Tom Johnson: Looking at Chords

Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-3-032-41585-1
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 221 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Computational Music Science

"Looking at Chords" presents the last drawings that minimalist composer Tom Johnson (1939-2024) created based on studies of Allen Forte's catalogue. We have collected, described, and published them for the first time in this volume. Chapter contributions by composers and musicologists then explore the richness and powerful potential of these graphs. In chapter order, Dean Rosenthal explores the resources of objects taken from a musical catalogue and Forte classes, contrasting Tom Johnson's music and his own, making use of the drawings. Gilbert Delor offers a detailed analysis of Johnson's piece "Four-Note Chords," a 2010 piece that exclusively explored Forte sets. Gaëtan Borot and Michael Winter, employing a new theory of Haros families, offer a new musical composition. Franck Jedrzejewski retraces the genesis and development of the analytical study of Forte's chords that he undertook alongside Johnson. Finally, Sergei Zagny presents his theory of tessellations by Magic Stars in equal temperament, which Franck Jedrzejewski extends into the universe of quarter tones. The whole of these texts form a unique and powerfully original collection of research on minimalist music and music theory today.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jedrzejewski, Franck

Rosenthal, Dean

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Mathematik Allgemein
• Mathematik | Informatik Mathematik Numerik und Wissenschaftliches Rechnen Angewandte Mathematik, Mathematische Modelle
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik, Kompositionslehre

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface.- Tom Johnson. The latest drawings.- Dean Rosenthal. The Chord Catalogue, Combinations, and the Music of Forte Set Class Drawings.- Gilbert Delor. Four-Note Chords by Tom Johnson: Graphs to music.- Franck Jedrzejewski. An Analytical Study of Forte Chords as seen by Tom Johnson.- Gaëtan Borot and Michael Winter. Haros families.- Sergei Zagny. An Introduction to Magic Stars.- Franck Jedrzejewski. Sergei Zagny’s Magic Stars and the sums of 26.- List of contributors.- References.

Über Autor(innen)

Franck Jedrzejewski is a French mathematician and Doctor in philosophy and musicology. He has published about thirty books, including Ontology of Categories (Ontologie des catégories, 2011), research in music theory (Mathematical Theory of Music, 2006, Looking at Numbers, 2013, with composer Tom Johnson, A Compendium of Musical Mathematics, 2024), musicology (Hétérotopies musicales, Preface by Hugues Dufourt, 2019, La musique dodécaphonique et sérielle: une nouvelle histoire, 2021), poetics (L'ombre des mots, 2013, D'une langue à l'autre. Poétique des écritures hétéroglottes, 2026) and in the history of sciences and mathematics (aleatory models and probabilistic physics). With Malgorzata Perigot-Grygielewicz, he published a bilingual French/Polish edition in two large volumes, Polish Futurism (1918-1924). The Palgrave Dictionnary of Microtonal Music will be published in 2026. His research is highly transdisciplinary (music, philosophy, mathematics, Russian and Polish avant-garde). He taught at the University of Paris-Saclay (CEA/INSTN).

Dean Rosenthal is a composer of experimental and contemporary music and a historian of American experimental music. His music is performed, broadcast, choreographed, and installed throughout the world at festivals, galleries and museums, public and private performances, and online. Recordings and scores of his music are held by the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the BBC, and in many other prominent libraries, institutions, and collections. As a writer on music, he has published in The Ear Reader (Netherlands), The Open Space Magazine (USA), and The Journal of Mathematics and Music among international print and online magazines and journals. He is the author of the first oral history of twentieth century American experimental music, The American Experimental Music Century, available from Oxford University Press. ©Dean Rosenthal 2026, www.deanrosenthal.org.