Dmitri Tymoczko

Tymoczko was born in 1969, in Northampton, Massachusetts. His father Thomas Tymoczko was a philosopher of mathematics is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His sister, Julianna Tymoczko, became a mathematics professor at Smith. They have a younger brother, Alexei. He attended Harvard University, studying composition, music theory, and philosophy. He subsequently attended graduate school in philosophy at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. After being asked to leave the philosophy D. Phil. program, he eventually returned to music, acquiring a Ph.D. in composition from The University of California, Berkeley. ==Academic career==

Since 2002, Tymoczko has been a professor at Princeton University. and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2007). ==Music==

Tymoczko's album Beat Therapy (Bridge 9353), combines jazz instrumentation with classical ideas of development. The critic Frank Oteri describes it as "far reaching and utterly entertaining." In Crackpot Hymnal (Bridge 9383), he presents expressly composed chamber pieces inspired and mixed from a number of traditional styles. Jazz, popular, blues and rock styles interact with folk and contemporary classical music. ==Theoretical work==

In A Geometry of Music, Tymoczko proposes a general framework for thinking about tonality, arguing that there are five basic features that jointly contribute to the sense of tonality: • conjunct melodic motion (melodies move by short distances) • harmonic consistency (harmonies sound similar) • acoustic consonance (harmonies sound pleasant) • limited macroharmony (music uses a small number of notes over moderate spans of musical time) • centricity (one note is heard as "more stable" than the others) The first part of the book explores theoretical questions about how these properties can be combined. In particular, Tymoczko uses orbifolds to develop "maps" of musical chords, showing that the first two properties (e.g. conjunct melodic motion and harmonic consistency) can be combined only in special circumstances. The second part of the book uses these tools to analyze pieces from the Middle Ages to the present. Tymoczko argues that there is an "extended common practice" linking superficially distinct styles, with jazz being much closer to classical music than many have thought. Tymoczko showed that nearly even chords (such as those prevalent in Western tonal music) are represented by three main families of lattices. Two of these are particularly useful in analysis. What results is a systematic perspective on the full family of chord-based graphs. Tymoczko has written a software program, ChordGeometries, allowing users to visualize the orbifolds representing musical chords. It is available at no charge. ==Personal life==

Tymoczko is married. He and his wife, philosopher Elisabeth Camp, have two children. ==Selected works==

• • Beat Therapy, Bridge Records, 2011. • • • Crackpot Hymnal, Bridge Records, 2013. • Rube Goldberg Variations, Bridge Records 9492, 2017. ==See also==