Robert Cogan’s internationally acclaimed books include Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music (coauthor Pozzi Escot), New Images of Musical Sound, recipient of the 1987 Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory, and two books of pioneering spectrographic studies of musical sounds: Music Seen, Music Heard and The Sounds of Song. His works have been performed and he has spoken on theoretical and creative matters at various prestigious musical institutions across the United States and in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. Cogan received the Young Composer’s Radio Award (BMI), Chopin and Fulbright scholarships, German government grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency.
He earned his B.M. and M.M. from the University of Michigan, his M.F.A. at Princeton University, and has since studied with Ross Lee Finney, Nadia Boulanger, Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, and Phillip Jarnach. Cogan also acted as a visiting faculty member at Berkshire Music Center (Tanglewood), SUNY/Purchase, IBM Watson Research Center, Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, and Shanghai Conservatory.
