Marilyn L. McCoy teaches music at Columbia University and Barnard College in New York. She has also taught at Clark University, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University, Brandeis University, and MIT. She completed her doctorate at the University of Chicago with a dissertation entitled “Gustav Mahler’s Path to the New Music: Musical Time and Modernism.” Drawing upon evidence found through study of Mahler’s compositional sketches and musical analysis, her research explores the ways in which Mahler evokes a sense of timelessness in his music, a compositional strategy that plays out in various ways across his entire creative oeuvre.
Recent publications include Schoenberg’s Correspondence with Alma Mahler (Schoenberg in Words) (Oxford University Press, 2019), coedited with Elizabeth L. Keathley, and “Mahler and Modernism” in Mahler in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2021). She also organized the conference “Mahler in New York” in 2019, held at Columbia University and sponsored by the Gustav Mahler Society of New York.
Professor McCoy is much in demand as a lecturer and commentator. She serves as Musical and Historical Advisor, commentator, and editor for the prize-winning podcast by Aaron Cohen of New York Public Radio, Embrace Everything: The World of Gustav Mahler, theworldofgustavmahler.org. McCoy is especially proud of her long association with the MahlerFest in Boulder, Colorado, where she served as annual pre-concert lecturer and symposium participant from 2002–2016. Recent engagements in New York include pre-concert lectures at Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Art Song Society; presentations for the symposium “Leonard Bernstein and Vienna: A Centennial Discussion” at the Remarque Institute of New York University; and the 2018 “Mahler Listening Marathon” sponsored by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. In February 2012 she gave several lectures at Disney Hall as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Mahler Project,” led by Maestro Gustavo Dudamel. Other speaking engagements include the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the Bard Festival, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.