​Daniel B. Stevens, associate professor of music theory, joined the faculty at the University of Delaware in 2008 after earning his Doctor of Philosophy in Music Theory from the University of Michigan. Stevens’s dissertation, Brahms’s Song Collections: Rethinking a Genre, explores the role of genre in the identification and interpretation of these works. In 2007, the American Brahms Society awarded Stevens the Karl Geiringer scholarship for his research on Brahms’s song collections. Apart from his work in 19th-century song, his other interests include studies in music theory pedagogy, performance and analysis, musical and literary genre, phrase rhythm and rubato, musical aesthetics and the relationships between music and ruins.

Stevens has presented papers at national and international conferences, including Performing Romantic Music: Theory and Practice held at Durham University, U.K. in July 2008. At the 2008 joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory, Stevens was an invited panelist on a discussion hosted by the American Brahms Society titled “Brahms at 175: A Study Session on Current and Future Trends in Brahms Scholarship.” Most recently, Stevens presented a paper on Brahms’s song pairings to the 2009 annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory.

As the assessment liaison between the UD Department of Music and the Center for Educational Effectiveness, Stevens has overseen significant improvements in the way student learning is assessed within the department. Through Stevens’s efforts, the Department of Music was awarded a sizable grant to develop and implement an e-portfolio system to be used by all music majors beginning in the 2011 Fall Semester.

Aside from his work as a music theorist, Stevens remains active as a pianist and cellist. He received his Bachelor of Music in Performance from the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he studied with composer-pianist Robert Helps and cellist Scott Kluksdahl. Later, he earned a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied piano with Evelyne Brancart and Sharon Mann, and chamber music with Mark Sokol, Bonnie Hampton and Nathan Schwartz. Stevens performs frequently with his wife, oboist Elizabeth Stevens, and with the New Castle Trio, which he co-founded in 2007.