Editor’s Message

“The Society for Music Theory reaffirms its values of inclusivity and diversity, open and respectful dialogue, academic freedom, and scholarly integrity. We further support the principle that all in the music-theoretic community and beyond should have the opportunity to study, work, and engage in free inquiry across cultural, linguistic, and other social boundaries. The free movement of scholars and sharing of ideas is essential to the progress of scholarship and to the intellectual health of our field. As musicians and theorists we affirm the SMT’s commitment to ideals of justice and freedom of expression.”

– Executive Board Statement on the Values of SMT

Dear readers,

We are pleased and proud to share the new ideas in the March 2017 issue of Music Theory Online (23.1). Three articles are concerned with tonal theory in different genres: Julie Pedneault-Deslauriers explores French models of major-minor tonality before Rameau, Michael McClimon presents a transformational paradigm for jazz harmony based on the ii–V–I progression, and David Temperley Iris Ren, and Zhiyao Duan investigate mixed mediant notes and blue thirds in some pop-rock songs. Three articles are analytical in focus: Diego Cubero categorizes different treatments of structural inner voices in some piano works of Brahms, James Palmer explores the ways in which contrasts create humor in Classical instrumental music, and Robert C. Cook offers an ecological interpretation of George Crumb’s An Idyll for the Misbegotten. Chris Stover provides a Deleuzean perspective on the act of improvisation.

Thanks to the efforts of our excellent new reviews editors Michael Callahan and Joti Rockwell, we also present two book reviews: Stephen Blum considers Kofi Agawu’s The African Imagination in Music (2016), and Daniel Villegas Vélez assesses Lawrence Kramer’s The Thought of Music (2016) in the context of his earlier works Interpreting Music (2011) and Expression and Truth (2012).

We encourage new and creative submissions to MTO. Although we are especially well suited for the publication of articles that incorporate recordings, videos, and other media, we also welcome text submissions in a variety of formats, including full-length articles, shorter essays and commentaries, conference reports, and entire special volumes. Commentaries in response to this issue’s articles, as well as announcements for our job listings and dissertation index, may be submitted to the Editor for publication in the next issue. Please refer to our submission guidelines.

All MTO volumes dating back to our first issue in 1993 can be accessed from the contents page at http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/issues.html. Thank you, as always, for your support of MTO—a Journal of the Society for Music Theory.