Fred Lerdahl


Alfred Whitford 'Lerdahl' is an American music theorist and composer. Best known for his work on musical grammar, cognition, rhythmic theory, and pitch space, he and the linguist Ray Jackendoff developed the Chomsky-inspired generative theory of tonal music.
Lerdahl has written numerous orchestral and chamber works, three of which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Music: Time after Time in 2001, String Quartet No. 3 in 2010, and Arches in 2011. He is a Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University.

Life

Alfred Whitford "Fred" Lerdahl was born on March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin. His maternal uncle was the astronomer Albert Whitford.
Lerdahl studied with James Ming at Lawrence University, where he earned his BMus in 1965, and with Milton Babbitt, Edward T. Cone, and Earl Kim at Princeton University, where he earned his MFA in 1967. At Tanglewood he studied with Arthur Berger in 1964 and Roger Sessions in 1966. He then studied with Wolfgang Fortner at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg/Breisgau in 1968–69, on a Fulbright Scholarship. From 1991 to 2018 Lerdahl was Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition at Columbia University; before that, he taught at the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Lerdahl was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lawrence University in 1999. He is a member of the American [Academy of Arts and Letters].
Lerdahl has written three books: A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Tonal Pitch Space, and Composition and Cognition. He has also written numerous articles on music theory, music cognition, computer-assisted composition, and other topics.
Lerdahl's music is published by Schott, and Bridge Records is producing an ongoing series of recordings of it. Lerdahl's students include composers Christopher Buchenholz, Zosha Di Castri, R. Luke DuBois, John Halle, Huck Hodge, Arthur Kampela, Alex Mincek, Paul Moravec, Matthew Ricketts, Allen Shearer, Kate Soper, Tyshawn Sorey, Christopher Trapani, Carl Voss, Wang Lu, Eric Wubbels, and Nina C. Young; and music theorists Elizabeth Margulis and David Temperley.

Music

Lerdahl's influences include the German classics, Sibelius, Schoenberg, Bartók, Stravinsky, Carter, Messiaen, and Ligeti. He has said he "always sought musical forms of own invention", and to discover the appropriate form for the intended expression. In Fanfare, Robert Carl wrote: "Lerdahl is a profoundly musical composer, engaged in all his work in a rigorous and respectful dialogue with tradition, eager to imbue his pieces with the maximum of both information and clarity." Of Lerdahl's composition Waves, Phillip Scott wrote, "Waves is an orchestral scherzo. It conjures up the motion and the sense of waves, not merely of the oceanic variety but also those found on graphs: sound waves, heartbeats, and so on. It begins with a surge of activity and never lets up in its cascading scales and rapid figuration. Unlike Debussy's La mer, whose deep-sea swells it recalls only fleetingly, it has no moments of repose."

List of compositions

Source:

Orchestral

  • Chords, large orchestra, 1974–83
  • Cross-Currents, large orchestra, 1987
  • Waves, small orchestra, 1988
  • Without Fanfare, small orchestra, 1994
  • Quiet Music, large orchestra, 1994
  • Spirals, orchestra, 2006
  • Arches, cello, small orchestra, 2011
  • Time and Again, small orchestra, 2014

Chamber music

  • String Trio, violin, viola, cello, 1966
  • Imitations, flute, harp, viola, 1977, revised 2001
  • String Quartet No. 1, 1978, revised 2008
  • Waltzes, violin, viola, cello, double bass, 1981
  • Episodes and Refrains, flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, bassoon, 1982
  • Fantasy Etudes, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion, 1985
  • Marches, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, 1992
  • Time after Time, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion, 2000
  • Imbrications, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, percussion, 2001
  • Oboe Quartet, oboe, violin, viola, cello, 2002
  • Duo, violin, piano, 2005
  • String Quartet No. 2, 1982–2010
  • String Quartet No. 3, 2008
  • Arches, cello, ensemble, 2010
  • There and Back Again, cello, 2010
  • Times 3, violin, cello, piano, 2012
  • Give and Take, violin, cello, 2014
  • String Quartet no. 4 "Chaconne", 2016
  • Three Bagatelles, violin, guitar, 2016
  • Duo, cello, piano, 2017
  • Chords, version for 13 instruments, 2018
  • Cyclic Descent, piano and large ensemble, 2018
  • Reflection, flute, clarinet, piano, 2020

Choral

Vocal

  • Wake, soprano, harp, violin, viola, cello, 3 percussion, 1967–68
  • Aftermath, 1973
  • Eros, mezzo-soprano, alto flute, harp, electric guitar, viola, bass guitar, piano, 2 percussion, 1975
  • Beyond the Realm of Bird, soprano, orchestra, 1984
  • The First Voices, soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, 8 percussion, 2007
  • Fire and Ice, high soprano, double bass, 2015

Piano

  • Piano Fantasy, 1964
  • Quiet Music, two pianos, 2001
  • Three Diatonic Studies, 2004–09
  • Inner Life, two pianos, 2022

Discography

Awards