Daniel Walden

Daniel Walden joins Yale as Assistant Professor in the Department of Music. His research combines practice-based methods of inquiry with the global histories of science, society, and technology.  His first book, According to Nature: The Choropoetics and Global Politics of Just Intonation, traces the emergence of just-intonation theories and practices from a global network of scholars, musicians, and instrument builders spanning Europe, Japan, India, Mexico, and West Africa. It draws upon his own experiences restoring, recreating, and performing on historical just-intonation keyboards in examining how these instruments mediated theories of musical nature and the politics of colonialism and resistance. Ongoing projects include two volumes featuring translations of the nineteenth-century musical scholarship of Tanaka Shōhei and Johanna Kinkel, as well as the development of New Instruments For Theory [NIFTY], an open-access database of digital and DIY instruments designed to unlock new directions in music-theoretical research and pedagogy. Before arriving at Yale, Daniel was Assistant Professor in Music Analysis at Durham University, and Junior Research Fellow in Music at University of Oxford. He earned an M.Phil. in Music Studies as a Gates Scholar at University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Music at Harvard University. He received a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing and Visual Arts for his performance projects exploring historical and contemporary microtonal repertories.  Walden’s work appears in journals including History of Humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Timbre, Early Music History, Keyboard Studies, Greek and Roman Musical Studies, and Music Theory Online.