dmitri tymoczko'sTonality: An Owner's Manual (hereafter TOM) is an impressive achievement that no doubt will inspire and challenge innumerable theorists for years to come. Tymoczko once again takes on the central big questions that have exercised generations of theorists, as he did in his previous book A Geometry of Music (hereafter GOM [Tymoczko 2011]): What is tonality?, How and why did functional harmony develop?, What are the basic building blocks of tonal harmony and how can we model them?, What is the purpose of music analysis?, to name a few. His answers in TOM build off and reiterate those in GOM, and yet his theory has at the same time taken great strides forward. Voice-leading geometry remains central to his thinking but has receded much more into the background. Given the many ideas and the hundreds of analyses each of which could be the subject of...

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