Enter the Prechorus: Producing Intensification in Two Recent Taylor Swift Songs
An analysis of the interaction of song production and formal structure.
Nov 8, 2024
‘Something Else is Possible’: Transcultural Collaboration as Anti-Apartheid Activism in the Music of Juluka
An analysis of songs by the pioneering Apartheid-era South African band Juluka.
Jul 1, 2021
Against the Monochord: Numbers, String Lengths, and the History of Music Theory
A riposte against the value of the monochord as an "instrument of music theory."
Nov 15, 2020
A Radical Theory: Lippius’s Misunderstood Theory of Roots
A new reading of the role of speculative mathematics in the origins of the theory of the triad.
Jul 3, 2020
The Triad in Dispute: Genre and Audience in the Writings of Johannes Lippius
A new reading of the role of educational institutions in the origins of the theory of the triad.
Nov 2, 2017
Comparing Bodies: Organicism and the Rise of Romantic Formenlehre
An uncovering of the parallels between Romantic-era biological science and musical form.
May 8, 2015
Cadence Systematized: Printz’s Doctrine of the Clausula formalis
An introduction to Printz’s fascinating, baroquely-complex theory of the cadence.
Oct 31, 2013
‘L’art ne progresse pas, mais il se transforme’: Reconsidering Teleology in Fétis’s Historiography
An analysis of Fétis’s concept of tonalité and its relation to cultural relativism.
Apr 7, 2013
A Major Step Forward: Changing Conceptions of Whole Tone and Scale Step in Ancient and Medieval Theory
An argument that historical tuning systems depended on contemporaneous concepts of the scale step.
Oct 28, 2011