Celebrating Recent Work by Fred Lerdahl

Mon Mar 09 2026 at 06:15 pm to 07:45 pm UTC-04:00

Heyman Center for the Humanities | New York

The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
Publisher/HostThe Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
Celebrating Recent Work by Fred Lerdahl
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Dr. Lerdahl discusses his new book "The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music"
About this Event

If you are a Columbia/Barnard affiliate with campus access, please use your Columbia/Barnard email when registering.

Each attendee must have their OWN registration and email address.

Registration for external guests closes at 4PM on March 6. Registration will automatically close at that time. Columbia/Barnard affiliates may register at the door.

by Fred Lerdahl

Poets, literary critics, and lovers of poetry often speak of the “music of poetry.” The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music gives substance to the metaphor by building on recent research in linguistics and music theory to propose a theory of the sounds of poetry conceived in musical terms. It develops a rule-based methodology for assigning normative readings to the rhythms and contours of poetic lines. Each component of the theory is compared to earlier treatments both in traditional prosody and in generative metrics and intonational phonology. The theory’s predictions correspond well to recorded readings by poets and actors. The book also advances an original hierarchical treatment of syllabic rhyme, alliteration, and assonance.

The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music is an interdisciplinary project. In reconceiving prosody in musical terms, it offers a detailed treatment of the cognitive organization of poetic sounds, and by implication it supports the claim that music and language have a common ancestry in expressive vocalization. This book will engage readers of poetry, literary scholars, musicians, philosophers, and cognitive scientists interested in the intersection of the musical and linguistic capacities.


About the Author

is Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University. An acclaimed composer and music theorist, he has written numerous orchestral and chamber pieces, three of which have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in music. His books include A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, with linguist Ray Jackendoff (1983); Tonal Pitch Space (2001); and Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind (2020).

About the Speakers

is the Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition, in the Department of Music at Columbia University. He’s the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Tanglewood Music Center Leonard Bernstein Fellowship, and two Chamber Music America Awards. He has been commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Orquestra do Estado de São Paulo, Geneva Camerata, Fromm Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

 is Professor of Music and Director of the University Seminars at Columbia University. Her research interests include liturgy and music in medieval Western monasticism, particularly the abbey of Cluny; manuscript studies; music in the Iberian peninsula; music and childhood; and intersections of music with the visual arts. Boynton has published seven books. The first, Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125 (2006), won the Lewis Lockwood Award of the American Musicological Society. Her second monograph, Silent Music: Medieval Song and the Construction of History in Eighteenth-Century Spain (2011), won the Society's Robert M. Stevenson Award. Prof. Boynton coedited (with Diane J. Reilly) The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages (2011).

is Professor and Acting Chair in the Department of Music, with affiliations in Psychology and Neuroscience. She studies the perception and cognition of music. She directs Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab, which brings together students and researchers to ask questions that lie at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. In particular, she’s interested in the aspects of musical experience that seem most powerful, but hardest to talk about. The lab uses experimental data as a provocative, illuminating way in to some of the most complex, subjective, culturally situated aspects of music, which in turn reveals neglected, broader aspects of human cognition and behavior. 

, professor of psychology, joined the faculty of Barnard in 1980. His teaching focuses on the relationships among perception, cognition and language. Support for research by Professor Remez and his students has been granted by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and, presently from the National Science Foundation. One line of his research examines the perceptual organization of speech and seeks to explain how listeners can follow speech amid the sounds that strike the ear. A second line of research examines the perceptible differences between individual talkers and the phonetic and qualitative aspects of these indexical properties.


Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. This event will be recorded. By being present, you consent to the SOF/Heyman using such video for promotional purposes.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Heyman Center for the Humanities, East Campus Residence Hall, New York, United States

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