Today in class we listened to Rube Goldberg Variations for brass quintet and prepared piano by Dmitri Tymoczko. This recording is of the Atlantic Brass Quintet with John Blacklow on piano. I mentioned that it was one of the most challenging projects that I had ever taken part in. The piece is incredible; often complex, frequently beautiful and occasionally humorous.
Dr. Tymoczko's biography from his website is below:
Dmitri Tymoczko was born in 1969 in Northampton, Massachusetts. He studied music and philosophy at Harvard University, and philosophy at Oxford University. He received his Ph.D in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a Professor of Music at Princeton, where he has taught composition and theory since 2002. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Elisabeth Camp, who teaches philosophy at Rutgers University, their son Lukas, who was born in 2008, and their daughter Katya, born 2012.
Dmitri Tymoczko, Photo credit: Peter Murphy
His compositions are polystylistic and mercurial, drawing on genres from the Renaissance to rock. His music has been commissioned and performed by groups including the Amernet Quartet, the Atlantic Brass Quintet, the Brentano Quartet, the Corigliano Quartet, Flexible Music, Gallicantus, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Illinois Modern Ensemble, Janus Trio, the Kitchener/Waterloo symphony, Network for New Music, Newspeak, Pacifica Quartet, Synergy Vocal Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion Quartet, and Ursula Oppens. Among his awards are a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rhodes Scholarship, the Leonard Bernstein fellowship from Tanglewood, a fewllowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Block lecturship from the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
His book A Geometry of Music (Oxford) has been described as "a tour de force" (The Times Literary Supplement), a "monumental achievement" (Music Theory Online), and, potentially, a modern analogue to Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre (The Musical Times). His three CDs, Beat Therapy ("far reaching yet utterly entertaining," Newmusicbox), Crackpot Hymnal ("ebullient … polystylistic … kinetic … vividly orchestrated and vibrantly paced," Sequenza21), and Rube Goldberg Variations ("foot tapping," "sassy," the product of "an intriguing musical voice that should interest anyone in search of a new auditory experience," Limelight), are available from Bridge Records. He is completing an album of rock-inspired pieces that mix electronics with acoustic instruments.
In addition to composing concert music, Dmitri enjoys playing rock and jazz and writing words. His articles have appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly, the Atlantic Monthly, Berfrois, Boston Review, Civilization, Integral, Journal of Music Theory, Lingua Franca, Music Analysis, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, Science, Seed, and Transition. His article "The Geometry of Musical Chords" was the first music-theory article published in the 130-year history of Science magazine. He has been invited to speak to audiences of musicians, philosophers, cognitive scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and the general public; articles about his work have appeared in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Time, Nature, and Physics Today.
