Publications and other writings
If you're interested in my approach to music theory you probably want to check out my first book.
In recent years I have slowed down my pace of article production; instead, I am working on a new book, tentatively titled Tonality: an owner's manual, which is complete and out for review. I also have a large new paper called "Why Topology?" which I hope takes a step forward in understanding musical geometry.
Mouse over titles for a brief description; click publication info to download. Please do not cite or circulate unpublished items without permission.
Drafts, forthcoming articles, and powerpoints
Many of the powerpoints are intended for a second book on triadic harmony.
- Why Topology? Forthcoming in the Journal of Mathematics and Music.
- Review of Fred Lerdahl's Composition and Cognition. Forthcoming in Music Theory Online.
- Revisiting post-skip reversals. Revise-and-resubmit from Music Perception which I never got around to revising (incorporated into chapter 1 of my second book).
- A Study on the Origins of Harmonic Tonality. Powerpoint (incorporated into chapter 5 of my second book).
- Harmonic Extroversion in the Pope Marcellus Mass. Powerpoint (incorporated into chapter 5).
- Rock Logic. Powerpoint (incorporated into chapter 2).
- Yes, but could the Martians understand Bach? Powerpoint (incorporated into chapter 6).
- Noneuclidean Perspectives on the Classical Style. Powerpoint (incorporated into chapter 6).
- OUCH theory, or a dialogue in neo-Fuxian style. Powerpoint (incorporated into chapter 3).
- Local Harmonic Grammar in Western Classical Music. Unpublished article (incorporated into chapter 6, sort of the inspiration for the whole book).
Published scholarly articles
- The Romantext Format: a flexible and standard method for representing roman numeral analyses.With Mark Gotham, Michael Scott Cuthbert, and Christopher Ariza. Includes substantial musical databases.20th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, Delft, The Netherlands, 2019.
- Fourier phase and pitch-class sum. With Jason Yust. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of Mathematics and Computation in Music, eds. Mariana Montiel, Francisco Gómez-Martín, and Octavio A. Agustín-Aquino. Springer. (2019) pp. 46–58.
- Intuitive Musical Homotopy (with with Aditya Sivakumar, then a high-school student!). Mathematical Music Theory. Robert Peck and Maria Montiel, eds. World Scientific (2018), pp. 233–252.
- In Quest of Musical Vectors. Mathemusical Conversations: mathematics and computation in performance and composition. Elaine Chew, Gerard Assayag, and Jordan Smith, eds. Imperial College Press/World Scientific (2016), pp. 256–282.
- Information Theoretical Approach to Chord Classification (with Nori Jacoby and Naftali Tishby) Journal of New Music Research (2015): 1–26.
- Geometry and the Quest for Theoretical Generality Journal of Mathematics and Music 7.2 (2013): 127–144.
- Review of Michael Cuthbert, Music21: a Toolkit for Computer-aided Musicology. Music Theory Online 19.3 (2013).
- The Generalized Tonnetz. Journal of Music Theory 56.1 (2012): 1–52.
- Submajorization and the Geometry of Unordered Collections (with Rachel Hall). The American Mathematical Monthly 119.4 (2012): 263–283.
- Mazzola's Model of Fuxian Counterpoint. Mathematics and Computation in Music, eds. Carlos Agon, Moreno Andreatta, Gérard Assayag, Emmanuel Amiot, Jean Bresson, and John Mandereau: Springer (2011): 297–310.
- Dear Stanley. Journal of Music Theory 54.1 (2010): 5–25.
- Generalizing Musical Intervals. Journal of Music Theory 53.2 (2009): 227–254.
- Geometrical Methods in Recent Music Theory. Music Theory Online 16.1 (2010).
- Set Class Similarity, Voice Leading, and the Fourier Transform. Journal of Music Theory 52.2 (2008): 251–272.
- Three Conceptions of Musical Distance. In Mathematics and Computation in Music, eds. Elaine Chew, Adrian Childs, and Ching-Hua Chuan, Heidelberg: Springer (2009), 258–273.
- Recasting K-nets. Music Theory Online 13.3 (2007).
- Lewin, Intervals, and Transformations: A Comment on Hook. Music Theory Spectrum 30.1 (2008): 164–168.
- Generalized Voice Leading Spaces (with Clifton Callender and Ian Quinn). Science 320 (2008): 346-348.
- The Geometry of Musical Chords. Science 313 (2006): 72-74.
- Scale Theory, Serial Theory, and Voice Leading. Music Analysis 27.1 (2008): 1-49.
- Scale Networks in Debussy. Journal of Music Theory 48.1 (2004).
- Voice Leadings as Generalized Key Signatures. Music Theory Online 11.4 (2005).
- Function Theories: A Statistical Approach (published in French, English original here). Musurgia 10.3-4 (2003): 35-64.
- Octatonicism Reconsidered Again. Music Theory Spectrum 25.1 (2003): 185-202.
- Stravinsky and the Octatonic: A Reconsideration. Music Theory Spectrum 24.1 (2002): 68-102.
- The Consecutive-Semitone Constraint on Scalar Structure: A Link Between Impressionism and Jazz. Integral 11 (1997): 135-179.
Annoying polemics
Things I've written responding to criticisms by others, or responding to responses to criticisms of others, etc.
- Basket Cases. Music Theory Spectrum 34.1 (2012): 153–154.
- 'Hey, Wait a Minute!'. Music Theory Spectrum 34.1 (2012): 144-149.
- Round Three. Music Theory Spectrum 33.2 (2011): 211-215.
General audience
Some dating back to the days after I'd been asked to leave philosophy graduate school, when I was thinking about trying to become a freelance intellectual.
- Geometric Listening. Berfrois August 2011.
- The Sound of Philosophy. Boston Review October/November 2000: 42-46.
- The Sublime Beethoven. Boston Review December/January 1999-2000: 40-43.
- What Good is Religion? Boston Review October/November 2000: 42-46.
- The Nitrous Oxide Philosopher. The Atlantic Monthly May 1996: 93-101.
- The End of Jazz? Transition 70 (1996): 72-81.
