David Lewin

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David Lewin (1933-2003)

David Lewin (July 2, 1933-May 5, 2003) was an American music theorist, music critic and composer. Called "the most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation", Lewin's most influential theoretical work includes the development of transformational theory, which involves the application of mathematical group theory to music.

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[edit] Biography

Lewin was born in New York and studied piano from a young age. He graduated from Harvard in 1954 with a degree in mathematics. Lewin then studied theory and composition with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt, Edward Cone, and Earl Kiim at Princeton University, gaining an M. F. A. in 1958. He returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1958-61. Following teaching positions at the University of California, Berkeley (1961–1967), the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1967–1979), and Yale University (1979–1985), he returned to Harvard as the Walter W. Naumberg Professor of Music in 1985. Lewin was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 1983–1984, served as the president of the Society for Music Theory from 1985–1988 and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago in 1995, and the New England Conservatory of Music in 2000.

[edit] Composition

While Lewin is primarily known as a theorist, he was also an active composer who wrote works a wide range of forces, from solo voice to full orchestra. Additionally, in 1961, he became the first professional musician in avant-garde circles to compose computer-generated music, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ.

[edit] Criticism

Lewin's theoretical work may best be understood against his background in 1950/60s avant-garde compositional circles on the North American East Coast. Most of these composers were also music critics. Benjamin Boretz, Edward T. Cone, and Milton Babbitt wrote music criticism. Starting during the late 1960s (with articles on Schoenberg, crystalized in his debate with Cone), Lewin began work with text/music relations. During the late 1970s, Lewin's work in this area became more explicitly concerned with issues in literary theory, publishing articles in 19th-Century Music. "Studies in Music with Text," published postumously, demonstrates Lewin's concerns in this area, while also demonstrating a synthesis of critical/theoretical insights/methods/etc. His most far reaching essay in this area is, "Music Theory, Phenomenology, Modes of Perception."

[edit] Music Education

[edit] Music Performance

Lewin's work in all of these areas is best theorized, performed, and discussed in his "Music Theory, Phenomenology, Modes of Perception." Starting from here, and in conjunction especially with work by Cone, we can understand Lewin's writings to contribute substantially to Performance Studies.

[edit] History of Theory

[edit] Theory

David Lewin's work in music theory was both influential and eclectic. Broadly, his writings can be divided into three overlapping groups: formal or mathematically-based theory, more interpretive writing on the interaction of music and text, and metatheoretical discussions on the methodology and purpose of contemporary music theory.

The first group includes his innovations in transformational theory, as expressed in numerous articles, and his important treatise, Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations. In this work, Lewin applied group theory to music, investigating the basic concepts, interval and transposition, and extending them beyond their traditional application to pitch. Based on a powerful metaphor of musical space, this theory can be applied to pitch, rhythm and metre, or even timbre. Moreover, it can be applied to both tonal and atonal repertories. (For tonal uses of transformational theory, see Neo-Riemannian theory.)

Lewin's writing on the relationship between text and music in song and opera, involves composers from Mozart to Wagner to Schoenberg. In one interesting example, "Music Analysis as Stage Direction", he discusses how structural aspects of the music can suggest dramatic interpretations.

Important writings for the discipline of music theory include "Behind the Beyond" (1968–9), a response to Edward Cone, and "Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception" (1986).

While Lewin's rigorous formal theory may seem forbidding, his writing is marked by a sense of poetry and a critical awareness of disciplinary issues and cultural biases. He often makes clear which dense sections can be overlooked by readers unfamiliar with mathematics, and connects his abstract theory to practical musical considerations, such as performance and music perception. For example, in Musical Form and Transformation: Four Analytic Essays, Lewin provides ear-training exercises to develop an ability to hear more difficult musical relationships. His work has influenced later theorists, such as Richard Cohn, Robert Morris, Henry Klumpenhouwer, John Clough, Brian Hyer, and Norman Carey and David Clampitt.


[edit] Publication list

  • "The Intervallic Content of a Collection of Notes, Intervallic Relations between a Collection of Notes and its Complement: an Application to Schoenberg’s Hexachordal Pieces", Journal of Music Theory, iv (1960), 98–101
  • "Moses und Aron: some General Remarks, and Analytic Notes for Act I, Scene I", Perspectives of New Music, vi/1 (1967–8), 18–32; repr. in The Garland Library of the History of Western Music, ed. E. Rosand, xii (New York, 1985), 327–43
  • "Inversional Balance as an Organizing Force in Schoenberg’s Music and Thought", Perspectives of New Music, vi/2 (1967–8), 1–21
  • "Some Applications of Communication Theory to the Study of Twelve-Tone Music", Journal of Music Theory, xii (1968), 50–84
  • "Behind the Beyond … a Response to Edward T. Cone", Perspectives of New Music, vii (1968–9), 59–69
  • "Forte’s Interval Vector, my Interval Function, and Regener’s Common-Note Function", Journal of Music Theory, xxi (1977), 194–237
  • "Some Investigations into Foreground Rhythmic and Metric Patterning", Music Theory: Special Topics, ed. R. Browne (New York, 1981), 101–37
  • "Vocal Meter in Schoenberg’s Atonal Music, with a Note on a Serial Hauptstimme", In Theory Only, vi/4 (1982), 12–36
  • "A Formal Theory of Generalized Tonal Functions", Journal of Music Theory, xxvi (1982), 23–60
  • "Image and Background in a Schubert Song", 19th-Century Music, vi (1982–3), 47–59; rev. as Auf dem Flusse … Schubert: Critical and Analytical Studies, ed. W. Frisch (Lincoln, NE, 1986), 126–52
  • "Transformational Techniques in Atonal and Other Music Theories", Perspectives of New Music, xxi (1982–3), 312–71
  • "Brahms, his Past, and Modes of Music Theory", Brahms Studies: Washington DC 1983, 13–27
  • "An Interesting Global Rule for Species Counterpoint", In Theory Only, vi/8 (1983), 19–44
  • "Amfortas’s Prayer to Titurel and the role of D in Parsifal: the Tonal Spaces of the Drama and the Enharmonic C/B", 19th-Century Music, vii (1983–4), 336–49
  • "Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception", Music Perception, iii (1986), 327–92
  • Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations (Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1987)
  • "Some Instances of Parallel Voice-Leading in Debussy", 19th-Century Music, xi (1987–8), 59–72
  • "Klumpenhouwer Networks and Some Isographies that Involve Them", Music Theory Spectrum, xii (1990), 83–120
  • "Musical Analysis as Stage Direction", Music and Text: Critical Inquiries, ed. S.P. Scher (Cambridge, 1992), 163–76
  • "Women’s Voices and the Fundamental Bass", Journal of Musicology, x (1992), 464–82
  • "Some Notes on Analyzing Wagner: The Ring and Parsifal", 19th-Century Music, xvi (1992–3), 49–58
  • "A Metrical Problem in Webern’s Op.27", Music Analysis, xii (1993), 343–54
  • Musical Form and Transformation: Four Analytic Essays (Yale University Press: New Haven, CT, 1993)
  • "A Tutorial on Klumpenhouwer Networks, using the Chorale in Schoenberg’s Opus 11 No.2", Journal of Music Theory, xxxviii (1994), 79–101
  • "Figaro’s Mistakes", Current Musicology, no.57 (1995), 45–60
  • "Generalized Interval Systems for Babbitt’s Lists, and for Schoenberg’s String Trio", Music Theory Spectrum, xvii (1995), 81–118
  • "Cohn Functions", Journal of Music Theory, xl (1996), 181–216
  • "Some Notes on Pierrot Lunaire", Music Theory in Concept and Practice, ed. J.M. Baker, D.W. Beach and J.W. Bernard (Rochester, NY, 1997), 433–57
  • "The D major Fugue Subject from WTCII: Spatial Saturation?", Music Theory Online, iv/4 (1998)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Cohn, Richard, "David Lewin", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed March 6, 2006)
  • Gewertz, Ken, "Composer, music theorist, David Lewin dies at 69" in Harvard University Gazette, May 15, 2003
  • Nolan, Catherine, "Music theory and mathematics" in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 272-304 (pp. 295-296)
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