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AMHERST, Mass.—Dmitri Tymoczko, a composer and music theorist, will give a talk on “Composition as Applied Philosophy” at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 12, in Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Organized by the Amherst College Department of Philosophy and funded by the Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science, Tymoczko’s talk is free and open to the public.
A composer, music theorist and professor at Princeton University, Dmitri Tymoczko is interested in contemporary tonal music. As a composer, he writes music that draws on a range of traditions, including impressionism, minimalism, jazz and rock. As a theorist, he is interested in understanding what makes music sound good. In recent work, he showed that musical chords have a precise geometrical structure and that composers in a range of styles have exploited the non-Euclidean features of this geometry.
Tymoczko’s music has won numerous prizes and awards, including a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Eisner Award from the University of California at Berkeley, and fellowships from Tanglewood, the Ernest Bloch Music Festival, Princeton University and the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory. His music has been performed by the Brentano Quartet, the Network for New Music, the Synergy Vocal Ensemble and others. His writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review and Music Theory Spectrum.
A native of Northampton, Mass., Tymoczko received a B.A. degree at Harvard University and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.
The Forry and Micken Fund in Philosophy and Science was established in 1983 by Carol Micken and John I. Forry ’66 to promote the study of issues in the philosophy and history of science, as well as the study of philosophical issues arising out of new developments in the sciences, including economics and mathematics.
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