Tessellated Tonics: Zuckerkandl’s Toy for Music Fundamentals
Daphne Tan, Alexis Millares Thomson, Tegan Ridge, and Emma Soldaat (University of Toronto)
Volume 11.3 (May 2025)
In the early- to mid-twentieth century, many music educators were concerned with creating engaging and effective approaches to teaching music fundamentals. This video-article brings to life a pedagogical device from 1946 that was invented by the music theorist Victor Zuckerkandl but never produced. We demonstrate how this “small toy” can be used to learn major and minor keys, as Zuckerkandl intended, as well as intervals, modulations, and more. We also connect this device to manipulatives in mathematics education.
Keywords: Music fundamentals, music theory pedagogy, tonality, Victor Zuckerkandl, key signatures, manipulatives