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Mayer Joel Mandelbaum (born October 12, 1932) is an American music composer and teacher, best known for his use of microtonal music (notably just intonation and 19 equal temperament and the 31 equal temperament). He wrote the first Ph.D. dissertation on microtonality in 1961. He is married to stained glass artist Ellen Mandelbaum, and is the nephew of Abraham Edel.
Mandelbaum became interested in microtonal music after listening to a lecture by Paul Hindemith in which Hindemith inadequately debunked various alternative forms of tuning. He began a correspondence with Adriaan Fokker which led to a six-week stay in Haarlem, Netherlands, in 1963, during which he composed music using Euler's genera under Fokker's tutelage. The result was 10 Studies in 31-Tone Temperament, which premiered on the Fokker organ in Haarlem.
Mandelbaum's motivation to use the 31 equal temperament arose from its close approximation to just intonation; Mandelbaum preferred the equal temperament to just tuning out of convenience, as it produced one tuning of a keyboard with which it was possible to explore approximations of chords to just tuning in any key. Although well known for exploring alternate tunings, Mandelbaum still uses conventional tuning in about 80% of his music. Mandelbaum attributes his use of conventional tuning to his reluctance to use keyed instruments (such as woodwinds) in tunings other than those that they were designed for.
Mandelbaum's music has been recorded on Capstone Records and Ravello Records (PARMA Recordings).
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