Fred Lerdahl

Biography

Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943) 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 (1983, second edition 1996, with linguist Ray Jackendoff, MIT Press), Tonal Pitch Space (2001, Oxford University Press), and Composition and Cognition (2019, University of California Press). 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 [his] 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 (rather than depicts) 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."

Orchestral

Chords, large orchestra (12 winds, 11 brass, harp, piano, percussion, violas, cellos, double basses), 1974–83
Cross-Currents, large orchestra (12 winds, 10 brass, harp, piano, percussion, strings), 1987
Waves, small orchestra (8 winds, 2 French horns, strings), 1988
Without Fanfare, small orchestra (12 winds, 11 brass, 3 percussion), 1994
Quiet Music, large orchestra (12 winds, 11 brass, harp, piano, percussion, strings), 1994 (also version for 2 pianos)
Spirals, orchestra (8 winds, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, piano, percussion, strings), 2006
Arches, cello, small orchestra (22 players), 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 (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, trombone, harp, 2 violins, viola, double bass, piano, 2 percussion), 2010 (also version for cello, small orchestra [22 players])
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

Cornstalks (text by Richard Wilbur), 16 mixed voices, 2012

Vocal

Wake (text by James Joyce), soprano, harp, violin, viola, cello, 3 percussion, 1967–68
Aftermath (dramatic cantata, text by the composer), soprano, alto, baritone, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, harp, 2 violins, viola, cello, double bass), 1973
Eros (text by Ezra Pound), mezzo-soprano, alto flute, harp, electric guitar, viola, bass guitar, piano, 2 percussion, 1975
Beyond the Realm of Bird (text by Emily Dickinson), soprano, orchestra (8 winds, French horn, trumpet, trombone, harp, piano, percussion, strings), 1984
The First Voices (text by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by John H. Moran and Alexander Gode), soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, 8 percussion, 2007
Fire and Ice (text by Robert Frost), high soprano, double bass, 2015

Piano

Piano Fantasy, 1964
Quiet Music, two pianos, 2001 (version of orchestral work)
Three Diatonic Studies, 2004–09
Inner Life, two pianos, 2022