Paula Maust

Paula Maust is a performer, scholar, and educator dedicated to fusing research and creative practice to amplify underrepresented voices and advocate for social change. She is the creator of Expanding the Music Theory Canon, an open-source collection of music theory examples by women and composers of color. A print anthology based on the project will be released with SUNY Press in December 2023. Paula also researches the pejorative language used to describe early modern women on stage and harmony books by nineteenth-century women. She has published articles in Women and Music and the Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music, and she is an Early Modern Area Editor for Grove Music Online’s gender and sexuality revision project.

As a harpsichordist and organist, Paula has been praised for combining “great power with masterful subtlety” (DC Metro Theater Arts) and as a “refined and elegant performer” (Boston Musical Intelligencer). As the co-director of Musica Spira, she curates provocative lecture-concerts connecting baroque music to contemporary social issues focused on women. Paula performs extensively as a continuo player with numerous ensembles in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. region, including the Washington Bach Consort, the Folger Consort, Third Practice, and the Handel Choir of Baltimore. She is currently working on a recording project of Elizabeth Turner’s c.1756 Six Lessons for the Harpsichord. 

Paula is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. She holds degrees in harpsichord from Peabody (DMA ’19, MM ’16) and in organ from the Cleveland Institute of Music (MM ’12) and Valparaiso University (BM ’09).