about

Daniel Walden (b. 1989 in Berkeley, California) is a pianist, harpsichordist, music theorist, and musicologist. He is currently Assistant Professor in Music Analysis at Durham University.

As a researcher and academic, I combine music theory with media theory, decolonial studies, and the global history of science and society. Most of my research focuses on the analysis of non-equal-tempered and microtonal musical systems from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I am currently working on a book project titled According to Nature: The Choropoetics and Global Politics of Just Intonation, which traces the emergence of just-intonation theories and practices from a global network of scholars, musicians, and instrument builders spanning Europe, Japan, India, and West Africa.  I draw upon my own experiences restoring, recreating and performing on nineteenth-century just-intonation keyboards, in analyzing how these instruments have mediated theories of musical nature and politics of colonialism and resistance.  This project is developed from material I examined in my doctoral dissertation, which received 1st Honorable Mention in the 2020 Outstanding Dissertation Award of the International Musicological Society.

I am at the same time engaged in several interconnected research projects. These include two volumes of translations featuring texts by overlooked nineteenth-century theorists: the first assembled with Jonathan Service, focuses on the Meiji-era theorist Tanaka Shōhei 田中正平, while the second is dedicated to the revolutionary critic Johanna Kinkel. I have also obtained grants from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and Durham Seedcorn Fund to develop New Instruments For Theory [NIFTY], an open-access database of digital and DIY instruments for new directions in music-theoretical research and pedagogy. (More on that project here.) I am also working with Nina Sun Eidsheim on a series of projects that examine the social, cultural, and political ramifications of metaphors about music. More information about the interdisciplinary virtual symposium we organized on this topic in April 2022 can be found here.

My next research projects will focus on the epistemological and scientific frameworks for analyzing musical pitch that developed in the late nineteenth century, including the techniques of empirical science and probabilistic statistics. I will look at the politics behind the discursive shifts within musical theory and science that fixed pitch as a stable parameter of musical sound by delineating it from timbre, amplitude, and other secondary parameters, and investigate how the scientific, archival, and technological mechanisms developed to quantify and quantize musical sounds set the groundwork for today’s digital systems for creating and managing massive reserves of musical data. In the past, I published on ancient Greek music theory and its reception in early modern Europe, and gave lectures on topics in Neo-Riemannian and transformational theory, the analysis of contemporary music, psychoacoustics, and critical organology.

I came to Durham University from The Queen’s College (Oxford), where I was a Junior Research Fellow in Music and a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Faculty of Music. Prior to that I obtained a PhD in Music Theory from Harvard University as a Presidential Scholar, an MPhil in Music Studies from University of Cambridge (King’s College) as a Gates Scholar, and studied piano and Classics at Oberlin College and Conservatory. Since 2021, I have served as a Trustee of the Society for Music Analysis, and since 2019 I have been Technical Assistant for Music Theory Spectrum, the flagship journal of the Society for Music Theory.

For my Academia.edu profile, please click here.

As a performer, I have earned praise for “extreme virtuosity” (Alex Ross, New Yorker) and “effortless elegance” (Mathew Guerrieri, NewMusicBox) in programs that blur the boundaries between historical and contemporary repertoire, as well as recital and improvisation. I am a graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory, where I studied piano with Peter Takács and harpsichord with Webb Wiggins after completing private studies with Ann Schein, Sharon Mann, and Pierre-Laurent Aimard as a Cleveland Orchestra Artist-in-Residence Fellow in 20th- and 21st Century Music. I received early career support from the Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts for my projects aimed at broadening the keyboard repertory, and have appeared as a soloist and chamber musician at leading festivals and venues across the United States, Europe, and Asia. My first album, Dual Synthesis for harpsichord and electronics, was described as “one of the most outstanding recordings of new music in this century” (New York Classical Review) and profiled by the New York Times as one of "Five Harpsichord Works You Need to Know." 

Highlights from the past few years include the world premieres of Clara Iannotta’s Eclipse Plumage for prepared piano and ensemble at Gaudeamus Muziekweek (with Ensemble Oerknal), followed by subsequent performances with Ensemble Linea (Arsenal de Metz) and Explore Ensemble (at the London Contemporary Music Festival); fortepiano recitals investigating Johanna Kinkel’s microtonal theories of Frédéric Chopin’s music, including on Lady John Scott’s Pleyel at the Cobbe Collection; the world premiere of Evan Williams’ Dead White Man Music for harpsichord and chamber orchestra with the Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra at St. Stephen’s (NYC), followed by repeat performances with members of the Toledo Symphony at Festival 4(19); and Julio Estrada’s complete yuuonhui’ cycle at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC (with Fonema Consort).

For a full artist bio, please contact me here.

For a full CV, click here.