Co-organized by the AMS History of Theory Study Group and SMT History of Theory Interest Group
For some time now, historians of music theory have been on the hunt for sources beyond the familiar archive of elite treatises and composition manuals, in search of new insights into past approaches to conceptualizing and formalizing music. This shift has been part of a broader questioning of what gets to count as music theory in our histories of the field. Scholars have already taken into consideration the vernacular music theory expressed by fans on online blogs (Rings 2013) and jazz liner notes (Hannaford 2022); the hidden theories of oral culture (Christensen 2011), conservatory pedagogy (Gjerdingen 2008), and of the electronic music studio (Iverson 2018); the forms of vernacular music analysis that amateurs engage with when making music (O’Hara 2022), or pairing music with other forms of expression, like light shows (Lucas 2021); the vernacular philosophies of practicing musicians (Gallope 2024); and the esoteric theories presented in theosophical treatises (Gawboy 2023).
The goal of this panel is to take stock of what these methods have revealed so far; to encourage new case studies of vernacular or hidden music theories; to investigate the processes by which these modes of theory and analysis become objects of history; to understand the agency and intention of the actors involved; and ultimately, to develop criteria and perhaps a taxonomy that can help us better work with these kinds of sources.
We invite c. 300-word abstracts for an 8-10 minute lightning talk for a panel during AMS-SMT 2025 (Minneapolis) that could engage with (but not be limited to) the following questions:
Please submit your proposal to historyofmusictheory@gmail.com by 11:59 PST on Thursday, March 13, 2025.
Organized by:
AMS History of Theory Study Group (Giulia Accornero, Siavash Sabetrohani)
SMT History of Theory Interest Group (William O’Hara, Daniel Walden)
Andrew Hicks (Cornell University) and Anna Zayaruznaya (Yale University) are delighted to announce that after an extended pandemic hiatus, the Historical Notation Bootcamp (https://blogs.cornell.edu/hnb/) will be held July 29–August 2, 2024. We are now accepting online applications (https://forms.gle/k4n1fwH49BMiNi1GA)
This year’s bootcamp will take place at Yale University’s Department of Music and Beinecke Library. The four-and-a-half-day seminar offers a practical and theoretical overview of medieval musical notations, from neumes to early print sources. Participants will acquire the basic skills needed to work with historical musical sources, make sense of source-based analyses, and sing from original notation.
The event is intended for graduate students in all fields of study, as well as undergraduates headed into graduate studies. Faculty and postdoctoral scholars are also welcome to apply. No previous knowledge of historical notation will be assumed, but experience with modern music notation is expected. The seminar is free of charge (including materials), and past participants have often been successful in securing funding from their home institutions to cover lodging and/or travel.
The application requires a statement of intent (max. 500 words) and a current CV. Applications are accepted through April 30, and participants will be notified by May 15.
Organized by the AMS History of Theory Study Group Business Meeting Call for Presenters.
This meeting will focus on relationships between the history of music theory and urgent questions of accessibility. What have music theories made (in)accessible, and to whom? What do the field’s concepts, objects, and practices reveal about ability and disability? And in what ways or contexts might histories of music theory serve as occasions for the historicization or even critique of current discourses around accessibility? Discussion will be prompted by short presentations and anchored in pre-circulated materials.
CFP:
While scholarly efforts make musicology and music theory more inclusive discipline with respect to disability (e.g., Straus 2011, Howe et al 2016, Holmes 2017, 2023), wide-ranging and pertinent work in disability studies (e.g., Dolmage 2017), and performances engaging issues of accessibility and disability (e.g., the June 2024 performance of Bach’s St. John Passion by the Sing & Sign sign language choir, soloists, deaf performers, the collegium thomanum and the “Weimar Baroque” orchestra under the baton of Diogo Mendes), accessibility remains an issue in musical thought and practice, e.g., in-person only conferences, exclusionary publishing practices, outdated pedagogies.
With such issues in mind, the AMS History of Music Theory Study Group invites proposals for 5–10 minute lightning talks that address relationships between histories of music theory and accessibility.
Possible questions to consider include, but are not limited to the following:
We envision the panel of 3–5 talks, followed by general discussion.
Please email abstracts of no more than 150 words, together with a brief bio (ca 100 words) to historyofmusictheory@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is August 20, 2024. We will inform potential speakers of the decision by September 30.
Per the current rules set by AMS leadership, accepted speakers will be expected to participate in person at the 2024 AMS Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois (November 14–17, 2024).
Music theory tends to engage with written cultures, to the exclusion of oral traditions (and contexts where non-written modes of knowledge dissemination prevail). In a joint interest group meeting, the IGs for the Analysis of World Musics and the History of Music Theory will inquire into the overrepresentation of insights from written traditions in music-theoretical scholarship. We invite proposals for lightning talks to address this imbalance, its challenges, and possible avenues for future engagement. Presentations could also focus on elucidating oral music theory traditions.
Some guiding questions include:
We envision the panel to feature a series of 10-minute lightning talks, followed by general discussion.
Please email abstracts of no more than 250 words, together with a brief bio (ca 150 words) to historyofmusictheory@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is Thursday, July 13, 2023. We will inform potential speakers of the decision by July 31. Accepted speakers will be expected to participate in person at the 2023 AMS/SMT Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado (November 9–12, 2023).
Building on recent interrogations of the ways in which race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, dis/ability, and class have shaped disciplinary agendas; on histories that extend or decenter Europe and the global North; and on historicizations of music theory’s fundamental concepts, this conference will address the role(s) identity does, might, or ought to play in histories of music theory.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers that engage with music theory and identity from a wide range of perspectives, including but not limited to:
Please submit abstracts (350 words) to historyofmusictheory@gmail.com by March 25, 2022, with the heading “Identity NOLA”.
Spanning centuries-old histories in Western and non-Western traditions alike, mode continues to be an important locus for the interrogation of musical thought. This special session will contribute to the ongoing conversation on the conceptual and epistemological frameworks of mode in music theory by placing it in a broader historical context and by approaching it from a global perspective.
We invite proposals for short papers (ca. 15 mins) that engage with the idea of mode from a wide range of perspectives, including but not limited to:
Proposals of no more than 200 words should be sent to historyofmusictheory -at- gmail.com by May 15th.
Music, Theory, and Their Sources
The Early Music Analysis Interest Group of the Society for Music Theory is proud to announce their third biennial conference, co-sponsored with the Newberry Library’s Center for Renaissance Studies.
Dates: Thursday, June 18–Saturday, June 20, 2020
Location: Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St., Chicago, IL 60610
Proposal Submission Deadline: 11:59 pm EST, Sunday, February 16, 2020
CFP:
The study and performance of early music requires us to recreate and represent past musical practices. In this work, we must consult a variety of historical and modern sources available to us today, ranging from manuscripts and prints to editions, translations, audio recordings, and digital sources. In addition, it is often essential to consider other kinds of ‘sources’ in a broader sense, such as biographical studies, transmission histories, or the invocation of historical authorities like Boethius or Isidore. This conference, “Music, Theory, and Their Sources,” will explore the ways in which we engage with these sources of and for early music and the degrees of mediation intrinsic to them. We invite proposals from scholars of diverse research areas including—but not limited to—music theory and analysis, musicology, performance practice, the history of music theory, codicology, art history, and digital humanities that take into consideration the sources for early music and music theory. In addition to paper presentations, the conference will include a collection presentation featuring several of the remarkable items contained in the Newberry’s holdings and a concert by the Newberry Consort.
For guidelines on submitting proposals, please see the PDF available at https://www.newberry.org/06182020-music-theory-and-their-sources or the EMAIG website: https://www.earlymusicanalysis.org/events
For any questions, please contact Ryan Taycher (rtaycher -at- umass.edu)
Musicology after Beethoven
XVII International Congress of the German Musicological Society (GfM)
16-19 September 2020
Upon invitation of the Department of Musicology/Sound Studies of the University of Bonn and the Beethoven Archive of the Beethoven House Bonn, the four-yearly international congress of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung 2020 will take place in Bonn from 16 to 19 September. Two main symposia are devoted to the topics “New Tasks in Beethoven Research” and “Aesthetic Normativity in Music”. Colleagues from Musicology and related fields are cordially invited to contribute to the programme of the congress. Possible formats are:
Congress languages are German and English. Abstracts can be submitted in both languages and cover any research area of musicology. Please submit your proposals by 31 January 2020 via the conference website (www.gfm2020.uni-bonn.de). The conference management will be supported by a scientific advisory board in the selection of the programme. Submissions are only possible via ConfTool. The results of the review of the submitted abstracts are expected to be announced in April 2020.
We are delighted to announce that our SMT History of Theory Interest Group meeting on Friday, November 2 (from 5:45–7:45pm) will feature the following workshop led by Prof. Suzie Clark (Harvard University)
“Schumann, Liszt, and Two Lessons in Reading Tonal Spaces”
This workshop will focus on two composers and two theorists to analyze the historical connections between specific composers and specific theories of tonal space: Robert Schumann’s reading of Gottfried Weber, and Franz Liszt’s engagement with Carl Weitzmann. Although Schumann begrudgingly read Weber’s Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817–21), it has been argued (Lerdahl 2001, Hoeckner 2006, and others) that the order of keys in Schumann’s multi-movement works and cycles reveal how deep the influence ran. Liszt knew Weitzmann, whose treatise on the augmented triad (Der übermässige Dreiklang, 1853) served as a defense and rationalization of the emerging musical language of the Zukunftsmusik, of which Liszt was a proponent. In turn, it influenced Liszt’s ensuing compositional output. The workshop will bring out the tensions between modern intuitions of iconic tonal spaces and historical configurations by Weber and Weitzmann. Through two musical examples, I shall highlight some of the dividends that venturing into the details of the history of tonal spaces produces for music analysis and hermeneutics.
Suzannah Clark specializes in the music of Franz Schubert, the history of music theory, and medieval vernacular music. Her book Analyzing Schubert was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She co-edited Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2001; pbk 2005) with Alexander Rehding, and co-edited Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned (Boydell & Brewer, 2005) with Elizabeth Eva Leach.
For the 2018 joint AMS/SMT meeting, we are organizing an open round-table discussion on “Women in the History of Music Theory”: Since (at least) Ptolemais of Cyrene, women have been actively involved in creating and transmitting music theory, often to a hitherto unacknowledged extent, although modern scholarship has recently begun to explore these contributions. This open round-table discussion seeks to identify the historical and social conditions under which these activities took place, while also examining the ways in which music theoretical work by women was received. Over the course of the discussion, we hope to consider how new historical methodologies combined with an expanded definition of music theory can assist in recovering and highlighting these contributions.
We invite anyone who would like to participate in the panel that will lead the discussion to send a brief proposal (no more than 200 words, please) to historyofmusictheory@gmail.com by May 10; we anticipate that panelists will offer short contributions (ca. 10 min), rather than full 20 min papers, in order to maximize time for open discussion.
We are pleased to announce that our featured speaker at the SMT Interest Group Meeting with be Prof. Suzie Clark (Harvard), as well as the program for our AMS round table on “Women in the History of music Theory.” The SMT IG Meeting is scheduled for Friday early evening at 5:45-7:45, and the AMS special session is scheduled immediately after from 8:00-11pm. Join us for what promises to be a fun HoT marathon!
Women in the History of Music Theory: Two Round-Table Discussions
Sponsored by the AMS History of Theory Study Group
Elina G. Hamilton (Boston Conservatory) and Karen Cook (University of Hartford), Chairs
Round-Table One: “Glyn, Kinkel, Lee, and Newmarch at Work”
Rachel Lumsden (Florida State University), “Who gets to write music theory? Margaret Glyn’s The Rhythmic Conception of Music (1907): A Case Study of Gender, Class, and Authorship”
Daniel Walden (Harvard University), “Johanna Kinkel (1810–58): Microtonalism
and Mother’s Milk”
Kristin Franseen (McGill University), “Between ‘Excessive Counterpoint’ and ‘Emotional Mysticism’: Form and Musical Meaning for Vernon Lee and Rosa Newmarch”
Round-Table Two: “Where Credit Is Due”
Nancy Yunhwa Rao (Rutgers University), “Crawford: A Theorist of American Ultramodern Music”
August Sheehy (Stony Brook University), “Hidden Lines and Binary Forms: Women’s Labor in the History of Music Theory”
Michael Scott Cuthbert (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), “‘For the Use of Sister Laudomina’: Nuns and the Transmission of Vernacular Music Theory in Fifteenth-Century Italy”
September 12, 2018:
We are delighted to announce that our SMT History of Theory Interest Group meeting on Friday, November 2 (from 5:45–7:45pm) will feature the following workshop led by Prof. Suzie Clark (Harvard University)
“Schumann, Liszt, and Two Lessons in Reading Tonal Spaces”
This workshop will focus on two composers and two theorists to analyze the historical connections between specific composers and specific theories of tonal space: Robert Schumann’s reading of Gottfried Weber, and Franz Liszt’s engagement with Carl Weitzmann. Although Schumann begrudgingly read Weber’s Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817–21), it has been argued (Lerdahl 2001, Hoeckner 2006, and others) that the order of keys in Schumann’s multi-movement works and cycles reveal how deep the influence ran. Liszt knew Weitzmann, whose treatise on the augmented triad (Der übermässige Dreiklang, 1853) served as a defense and rationalization of the emerging musical language of the Zukunftsmusik, of which Liszt was a proponent. In turn, it influenced Liszt’s ensuing compositional output. The workshop will bring out the tensions between modern intuitions of iconic tonal spaces and historical configurations by Weber and Weitzmann. Through two musical examples, I shall highlight some of the dividends that venturing into the details of the history of tonal spaces produces for music analysis and hermeneutics.
Suzannah Clark specializes in the music of Franz Schubert, the history of music theory, and medieval vernacular music. Her book Analyzing Schubert was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She co-edited Music Theory and Natural Order from the Renaissance to the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2001; pbk 2005) with Alexander Rehding, and co-edited Citation and Authority in Medieval and Renaissance Musical Culture: Learning from the Learned (Boydell & Brewer, 2005) with Elizabeth Eva Leach.
Since (at least) Ptolemais of Cyrene, women have been actively involved in creating and transmitting music theory, often to a hitherto unacknowledged extent, although modern scholarship has recently begun to explore these contributions. This open round-table discussion seeks to identify the historical and social conditions under which these activities took place, while also examining the ways in which music theoretical work by women was received. Over the course of the discussion, we hope to consider how new historical methodologies combined with an expanded definition of music theory can assist in recovering and highlighting these contributions.
Music-theoretical systems have relied upon various forms of instrumental mediations, from the monochord and the Guidonian hand to the Music Encoding Initiative and computer-based toolkits such as music21. Such tools enable the articulation (and testing) of theoretical propositions, but they also limit the kind and content of the epistemic claims they enable. Does a “History of Music Theory,” then, map a “History of the Instruments of Music Theory”? What are the instruments (musical, scientific, mechanical, conceptual, digital, etc.) through which music-theoretical knowledge is generated, and how do such instruments shape and condition music-theoretical knowledge?
We invite 250-word proposals for 20-min papers that address any aspect of music theory and “instrumentality.” Our definition of “music-theoretical instruments” is intentionally broad and encompasses musical instruments (traditional and experimental), notational systems (practical and theoretical), diagrammatic and visual representations, recording technologies, digital analytic toolkits, etc. We particularly welcome submissions that engage topics in non-Western musics.Submissions will be accepted through May 1, 2017, and speakers will be notified of acceptance in late May or early June.
Please send all submissions (as MS Word or PDF attachments, with the subject “History of Theory Proposal”) and queries to Andrew Hicks at ajh299@cornell.edu. Proposals should include the presenter’s name, contact information, and institutional affiliation (if any).