Professor Fred Lerdahl Releases New Book: The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music

Professor Fred Lerdahl, Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, is releasing a new book through Columbia University Press titled The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music.

December 16, 2025
The cover of The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music, featuring Lerdahl's musical diagrams over a blue and yellow ombre background.

Professor Fred Lerdahl, Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, is releasing a new book through Columbia University Press titled The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music. In it, Professor Lerdahl proposes a new musical theory of the sounds of poetry that builds on recent research in linguistics and music theory. His other books include A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, with linguist Ray Jackendoff, in 1983, Tonal Pitch Space in 2001, and Composition and Cognition: Reflections on Contemporary Music and the Musical Mind in 2020.

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Faculty Achievements Music Theory