Music Notation and/as Theory

Graduate / Professional

This course examines the sites of contact and overlap between music theory and music notation. By “music notation” we mean both written and unwritten mnemonic support technologies such as the neumes that inscribe medieval European plainchant or the vocables that instantiate South Asian musical grammars. By “music theory” we mean not only explicit knowledge of music transmitted through written treatises but also implicit knowledge shaped by musical notations and other forms of what Thomas Christensen calls the “fragile texts” of “hidden theory.” Although they are often treated separately, theory and notation can to some extent be co-constitutive: notational systems embed conceptual structures, and various modes of theorizing illuminate the cognitive affordances of the human musical mind, which acts as both a storage medium and a performer. Attending to these sites of overlap reveals the cultural processes by which notations are transmitted and by which they can influence the theoretical systems built upon them. W 9:25am-11:20am