principi’s music analyses focus on late-stage tonality in modernist art music and bebop. His work on Darius Milhaud and the members of Les Six has been supported by scholarships from the Paul Sacher Stiftung and featured on numerous conferences programs, including the Society for Music Theory and the American Musicological Society. An article on John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” is forthcoming in the Journal of Music Theory, and his work on formulaic improvisation in the Charlie Parker Omnibook has been funded by Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities.

Principi serves as co-editor of the International Musicological Society publication, Musicological Brainfood, as co-chair of the American Musicological Society’s Philosophy Study Group, on the editorial board of Music Theory Online, and member-at-large of Music Theory Southeast. As a multiple woodwind performer, Principi has played saxophones, flutes, and clarinets with the Artosphere Festival Orchestra, the Philly Singers, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, at the Walnut Street, Media, and Horizon Theatres, and on the PBS television show Articulate!.

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