Staff profile

Rafael (Ardi) Echevarria is a musicologist and music theorist specialising innineteenth-century musical form and musicology's disciplinary debates. Ardi earned First Class Honours and Masters degrees from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and is completing a PhD at Durham University, supported by the Northern Bridge Consortium and the Ramsay Centre. He has worked with Sydney Conservatorium’s musicology division and the Australian National University’s School of Music. Ardi has presented at multiple national and international conferences, earning 2nd Prize at the Musicological Society of Australia’s 2019 Student Paper Awards. He currently serves as secretary for the MSA’s Sydney chapter and was part of the organising committee for its 2021 national conference.  

Invited Talks

• “From Deformation to Reformation: Sonata Failure and the Analysis of 19th-century Music,” Research Seminar Series at the School of Music, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 19 May 2022

Conferences

• “Deconstructing Adorno’s Durchbruch: From Materiale Formenlehre to the New Formenlehre,” Paper presented at the 23. Jahreskongress der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH), Freiburg, Germany, 22–24 September 2023.
• “Towards a Theory of Breakthrough,” Paper presented at the Society for Music Analysis Annual Conference (OxMAC23), Oxford, UK, 6–8 July 2023
• “Wagner’s Musical Gift: Siegfried Idyll and the New Formenlehre,” Paper presented at the SMA Theory and Analysis Graduate Student’s Conference, Liverpool, UK, 13–14 April 2023.
• “Beethoven, Schumann and the Foundations of Breakthrough,” Paper presented at the BFE/RMA Research Students’ Conference, Newcastle, UK, 10–12 January 2023.
• “On the Use and Disadvantages of History for the New Formenlehre,” Paper presented at the 8th Conference of the Royal Musical Association Music & Philosophy Study Group, London, UK, 7–8 July 2022.
• “Breakthroughs in Sonata Theory: Analysing Deformations and Historical Narratives,” Paper presented at the 44^th MSA National Conference, Sydney, Australia, 9–11 December 2021.
• “In Search of Processual Form: On the Concept of Becoming,” Paper presented at the SMA Theory and Analysis Graduate Students Conference, London, UK, 12 November 2021.
• “The Deformational Titan: Mahler 1/IV and History Within the New Formenlehre,” Paper presented at the International Conference on Musical Form, Newcastle, UK, 21–23 June 2021.
• “Musical Modernity and Dialectical Deformations: Listening under the New Formenlehre Paradigm,” Paper presented at the 43^rd MSA National Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 3–5 December 2020.
• “Transformational Theory or Audacious Analysis? How Philosophy Influences Neo-Riemannian Theory,” Paper presented at the 42^nd MSA National Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 3–5 December 2019.

Scholarships and Awards

• Northern Bridge Consortium: Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship
• World Universities Ramsay Postgraduate Scholarship
• Eleanor Sophia Wood Postgraduate Research Travelling Scholarship
• Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship
• University of Sydney Honours Scholarship
• David Harold Tribe Postgraduate Research Fellowship – Symphony
• Busby Musical Scholarship
• Musicological Society of Australia Student Delegate Conference Paper Award – Second Prize

• Music Theory
• Musicology
• Musical Form
• Nineteenth-century Music
• Music Philosophy

Journal Article

• Echevarria, Rafael (2018). Parsing Parsifal: Wagner’s Erotic Kunstreligion. Sydney Undergraduate Journal of Musicology 8: 3–22.