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About the Author

Professor Kenneth Smith has worked at the University of Liverpool since 2011 after holding posts at Keele and Durham (where he completed his PhD in 2009). His first book, Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire was published early in 2013, and he has published essays in music journals on Alexander Skryabin, Karol Szymanowski, Charles Ives and Alexander von Zemlinsky. In addition to his interest in Western art-music from the turn of the twentieth century, Kenneth is also interested in the analysis of popular music with a co-edited book (The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, 2018) containing a chapter on Arab Strap, and he has published on form and harmony in Modest Mouse (2014) and Suede (2017).

Kenneth is president of the Society for Music Analysis, having served as Events Officer and Trustee.

Publications

2026	Smith, Kenneth, and R. Worth. “A Model of Pitch-retention in Extended Harmony, or Drunk on Thundercat’s Common Tones.” Journal of Music Theory (forthcoming, 2026).
	Smith, Kenneth, and I. Costabile. “Scriabin’s ‘Irrlicht’: Lights, Colors, and Insects in Scriabin’s Tenth Sonata.” In Rethinking Scriabin, edited by C. Flamm, L. Macchiarella, V. Kallis, and S. Nichols. New York: Oxford University Press (forthcoming, 2026).
2025	Smith, Kenneth “The Romantic‑Virtuosic Sentence in Liszt’s B Minor Sonata, or, Positive Feedback as Formal Accelerator.” Music & Letters 106, no. 1 (February 2025): 29–57. View
	Smith, Kenneth “Skryabin’s Mystical Space and the Spectral Attitude.” In The Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, edited by Amy Bauer, Liam Cagney, William Mason, 15–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025. View
2023	Smith, Kenneth M., & Stephen Overy. Listening to the Unconscious: Adventures in Popular Music and Psychoanalysis. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Bloomsbury product page.
2022	Smith, Kenneth “Groping in the Darkness: Harmonic Spaces, Energetic Cycles and Cybernetic Transformations in Alma Mahler‑Werfel’s ‘Licht in der Nacht’.” In Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers, edited by Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, 23–54. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. View
	Smith, Kenneth “Music in Radio Drama: The Curious Case of the Acousmatic Detective.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 147, no. 1 (May 2022): 105–134. View
2021	Smith, Kenneth “Scriabin’s Accelerative ‘Two Dimensional’ Sonata Forms.” In Demystifying Scriabin, edited by Kenneth Smith and Vasilis Kallis, 178–198. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021. View
	Smith, Kenneth “The Enigma of Entropy in Extended Harmony.” Music Theory Spectrum 43, no. 1 (2021): 1–18. View
2020	Smith, Kenneth “Diatonic Refraction through Metatonal Spaces.” In Mining the Gap: Musics with and after Tonality, edited by Paul Fleet, 182–204. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. View
	Smith, Kenneth “Pulp: A Paradigm for Perversion in Pornosonic Pop.” In Identity in Popular Music, edited by Kai Arne Hansen, Eirik Askerøi, Freya Jarman, 160–177. Routledge, 2020. View
	Desire in Chromatic Harmony. Oxford University Press. (OUP product page verified.) View
2018	Smith, Kenneth “Vertigo’s Musical Gaze: Neo‑Riemannian Symmetries and Spirals.” Music Analysis 37, no. 1 (2018): 68–102. View
	Overy, Stephen, and Kenneth Smith. “Cybernetic Groove Cycles and the Mysteries of Desire in Arab Strap.” In The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, edited by Ciro Scotto, Kenneth Smith, and John Brackett, 364–377. London: Routledge, 2018. View
	The Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches, ed. Ciro Scotto, Kenneth M. Smith, John Brackett (Routledge). View
	Smith, Kenneth “Becoming Minoritarian: Embodiment and Disembodiment in Szymanowski’s Mythes, Op. 30.” In Music, Analysis, and the Body, edited by N. Reyland and R. Thumpston, 51–73. Leuven: Leuven University Press / Peeters, 2018. View
2017	Smith, Kenneth M. "Sexual Subversion and the Subdominant: The Case of Suede." Music Analysis (Special Issue). (Wiley page verified.) View
	Smith, Kenneth “The Psychodynamics of Neo-Riemannian Theory.” In Music — Psychoanalysis — Musicology, edited by Susan Wilson, 66–83. Farnham: Ashgate, 2017. View
2014	Smith, Kenneth “Formal Negativities, Breakthroughs, Ruptures & Continuities in the Music of Modest Mouse.” Popular Music 33, no. 3 (2014): 428–454. View
	Smith, Kenneth “The Tonal Energetics of the Transformational Universe: Cohn, Rings, Tymoczko.” Music Analysis 33, no. 2 (2014): 214–256.. View
2013	Smith, Kenneth M. Skryabin, Philosophy and the Music of Desire. Royal Musical Association Monographs 19. Routledge (Taylor & Francis eBook product page verified). View
2011	Smith, Kenneth M. "Skryabin’s Revolving Harmonies, Lacanian Desire and Riemannian Funktionstheorie." Twentieth-Century Music 7, no. 2 (2011). (Cambridge listing verified.) View.
	Smith, Kenneth M. "The Tonic Chord and Lacan’s Object a in Selected Songs by Charles Ives." Journal of the Royal Musical Association 136 (2011). View
	Smith, Kenneth M. "'A Science of Tonal Love'? Drive and Desire in Twentieth-Century Harmony: the Erotics of Skryabin." Music Analysis 29 (2011). View
2010	Smith, Kenneth M. "Lacan, Zemlinsky and Der Zwerg: Mirror, Metaphor and Fantasy." Perspectives of New Music 48, no. 2 (2010). View