Making a Home of The Society for Music Theory, Inc.

Abstract

This article studies the values animating the profession of music theory in the North American academy. Focusing on the creation and development of the field’s institutional home, the Society for Music Theory, Inc., I argue that professional music theory’s homemaking project was first built—and continues to operate—on exclusionary and assimilationist world-building practices. To conclude, I ask how we might pursue homemaking and world-building otherwise in coalition with contemporary abolitionist scholarship.

Music theory in/as musicology in Norway

“…For recent discussions of the broadening of this field, seeDuinker and Gauvin, 2017;VanHandel, 2023. Although there is no doubt that Anglo-American music theory has increased its thematic scope, there are still important ongoing debates on diversity and inclusion in the field, which gained renewed relevance in the wake of Ewell, 2020. For a recent contribution, seeLett, 2023, and its responses in the colloquy section of Music Theory Spectrum, 45 (1).…”

Review of Philip Ewell, On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone (University of Michigan Press, 2023)

“…[14] Along with redefining what it means to do music theory, Ewell might wisely have considered more deeply, as Ellie Hisama (2021) asks, "Who counts in music theory" (350). Ewell does explore this question in a section titled "Why Jazz Is Not Part of the Standard Music Theory Curriculum" , where he cites the work of Marc Hannaford (2019;see also 2021, 2023 to advocate for the inclusion of Muhal Richard Abrams, Mary Lou Williams, George Russell, and several other twentieth-century African American theorists in the music theory classroom, at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Yet in On Music Theory, this discourse on Black music theorists who have existed outside of the walls of the SMT is limited.…”