Music theory

The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built.

[n 1] But this medieval discipline became the basis for tuning systems in later centuries and is generally included in modern scholarship on the history of music theory.

In ancient and living cultures around the world, the deep and long roots of music theory are visible in instruments, oral traditions, and current music-making.

There is also a body of theory concerning practical aspects, such as the creation or the performance of music, orchestration, ornamentation, improvisation, and electronic sound production.

Several surviving Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets include musical information of a theoretical nature, mainly lists of intervals and tunings.

[6] The scholar Sam Mirelman reports that the earliest of these texts dates from before 1500 BCE, a millennium earlier than surviving evidence from any other culture of comparable musical thought.

[...] Even the music of the qin zither, a genre closely affiliated with Confucian scholar-officials, includes many works with Daoist references, such as Tianfeng huanpei ("Heavenly Breeze and Sounds of Jade Pendants").

The Natya Shastra, written between 200 BCE to 200 CE, discusses intervals (Śrutis), scales (Grāmas), consonances and dissonances, classes of melodic structure (Mūrchanās, modes?

Boethius represented Classical authority on music during the Middle Ages, as the Greek writings on which he based his work were not read or translated by later Europeans until the 15th century.

[21] This treatise carefully maintains distance from the actual practice of music, focusing mostly on the mathematical proportions involved in tuning systems and on the moral character of particular modes.

Guido d'Arezzo wrote a letter to Michael of Pomposa in 1028, entitled Epistola de ignoto cantu,[23] in which he introduced the practice of using syllables to describe notes and intervals.

An early form of mensural notation was first described and codified in the treatise Ars cantus mensurabilis ("The art of measured chant") by Franco of Cologne (c. 1280).

Additionally, many cultures do not attempt to standardize pitch, often considering that it should be allowed to vary depending on genre, style, mood, etc.

Indian classical music theory continues to strongly associate keys with emotional states, times of day, and other extra-musical concepts and notably, does not employ equal temperament.

The most highly cited of these recent scholars are Maury Yeston,[35] Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff,[36] Jonathan Kramer,[37] and Justin London.

It has been called "... the psychoacoustician's multidimensional waste-basket category for everything that cannot be labeled pitch or loudness,"[53] but can be accurately described and analyzed by Fourier analysis and other methods[54] because it results from the combination of all sound frequencies, attack and release envelopes, and other qualities that a tone comprises.

Musical notation frequently specifies alteration in timbre by changes in sounding technique, volume, accent, and other means.

In music, texture is how the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece.

The elements of music that comprise expression include dynamic indications, such as forte or piano, phrasing, differing qualities of timbre and articulation, color, intensity, energy and excitement.

Musical expression is sometimes thought to be produced by a combination of other parameters, and sometimes described as a transcendent quality that is more than the sum of measurable quantities such as pitch or duration.

"[72][incomplete short citation] Adolf Bernhard Marx was influential in formalising concepts about composition and music understanding towards the second half of the 19th century.

The analysis makes use of a specialized symbolic form of musical notation that Schenker devised to demonstrate various techniques of elaboration.

[75] Even at intermediate levels of the reduction, rhythmic notation (open and closed noteheads, beams and flags) shows not rhythm but the hierarchical relationships between the pitch-events.

[78][79] Modern music psychology is primarily empirical; its knowledge tends to advance on the basis of interpretations of data collected by systematic observation of and interaction with human participants.

Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations.

Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions (often called "parameters"), such as duration, dynamics, and timbre.

[citation needed] "Topics", or various musical conventions (such as horn calls, dance forms, and styles), have been treated suggestively by Agawu, among others.

It called the First European Conference of Music Analysis for 1989, which resulted in the foundation of the Société belge d'Analyse musicale in Belgium and the Gruppo analisi e teoria musicale in Italy the same year, the Society for Music Analysis in the UK in 1991, the Vereniging voor Muziektheorie in the Netherlands in 1999 and the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie in Germany in 2000.

Applicants must hold a completed PhD or the equivalent degree (or expect to receive one within a year of being hired—called an "ABD", for "All But Dissertation" stage) and (for more senior positions) have a strong record of publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

The job tasks of a music theorist are the same as those of a professor in any other humanities discipline: teaching undergraduate and/or graduate classes in this area of specialization and, in many cases some general courses (such as Music appreciation or Introduction to Music Theory), conducting research in this area of expertise, publishing research articles in peer-reviewed journals, authoring book chapters, books or textbooks, traveling to conferences to present papers and learn about research in the field, and, if the program includes a graduate school, supervising M.A.