Review Article: A Manual for One User. Review Essay of Tonality: An Owner’s Manual, by Dmitri Tymoczko. Oxford Studies in Music Theory. New York: Oxford Academic, 2023. xiii, 612 pp.

Abstract

Focusing on the first half of the book, chapters 1−5 (pp. 1−252), the review challenges several claims central to the book at large, most notably the “geometrical logic” (33) supposedly exhibited by the “spiral diagrams,” “the main theoretical models used in this book” (580). At the same time, the review fleshes-out a theory of “voice-leading sums under translation and Tymoczkian permutation of chords,” hinted in the book on more than one occasion in connection with the diagrams, but never pursued to the point of formulating a valuable insight. The insight is stated as a theorem in a mathematical appendix and proven therein.