Schenker and the Theory of Chordal Scales

Speaker: Dmitri Tymoczko (Princeton University)

Monday, December 15, 2025, 20:00 CEST – online via Webex

Committee: Tim Gebel, Johannes Hentschel

The GMTH (society of German-language music theory) announces the seventh event in their international online lecture series, taking place on Monday, December 15, 2025, 20:00 CEST. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Dmitri Tymoczko (Princeton University) who will present a talk entitled “Schenker and the Theory of Chordal Scales.” Anyone interested in attending may register via this website.

Die GMTH (Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie) kündigt die siebte Veranstaltung ihrer internationalen Vortragsreihe an, die am Montag, 15. Dezember 2025, 20:00 Uhr MESZ stattfinden wird. Dr. Dmitri Tymoczko (Princeton University) wird einen Vortrag zum Thema »Schenker and the Theory of Chordal Scales« präsentieren. Interessierte melden sich bitte über dieses Formular an.

Registration | Anmeldung

Please register in advance via the GMTH website

Bitte melden Sie sich zur Veranstaltung über die GMTH website an.

Webex Webinar-Link: https://udk-berlin.webex.com/udk-berlin/j.php?MTID=m7f0a1cd003debffab417a8d251612ba0

Webinar-Kennnummer: 2795 723 7978

Webinar-Kennwort: jSYm7bT52i9

Abstract

In my talk I will suggest that one can arrive at recognizably Schenkerian analyses in a radically new way, by modeling chords as very small scales. The voice leadings between these scalar collections provide a kind of musical reduction, eliminating within-chord motion and leaving behind only between-chord motion. These reductions often resemble the "middlegrounds" of Schenkerian practice -- sometimes in remarkably specific ways. The talk will illustrate this by comparing Schenker's and my analyses of the first C-minor prelude from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. I will also introduce Arca, a "musical programming language," that performs the musical calculations required by my approach.

Dmitri Tymoczko was born in 1969 in Northampton, Massachusetts. He studied music and philosophy at Harvard University, and philosophy at Oxford University. He received his Ph.D in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a Professor of Music at Princeton, where he has taught composition and theory since 2002. He is also an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. He has published two books with Oxford University Press, "A Geometry of Music" (2011) and "Tonality: an owner's manual" (2023). His music appears on numerous CDs and has been performed around the world.