Adem Merter Birson specializes in eighteenth-century Western art music and classical Turkish music. His research in Western music deals with the relationship between chromaticism and form in the music of Joseph Haydn, and his work has been published in HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America (2014). Additional interests include exoticism, genre/cultural hybridity, topic theory and galant schemata of the Italian partimento tradition. A dedicated teacher, Dr. Birson has published on the use of historical style composition in the music theory classroom in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy Online (2017) and he is the recipient of the Graduate Teaching as Research/Teagle Fellowship from the Cornell University Center for Teaching Excellence (2012–13). He serves as Secretary for the Haydn Society of North America.
Dr. Birson’s research on classical Turkish music deals with identity, modal theory (makam), and religious mysticism in the Ottoman tradition. He is the recipient of such grants as the Critical Language Scholarship (US Department of State) and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Mario Einaudi Center for European Studies). He has presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology and Society for Music Theory and has published in Rast Journal of Musicology (2016). As a performer of the Turkish lute (oud), Dr. Birson has studied with virtuosos like Necati Çelik, Sedat Oytun, Yurdal Tokcan, and Alper Karaağaçlı.
Adem Merter Birson is a graduate of Cornell University and the Aaron Copland School of Music at CUNY Queens College. He has worked as Assistant Professor/Director of the Conservatory at Ipek University, in Ankara, Turkey. He is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Theory at both New York University and Hofstra University.