Fred Lerdahl

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 Uni