Naming, Understanding, and Playing With Metaphors in Music. 2021– . In collaboration with Nina Sun Eidsheim (UCLA).
For the past several years, I have been collaborating with Nina Sun Eidsheim on a series of research projects focused on understanding and undoing metaphors about music from an interdisciplinary perspective. With support from the UCLA Peer Lab and Durham University Music Department, we organized our first symposium on April 29-30, with keynotes from Nicholas Harkness, Philip Ewell, Shana Redmond, Dylan Robinson, J Martin Daughtry, Katherine Hambridge, Dorinne Kondo, Jessica Bissett Perea, and Holly Watkins, and poets-in-residence Tsitsi Jaji, Carlos Pittella, Klara du Plessis, and Jason Camlot. You can view the symposium introduction at the left, videos of additional talks here, and images and poems from the symposium here. Future outputs will include experimental workshops, jointly written articles, an edited volume.
New Instruments for Theory [NIFTY]. 2021-2023. Two-year grant project supported by British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.
NIFTY focuses on the digital recreation of historical and non-Western “instruments of theory”—musical instruments that shape how music is conceived, interpreted, and cognized—for teaching, research, and performance practice. The first stage of this project brought together scholars at the intersection of music theory, instrument building, and the digital humanities for a series of meetings held in May 2022. Future stages will focus on the production of new instruments, all of which will be hosted on an open-access database. You can read more about the project here.
“Inventing a Musical Esperanto.” Harvard Horizons Symposium, April 2019.
I was appointed a Harvard Horizons Scholar at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning during my final year at Harvard University. This talk introduces my research into the global history of tuning and temperament.
Invited Journal Articles:
“No Conclusions / The Work of Western Botanical Metaphors in Ethnographies of Native American Song,” Nina Sun Eidsheim and Daniel Walden, Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies 9/2 (2023)
“Composing at the Keyboard: Assessing the Theory Behind Schoenberg’s Musical Typewriter,” Keyboard Perspectives 10 (2017): 113-134.
Book Chapters:
[forthcoming] “Pitch,” in Jade Conlee and Tatiana Koike (eds.), Key Terms in Music Theory for Anti-Racist Scholars: Epistemic Disavowals, Reimagined Formalisms
[forthcoming] “Organizing Modernity: Henry Liston’s Euharmonic Organ and Natural Tuning in Company India,” in Carmel Raz and James Grande (eds.), Sound and Sense in Britain: 1770-1840. (Cambridge University Press: 2021).
[forthcoming] “Science, Politics, and the Instruments of Tanaka Shōhei,” in Martin Kirnbauer, ed. Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Scripta. (Schwabe: 2021).
“Pitch vs. Timbre,” in Alexander Rehding and Emily Dolan (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Timbre (Oxford University Press, 2019).
“Daniele Barbaro, Nicola Vicentino, and Vitruvian Music Theory in Sixteenth-Century Italy,” in P. Caye, F. Lemerle. L. Moretti, V. Zara (eds.), Daniele Barbaro. Vénitien, patricien, humaniste (Brepols, 2018).
Book Reviews:
“Stories of Tonality in the Age of François-Joseph Fétis, by Thomas Christensen,” Journal of Music Theory (2020).
CD Reviews:
“From Antico to Zipoli: New Recordings of Italian Keyboard Literature.” Early Music 49:3 (2021): 456–458.
"Expanding the Conversation: New Recordings of the Italian Baroque and Galant," Early Music 46:3 (2018): 535–538.
“A Grand Tour of Historical Italian Keyboard Music,” Early Music 42 (2014): 141-143
Books In Development:
A New World of Sound: Just Intonation and the Making of Modern Music Theory. Book Manuscript. [19th-c. global history, tuning and temperament, politics, media theory]
Naming, Understanding, and Playing with Metaphors in Music. Co-edited with Nina Eidsheim (UCLA), Dylan Robinson (UBC), and J. Martin Daughtry (NYU).
The Tanaka Shōhei Reader. Volume. Co-edited with Jonathan Service. [English translations of selected German and Japanese texts with commentary.]
Articles in Development:
“The Seventh Nature.” Article. [Examination of the role the natural seventh played in the global history of music theory during the 19th-century.]
“The Choropoetics of Musical Instruments.” Article. [Media-theoretical analysis of musical instruments, spatial reorganization, gesture, and cognition.]
Articles in Refereed Journals:
“The Global Tonnetz.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 77:2 (2024) [forthcoming]
“Emancipate the Quartertone: The Call to Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Music Theory,” History of Humanities 2:2 (2017): 327-344.
“Charting Boethius: Music and the Diagrammatic Tree in the Cambridge University De institutione arithmetica,” Early Music History 34 (2015): 207-238.
“Dom Mocquereau’s Theories of Music and Romantic Musical Aesthetics,” Études grégoriennes 23 (2015): 125-150.
“Frozen Music: Music and Architecture in Vitruvius’ De Architectura,” Greek and Roman Musical Studies 2 (2014): 124-145.
“Ut Pictura Musica: Carlo Farina’s Capriccio Stravagante and Kunstkammer Paintings,” Nota Bene 5:1 (2013): 1-20.
“Noting Images: Understanding the Illustrated Manuscripts of Mendelssohn’s Schilflied and Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis,” Music Theory Online, 16:3 (2012). [Translated into Farsi by Farshad Moshfeghi for Music Report Magazine, 2012.]
“PianoFortePiano: Exploring The Use Of Historical Keyboards As A Heuristic Guide To Performance On The Modern Piano,” MTNA E-Journal (2010): 10-21.
Group for Latin American Musics [GLAM] (2016-2019)
For three years, I worked with Julio Zúñiga (composer) and Felipe Ledesma-Núñez (musicologist) in arranging recitals, workshops, academic seminars, and masterclasses that promote Latin American experimental and popular musics. Our goal was to complement musical studies at Harvard while also serving the broader Boston/Cambridge/Somerville community. Projects featured Maria Chavez (sound artist/abstract turntablist), Julio Estrada (composer), and Mesías Maiguashca (composer) with musicians from Fonema Consort and TAK. Our events were held at Paine Hall, Holden Chapel, and the Harvard Ed Portal, and supported by ARTS@DRCLAS, Instituto Cervantes, and the Harvard Music Department.
