Jenny McLeod

Jenny Helen McLeod, ONZM (born 1941) is a composer and former Professor of Music at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

McLeod graduated BMus (Hons) from Victoria University in 1964, and the same year a New Zealand government bursary enabled her to study for two years in Europe with Messiaen, and Berio. In 1967 she became a lecturer in music at Victoria University, and Professor in 1971, a position she held until 1976.

During her professorship, she was influenced by Guru Maharaji's Divine Light Mission, which led to her early retirement.

In June 1997 she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to music.

She is best known for two major works, Earth and Sky and Under the Sun for large forces. She has also composed many songs and hymns. She is a great admirer of, and was greatly influenced by the music of Messiaen.

Her Seven Tone Clock Pieces were first performed by the New Zealand pianist Jeffrey Grice 1.

She lives in Pukerua Bay, Porirua, where she continues to work on music theory, especially the relationships between notes and scales.

In the mid-1980s, McLeod encountered the work of Dutch composer Peter Schat, who had developed a post-tonal compositional technique called the Tone Clock. This technique emphasised the role on forming the chromatic aggregate through the transposition and inversion of three-note chords (trichords). McLeod expanded this technique to encompass all 223 possible set-classes (to use the terminology of Allan Forte's pitch-class set theory), and also developed an exceptionally coherent labelling, categorisation and analytical approach to the chromatic universe. Her unpublished manuscript Tone Clock Theory Expanded: Chromatic Maps I & II explains the theoretical and philosophical basis behind her theory, and includes a rigorous listing of all set-classes (called Intervallic Prime Forms) with details notes and observations on their properties.

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