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David Huron Obituary
David Brian Huron (né Harrison). Born June 1, 1954 in Peace River, Alberta, Canada. Died in Benicia, California on June 5th, from cancer. Son of Allan Henry Harrison (1919-2011) and Luella Gertrude Scott (1925-2011). Survived by long-time partner and spouse Kristin Precoda, brothers Douglas Allan, Kenneth Bruce, sister Marion Gaye, in-laws Beth Harrison-Cain, Peter Thompson, and nephew Casey Scott Harrison.
David was a music lover, musician, and music scholar. Throughout his childhood and adolescence David received extensive training in piano, organ, flute, and music theory. He attended Canterbury High School for the performing arts in Ottawa and subsequently studied flute with Karin Schindler at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. In 1978 he completed an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo--pursuing mixed studies in music, aesthetics, psychology, acoustics, computer science, and engineering.
For several years after graduation David was active as a composer. His music was programmed in some fifty concerts and was featured in single-composer productions in Ottawa, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. Discouraged by mix-ups in which he was mistaken for another composer by the same name, David Harrison legally changed his name to David Huron in 1984.
David continued his education, completing a masters degree at York University, Toronto (where he worked with semiotician David Lidov), and a doctoral degree in musicology at the University of Nottingham, UK (where he was supervised by Brahms scholar, Robert Pascall). At Nottingham, David also began conducting experimental studies, collaborating with psychoacoustician Deborah Fantini at the nearby British Institute for Hearing Research. Abandoning his activities as a composer, David spent the rest of his career conducting music research, producing nearly 200 scholarly publications including three influential books: *The Science of Sadness: A New Understanding of Emotion* (2024), *Sweet Anticipation: The Psychology of Expectation* (2006) and *Voice Leading: The Science Behind a Musical Art* (2016).
Upon completing a PhD in 1989, David was appointed Assistant Professor of Music at Conrad Grebel College, receiving a promotion to Associate Professor in 1991. He held concurrent positions at the University of Waterloo, including administrative Coordinator and principal instructor at UW's Center for Society, Technology, and Values. At the University of Waterloo, he also held complimentary appointments as Associate Professor of Psychology (1994-1998) and Adjunct Professor of Systems Design Engineering (1994-1998).
In 1998, David emigrated to the United States where he took up the position of Professor in the Ohio State University School of Music with a salaried joint appointment at the Center for Cognitive Science (later the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences). At OSU he was head of the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory for 22 years, retiring in 2019 with the rank of Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor. During his OSU tenure he supervised two dozen doctoral and post-doctoral researchers in systematic and empirical music research. He also taught empirical research methods in musicology to nearly two hundred scholars and students from other institutions through annual week-long summer workshops.
David's scholarship was recognized through several awards, including the Society for Music Perception and Cognition's lifetime Achievement Award (2017), the Society for Music Theory's Lifetime Membership Award (2019), and a Fulbright Research Chair (2020) which he was unable to take up due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021 he was named Nico Frijda Honorary Chair in Cognitive Science, awarded by the Amsterdam Brain and Cognition Center and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Amsterdam.
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Rolf Reber
July 6, 2025
This is sad news indeed.
David has always been an inspiration, as a scientist, as a writer, and as a real mensch.
Elizabeth Phillips
June 23, 2025
David Huron always had the most insightful comments at any meeting he was a part of, and delivered them with utmost eloquence. He was a kind and thoughtful presence in the field, full of humility and curiosity, and one I will continue to look up to.
Parag Chordia
June 19, 2025
David was a genius. He asked simple, profound questions: How does music evoke emotions? Why is sad music pleasurable? And amazingly he actually made progress in explaining why.
Meeting him as a grad student at CCRMA was life-changing. I loved music and was searching for deeper explanations. It was thrilling to see him persuasively combine psychology and information theory, evolution and computation, music theory and ethology. He was far ahead of his time in working with large data sets in music, to test and extend his theories. He was a pathbreaker who took these questions seriously and encouraged and inspired others to do so too. He provided a map and method. He was incredibly supportive of studying other traditions such as Indian music. He believed that serious theory had to grapple with all types of music.
Over time his influence on me was deeper than intellectual. He lived the ideal of a scholar-monk. A pure love of learning and genuine delight in ideas. I remember him saying that we all live like kings compared to medieval kings - he seemed content with his material possessions. He shared much wisdom as well. One time during my post-doc with him, I asked him very earnestly, as you do when you´re young, whether there was any point in studying music. Wouldn´t it better if switched to public health? He told me that the best thing you can do is what you love. The world is too unpredictable for you to try and simply maximize some abstract social good. It was the kind of observation that came from a life of reflection.
Perhaps most personally was David´s impact on my personal life. I was getting ready to leave California to go to OSU. Just before leaving I met the woman who would become my wife. I knew immediately that I could not go. I was afraid to tell David, but when I did his answer surprised me. He said simply, there is nothing more important than love.
Christina Klassen
June 19, 2025
I am so sorry to hear about cousin David's passing. Unfortunately, I only knew David through the stories we heard of him and from his many accomplishments. I wish we had the opportunity to meet. We send our sincere condolences to Kristen and all his family.
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Michael Good
June 18, 2025
I am so sorry to learn of David's death. His work on Humdrum was a key starting point for the MusicXML format. His talks, whether one-on-one or in conference presentations, were always inspiring and made me want to do more with music software technology. May his memory be a blessing.
Dan Abrams
June 17, 2025
I was fortunate to spend time with David when I first came to Stanford as a postdoc. He was visiting Stanford at the time and it was so exciting to spend time with him: he had so many interesting thoughts about music and sound, and he really opened my eyes and ears to new ways of thinking. He was so intellectually generous and just brimming with energy and ideas. I hope to honor his memory by bringing his enthusiasm and excitement for auditory and music research to the students I interact with.
Pantelis Vassilakis
June 17, 2025
Dr. Huron has left major mark on music perception and on the way we all understand and teach music's emotional impact on our lives. He and his work are kept alive through consistent discussions in university classrooms and citations in student and faculty research.
Sofia Dahl
June 16, 2025
My heart go out to Kristin and all family and friends. I'm so sorry to hear of David's passing.
I was so very fortunate to be invited by David to do a postdoc with at OSU 2006 and the year in his lab shaped me in many different ways.
I learned much about research from David, but also much about other aspects of life. For me, spending one year over seas was a big deal, and David was always very supportive and helped me in so many ways: from giving me lifts when needed (I didn't have a car), to compare immigrant status and frustrations with non-metric systems, as well as how to handle different kinds of difficulties. And the life-hack of making tough decisions by tossing a coin but paying attention to one's emotional response at the outcome to find out what you REALLY want (which I now pass on to my kids).
Although it is now a long time since I met him in person (last time ESCOM 2009 in Jyväskylä I believe) he is still often in my thoughts. I will tresure the memory of this curious, insightful person and how he shared his appreciation of small delights in life, like the sight of a baby racoon on the balcony, or a humming bird outside the window.
Linshu Zhou
June 16, 2025
I was deeply shocked and saddened to learn of David Huron's passing. Just months ago, he reviewed my work on music and pro-sociality with characteristic generosity - his feedback was not only profoundly encouraging but also painstakingly detailed, refining even single-word choices. Though we never met in person, his scholarship, especially Sweet Anticipation, shaped my thinking in ways I can scarcely measure.
The world has lost both a brilliant scholar and a deeply kind soul. His absence will be deeply felt, but his light will endure through his writings and the countless lives he touched.
- Dr. Linshu Zhou, Shanghai Normal University
Rodrigo Segnini
June 15, 2025
I was saddened to read about David Huron´s passing. I paused my day to reminisce the ways in which knowing him and his work contributed to my own ideas. I wished I had spent more time closer to that part of my endeavor, perhaps receiving his wisdom once again. His legacy lives in the scholarship of several many others his life touched. Peace be upon him and my thoughts go out to his loved ones and family members.
Aniruddh Patel
June 15, 2025
I am so grateful to David for being such a generous colleague and a groundbreaking pioneer in the field of music cognition. I first met him in the 1990s when I was doing my PhD work, and his work and personal qualities became a role model for the kind of person who could thrive in this emerging discipline. His influence continued as we kept in touch via conferences and email over these many years, including exploring our shared interest in relations between linguistic and musical rhythm.
David had a remarkable combination of acumen, good humor, enthusiasm for ideas and data, and generosity to the field (as when he created and taught his Humdrum Toolkit for computational music analysis). I remember visiting David in his house in Columbus when he was at OSU, and appreciating his openness with his time and ideas. Just a few months before his passing he kindly agreed to Zoom with my Psychology of Music class at Tufts to discuss his work on "sad music". He was vibrant and inspiring, and I am so happy that I had that recent hour with him and that the students had the opportunity to learn from such an intellectually engaged and kind scholar from whom I had learned so much. I´m also happy to have the attached photo from his visit.
Soon after his passing, colleagues on the Auditory List (an elist of auditory researchers from around the world), shared their appreciation of David. As I wrote there:
"David played a key role in making music cognition the vibrant research area it is today, and his signature combination of deep knowledge of musical structure and history, empirical acumen, enthusiasm for cross-disciplinary thinking and research, and personal kindness and warmth all made him a treasured colleague.
For those that would like a sample of his broad research interests, he has numerous research videos on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/user8725919
And here is an interview with David about "research methodology, public musicology, music and emotion, formal theory, the place of biology in music studies, and other topics":
https://emusicology.org/index.php/EMR/article/view/8103/6032"
Thank you David, for all your energy, wisdom, kindness, and friendship. I am one of many who will miss you deeply.
Ani Patel
Michael Tenzer
June 12, 2025
I too am sad. David's round face exuded joy and kindness. He liked to laugh. He was generous and always ready to engage. His dazzling talks were copious with diverse musical examples. He set a towering example of the scholarly life and made me proud to aspire to be (somehow...) his fellow traveler. The first time I met him, he said "the most interesting questions are yet to be asked." Stunning, true, words to live by. Condolences to his family and all who miss him.
Ben Brinner
June 11, 2025
I am deeply saddened by this loss. We had not been in touch for many years, but I treasure the conversations we had at UC Berkeley, when David delivered a fascinating as the Bloch visiting professor, and on other occasions. He was beyond smart, with a great sense of humor, and wide-ranging intelligence. My deepest condolences to family and friends.
Ben Brinner, professor emeritus of ethnomusicology, U. C. Berkeley
Alex Rossi
June 11, 2025
While I only met David a few times in the last few years through the cognitive ethnomusicology SiG, I took a lot of inspiration from his perspectives, and they have helped guide my work when I felt misunderstood by closer colleagues. He was also one of the members in the SiG that I could count on for the warmest welcome, and the kindest words.
Luke Shier
June 11, 2025
I met David at the University of Waterloo in the early 1980s, where I had just entered the Integrated Studies program, wanting to study what I vaguely called experimental electronic and electroacoustic music. David had introduced a course on the history of electronic music and quickly became a wonderfully supportive mentor.
He was such an inspiration for me, so enthusiastic and helpful. I felt I had finally found a purpose, a goal, and a person with similar passions who was immensely gifted and knowledgeable, and also so very kind and generous with his time. It seemed we were friends in an unequal way; he gave so much to me. I admired and loved him.
Very sadly, my time with David came to a premature end, due to fierce discouragement by my father, who considered what I was pursuing to have no merit and no future. I was so distressed I could not even face or talk things over with David, and left Waterloo with much regret. For so many years, I have wanted to find David and hopefully renew our friendship. Demanding work and new obligations kept getting in the way.
My deepest condolences to David´s family and loved ones. This is my long-winded way of saying that I know in part what a wonderful, kind, and gifted man he was. My time with him, a glimpse into a path not taken, will always be one of my most treasured memories
David Clampitt
June 11, 2025
David Huron was an eminent scholar, an inspirational teacher and mentor, and a mensch. A few weeks ago I wrote to another friend about him, our friendship, and his categories of sadness: principally melancholy and grief, secondarily nostalgia. I feel his loss in some combination of those three: nostalgically, our many dinners at Aladdin's, an inexpensive Middle Eastern restaurant in Columbus. There is melancholy that we may not have his book on the science of sad music, to which The Science of Sadness (MIT Press, 2024) was meant to be the prolegomena. Mostly, there is grief to have lost this wonderful person. My condolences to his family, especially to Kristin (whom I never met; our wives were on opposite coasts; mine met David only once).
RAYMOND MONTEMAYOR
June 10, 2025
I knew David Huron beginning with his appointment to The Ohio State University faculty in 1998. He was a colleague, a fellow cinephile, and most of all a good friend. There were many occasions when David would come over to my house on a Friday evening to eat pizza, watch a classic film noir movie, and talk about the film, among many other things. I miss him and miss our long conversations about movies, cognitive science, psychology, and people we both knew. He was a gifted, knowledgeable, and thoughtful companion who could always be counted on to add an original idea to our talks. David was a smart guy, but more than his mental prowess he was a warm, funny, thoughtful man with a keen wit. He had broad and deep interests that extended far beyond his music scholarship. He died too soon and will be long remembered by me and by the many others who knew him.
Durrell Bowman
June 10, 2025
My condolences to David's family. I have fond memories of working with him when I was a music student at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo in the mid to late 1980s.
stephen a jones
June 10, 2025
I knew David in the 1990s when I was editing the newsletter for the Centre for Society, Technology and Values at the University of Waterloo. I admired his wit and energy, although I'm afraid I didn't have a much of a clue about his ground-breaking research! I'm glad to learn now of his many accomplishments and his terrific impact on students and colleagues since then. A life well lived. For a 1990 CSTV newsletter with David on the front page and elsewhere, please go to https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-society-technology-values/sites/default/files/uploads/files/newsletter-18.pdf. Best regards to all. -- Steve Jones
Jascha Narveson
June 10, 2025
I was lucky enough to take classes with David while he was still at Conrad Grebel College, at the University of Waterloo. His electronic music class and his psychology of music class were each fountains of new exciting info, accompanied by the giant photocopied textbooks he'd created himself (which I still have!). So many foundational facts about music that have formed my understanding are from him.
Also: he was a jolly guy - deeply unpretentious and sincerely enthused about all the stuff he was teaching. Many times class would end and an unofficial class would start up in his office with a gaggle of keener nerds who stuck around to keep talking and asking questions, sharing favorite recordings, etc. He was the embodiment of everything that I love about academia!
Stanley O'Shea
June 10, 2025
As one of the past members in his lab with a biomedical background, I not only learned from him how to conduct scientific research, but also learned how to live as an empiricist and how to observe human beings. The first time I talked with him in his lab, he taught me that sometimes to be a scientific researcher, we have to endure loneliness, like a Martian does. In reality, that lab was a heartwarming place for me, and I never felt lonely when spending time with my musician colleagues in that building. So lucky to be his student. Like a former colleague pointed out, he treated us like his kids. (The photos were AI-generated to demonstrate the vibe of our lab meetings at OSU - He was a big fan of ethology, the study of animal behavior.)
Henkjan Honing
June 9, 2025
David at the 2014 Lorentz Workshop....
Don Gibson
June 9, 2025
I had the privilege to hire David Huron as Professor of Music Cognition at Ohio State University. While I served as Director of the School of Music, I maintained a strong interest in music cognition while serving at OSU, having a modest number (very modest in comparison to David's output) of research studies published in periodicals prior to my appointment. With his appointment, Professor David Butler gained a colleague and the School of Music had two professors in the research area to complement the two professors in residence in the Department of Psychology.
David was a delightful colleague and friend. My fondest memories of him were collected over a number of Friday afternoons, usually after most faculty members had gone home. He would come to my office dressed in khaki shorts and a long-sleeve white shirt (always the same outfit) and regale me with visions of the future. An excellent example would be his discussion of the search engine "Google" well before the word even existed. He was brilliant, highly productive, and just plain fun to be around. I have missed him since I left OSU.
Don Gibson
Gregory Pat Scandalis
June 8, 2025
So sorry to hear this. I hung around with David in the CCRMA trailers back in the mid 90s. I recall some great conversations with David about Music, technology, music representation. I ran into him 3 years ago at the grocery store, and our conversation picked up right were it left off 25 years earlier.
Yuri Broze
June 8, 2025
I'll be lighting a candle for David tonight. What a loss for the world that he's departed, but we were so enriched by his insight and compassion, that there can be nothing but celebration of a life wonderfully lived.
Vishnu Sreekumar
June 8, 2025
I was a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at Ohio State University from 2009 to 2015, and one of the main reasons I chose OSU was David Huron. David radiated warmth and love, and he carried a childlike curiosity about human behavior throughout his life. His impact on me is difficult to capture in just a few words, so I wrote a blog post in his memory: https://mandalabodyssey.blogspot.com/2025/06/remembering-prof-david-huron.html
Thank you, David, for teaching me the value of productive leisure, how to observe human behavior as if walking among them like an alien, and how to wander in thought on long walks. I will always cherish our conversations and the lessons you shared with such generosity.
Linda Fauth
June 7, 2025
Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. He was my cousin but unfortunately I never had the opportunity to know him. Nice to read all the wonderful memories and to get to hear how appreciated he was. May David rest in peace. Love Linda Fauth (Mackenzie) and Rob Fauth.
Katelyn Horn
June 7, 2025
Some people have an outsized effect on your growth as a person compared to the time you actually spend with them. David was just such a person for me. Even though I only spent two years as his graduate student, I learned more from him about music, science, and what it means to be human than almost any other teacher or mentor I had. He was kind and loving and brilliant and I am forever grateful for the time I had with him. I will carry the things he taught with me for the rest of my life, especially the critical importance of avoiding "hypothesislessness" :).
Henkjan Honing
June 7, 2025
David accepting his Honorary chair.
Henkjan Honing
June 7, 2025
Richard Cohn
June 7, 2025
One remarkable thing about David was how much of his personality was present in his writing. If you knew David personally, and are reading one of his books or articles, he is fully present in the room with you. The directness, the subtle wit (the four voices you want to hear are not the woofer, the tweeter...), the parsimonious language, the generosity toward other scholars. Partly this was because he was able to build his lessons on top of little episodes in his own life (I once had a shoe that squeaked....). Partly it's the complete confidence he seemed to have, with no need to manufacture a veil of pretensions, a different professional persona. He was just all there. I like to fantasize that someone reading David's work without knowing him personally could fully reconstruct his personality. Can't happen, one can only live so much through one's work, but still, David approaches that unreachable more than any other scholar I can think of. He was a beautiful guy in a one-of-a-kind way. It makes me sad that he wasn't able to live a long and comfortable post-Ohio-teaching life in California.
--Rick Cohn
Vincent Cheung
June 7, 2025
David, your work on sweet anticipation was the inspiration of my research. And thank you so much for your encouragement and support. You will be dearly missed.
Alexis Deighton MacIntyre
June 7, 2025
My deepest condolences to David's loved ones. I never got the chance to meet David in person, but he was still an important person in my story. I had just finished an undergraduate degree in music performance and felt very lost, unsure of how to merge my interests that pulled me in seemingly opposing directions. I couldn't find any examples or role models of people who loved and practiced both music and science in my own life or circle of influence. At some point, someone recommended one of David's books. Without much hope that this important and distinguished professor would respond, I sent him a tentative email explaining my situation, without any specific question - just saying that I didn't know what to do. He immediately wrote me back suggesting a phone chat and generously spent more than an hour listening, discussing, and opening my eyes to the fascinating world of music cognition. This phone call made all the difference: I knew I had options, there was a path forward, and that at least one person in the field was happy for me to be there. This was all back in 2014. About a year ago, I sent David another message to let him know that I had gotten involved in science, first as a research assistant and then graduate student, had finished my PhD, and was now a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge. I thanked him for his earlier guidance and support and let him know that I loved my work as a cognitive neuroscientist, but I also mused that my ten-years-ago-self would probably feel some ambivalence about the fact I didn't have much time to write or play music anymore. Just like before, he immediately sent a kind response with these closing words of encouragement: "Don't worry about the music-making. There is plenty of time ahead for you, and you never know what future opportunities await." I know I will continue to come back to his words for the next ten years and a long time after that. Thank you, David.
Richard Parncutt
June 7, 2025
It´s hard to believe that David is no longer with us. He was one of the most passionate and original thinkers in music perception and cognition. His achievements are enormous but let me tell a few personal stories. I first met David when he was reviewing my 1989 book. Not satisfied to just read it and review it, he was determined to meet the author and talk through the issues. So I visited him in Waterloo. He also wanted to understand Terhardt´s theory of virtual pitch in all its philosophical, empirical and modeling detail. 35 years later, last year, David was at it again, sending me detailed questions about my latest book for his review. When I organized the ICMPC in 2018, he could not attend for health reasons but watched the videos, thanking me for making them available. His appetite and energy for research seemed endless. Thanks David for your endless curiosity and determination to get to the bottom of things. Thanks for your courage to test radical hypotheses. Thanks for crossing multiple disciplinary boundaries and catching up with piles of literature on the other sides of multiple disciplinary fences. Thanks for your determination to be exceptional and inspire others to do the same.
Fred W Martin
June 6, 2025
David is fondly remembered by colleagues and alumni from Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo Ontario. I remember a nice visit with him at Ohio State and enjoyed seeing the lab where he studied the physiological impact of music. His research and gentle spirit will be missed.
Shantala Hegde
June 6, 2025
You will remain so dear to me. Every time we met, you only showed me how a good mentor , teacher, researcher is and should be. Your warmth and the affection you showed, will always remain etched in my memories. Rest in peace.
Malcolm Slaney
June 6, 2025
I am so grateful that David was part of my life. He was an amazing scientist and a wonderful person. It was such a treat to be in his presence.
I will always remember him for his contributions to the Stanford Hearing Seminar. We all gained so much from his questions, his broad knowledge, and most of all his inquisitiveness. He had a child-like curiosity and encyclopedic knowledge. It was a wonderful combination. Those years when he was a regular visitor were wonderful.
Thank you David for all you have done for me. I am a better person because of you.
With love, Malcolm
Denise Bronson
June 6, 2025
Here are a few pictures from our movie group family. So many happy memories!
Vincent Lostanlen
June 6, 2025
with gratitude
Sandra MacKenzie-Cioppa
June 6, 2025
We didn't meet at a conference or in a post doc class. We were "only" neighbors, yet so much more. For as long as he could he walked from the two + houses that separated us. He and my husband had long, philosophical discussions on Music, Medicine, Life etc. He was kind, gentle, interesting and interested. Devoted to Kristen, they made a great team to handle, with grace, whatever life threw at them. We will miss him and I will be forever sorry we never had our mysterious interview.
Alan Marsden
June 6, 2025
I first met David at a conference in Paris in 1988, my second time at a conference abroad when I was an excited research fellow starting my career. He sat on the floor in my hotel room and we spoke for ages about our work. Our paths crossed at conferences and in publications several times since then. He was always a pleasure to talk to, enthusiastic about his research and interested in mine. He always had the best questions. I made use of his work several times in my own, both in research and teaching. I am sure many scholars have been similarly touched by him. I will miss him and I wish his family and close friends and colleagues well.
Poundie Burstein
June 6, 2025
I am deeply saddened to hear about David Huron. As with many others, he greatly influenced the way I think about music, scholarship, and--in a larger sense--about life itself. I often assign his writings to my students, though at times I feel as though I could simply base all of my class sessions on his writings alone, which are so foundational and inspirational.
At one conference, David stopped to chat with me and another scholar for about 10 minutes. After he left, this other scholar and I turned to each other and agreed that we learned more in those 10 minutes than in the rest of the conference, and this was not atypical.
In my comments above, I focus on his scholarship, since that is the context in which I interacted with David. But I should also emphasize his humanity. David deeply influenced me not only as a musician but also by showing me how one could conduct scholarship in an ethical and respectful manner.
Denise Bronson
June 6, 2025
David was brilliant in so many ways as a professor, researcher, writer, and musician. But on a lighter side, he was also a member of our "Friday Night Movie Group" who met weekly for 20+ years to enjoy dinner and a movie, followed by dessert and discussion. We were a diverse group whose membership included professors, researchers, and practitioners from psychology, music, and social work but over many years of friendship our discussions covered every topic under the sun.
It is with a heavy heart that we learned of David´s passing. We were well aware of his medical issues but the news was nonetheless shocking. David was always the positive, "look on the bright side" voice in our little group. He always found something good to say about every movie we saw, and seemed to approach everything in life that way.
His professional accomplishments are beyond impressive and have made important contributions to the psychology of music. But, equally impressive are the qualities he brought to Movie Group and his friendships with all of us. His kindness, thoughtfulness, humor, and intellect were just a few of the things that made our Movie Group a family. Can´t imagine movie group without him; he´ll be very missed.
Eva Banks
June 6, 2025
I met David when I joined the staff in the School of Music at Ohio State University in 2002. His enthusiasm for his work was obvious, but what I appreciated was the fact that he was more than willing to take the time to answer any question about his work. He saw each opportunity not just to answer but also instruct and also learn. And while his travels would take him to just about every known center of learning, his research would also take him to fun places like Micronesia. And Yap. And the Amazon basin. After "retiring" he didn't stop his work. If anything I think his work continued to be one part of his life that gave him purpose. The other part that gave him purpose was his love for Kristin. As much as I hated to see him leave OSU, I could tell that his being able to live the next part of his life with Kristin meant the world to him. To Kristin and all of David's family: thank you for sharing David with us.
Henkjan Honing
June 6, 2025
David was a colleague in the truest sense - someone whose intellectual curiosity followed paths closely aligned with mine, especially from the 1990s onward. Over the years, our interests continued to move in similar directions, bridging the theoretical and the empirical, and spanning the cultural as well as the biological dimensions of human experience.
He participated in the 2014 Origins of Musicality meeting, and we connected regularly online during the pandemic. In 2021, I had the honor of presenting him with the Nico Frijda Honorary Chair in Cognitive Science, awarded by the Amsterdam Brain and Cognition center and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, in recognition of his immense contributions to the field.
Just a few weeks ago, I shared a recording of that meeting with him as a reminder. His response was simple and deeply human: "I miss the students."
We will miss him.
Ken Harrison
June 5, 2025
As David was the better story teller amongst us, we can provide no account that could do this moment justice. David studied, sought to understand, shared what he learned with enthusiasm, and most importantly loved. Most of this we knew from a distance, but up close he was truly a lovely and caring person. As his brother I shared a quiet appreciation for the focus of David´s life work in sadness; a feeling that now lingers heavily among us who remain. The stimulating discussions, both brotherly and scholarly, will be missed. Of utmost importance, it was evident that David loved Kristen with a full heart and got more from life because of her. David would want her to know that she is in our hearts.
Ken and Beth Harrison
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The Five Stages of Grief
They're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel.
Read moreWays to honor David Huron's life and legacy
Obituary Examples
You may find these well-written obituary examples helpful as you write about your own family.
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Obituary Templates – Customizable Examples and Samples
These free blank templates make writing an obituary faster and easier.
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How Do I Write a Eulogy?
Some basic help and starters when you have to write a tribute to someone you love.
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