Born in New York City, Mandelbaum received his Ph.D. from
Indiana University School of Music in
music theory in 1961. He also studied at the
Harvard and
Brandeis universities, as well as the
Berkshire Music Center and the
Berlin Hochschule für Musik. His composition teachers included
Boris Blacher,
Luigi Dallapiccola,
Irving Fine,
Walter Piston, and
Harold Shapero. He was a teacher and chairman of the music department at
Queens College, City University of New York, from 1961 to 1999. Mandelbaum became interested in
microtonality after listening to a lecture by
Paul Hindemith in which Hindemith inadequately debunked various alternative forms of tuning. He began a correspondence with
Adriaan Fokker which led to a six-week stay in
Haarlem, Netherlands, in 1963, during which he composed music using
Euler's genera under Fokker's tutelage. The result was
10 Studies in 31-Tone Temperament, which premiered on the Fokker organ in Haarlem. Mandelbaum's motivation to use the
31 equal temperament arose from its close approximation to
just intonation; Mandelbaum preferred the equal temperament to just tuning out of convenience, as it produced one tuning of a keyboard with which it was possible to explore approximations of chords to just tuning in any key. Although well known for exploring alternate tunings, Mandelbaum still uses conventional tuning in about 80% of his music. Mandelbaum attributes his use of conventional tuning to his reluctance to use keyed instruments (such as
woodwinds) in tunings other than those that they were designed for. Mandelbaum's music has been recorded on
Capstone and Ravello Records (
PARMA Recordings). ==References==