Why do I believe there is no such thing? I am dissatisfied with most theory books on the market, and I think it almost impossible to write a good and complete one. And I depsair of finding a good comprehensive one to use in class.

To help illustrate why I think there is no such thing as Music Theory, I went to a university music library, did a search for relatively recent articles with the key words ‘Music Theory’ and this is what I found:

“The figure displays pcsets X= {x1, x2,….xN} and Y = {y1, y2,….yN} that have the same cardinality. Furthermore, the pitches instancing the various pcs of X and Y can be laid out in registral order here so that x1 is below (or the same as) y1, which is (strictly) below x3, and so forth until we reach y(N-1), which is (strictly) below xN, which is below (or the same as) yN. In short, we could say that the normal orderings of the two pcsets ‘dovetail’ (though that is not quite precise to allow for the possibility that any xN might be the same as yN). In these circumstances, the retrograde of Figure 7 will indeed be a formal voice leading, and it will indeed instance the downshift voice leading from Y into X. But the special circumstances are very restrictive.”

‘Ach, seine Theorie!’ Names will be kept secret to protect the guilty. And really, this was the first article I found. I didn’t have to look hard for something ridiculous, and to confirm that this was not atypical, I looked further into the theoretical journals and found much more of the same.

But then again, this is a very easy thing to do, to make fun of theory. Sadly easy, especially after the late twentieth century. It’s a harder thing to be constructive, and why it is harder to be constructive is the essence of what I want to write about here.

(republished from CalArts Music School Theory Wiki)