Editor’s Message
Greetings all, and welcome to Volume 31, Issue 2 of Music Theory Online!
[1] I will open this quarterly offering with a quick bit of introspection that is meant to provide some context for its offerings. Many who follow our journal closely have likely noticed a number of publication trends. One well known, longstanding trend is the prevalence of articles treating popular and rock music. The coverage of this topic, of course, has been steadily on the rise in theory journals, writ large; nonetheless, based on the number of pieces (and responses) we publish on pop and rock, I would maintain MTO is one of “the” essential places to visit to stay on top of developments in this vibrant field. Another newer trend, of which we are particularly proud, is increasing coverage of non-Western musics. Here, one might quickly recall the “Music Theory in the Plural” special issue from the end of last year (December 2024), which presented a set of twelve new translations-with-commentary of theories from around the globe stemming from both written and oral traditions. Yet even setting that voluminous offering aside, most recent issues of MTO have contained at least one entry centering on music from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, or South America.
[2] And there is a third trend, that—on the basis of conversations I have had with members of the theory community—I am fully certain that regular readers have noticed: the steady growth in length the MTO’s standalone articles. For a few years, the official limit for new submissions was strictly held to 10,000 words, with any exceeding that length automatically declined. In the last year or so, that boundary has been relaxed. The current official cutoff is 12,000 words—with the understanding that submissions in the upper range of this limit might, once accepted, extend even further as authors shore up their arguments to incorporate reviewer suggestions.
[3] This policy shift is largely result of “market forces,” as it were as authors have grown increasingly ambitious in the scope of research they wish to present. For three cases in point, see the articles in this issue that concern the history of theory. The first, by Kioumars Poorhaydari, offers readers a “Historical Examination and Theoretical Analysis of Maqām Iṣfahān in Persian Art Music.” Here, the new insights given into Persian modes—more specifically, their evolving construction, tuning, and scale degree behavior—are based both on close reading of texts dating back to the thirteenth century and the statistical analysis of hundreds of collected melodies derived from them. The second article, by Jason Yin Hei Lee, theorizes “The Semantic Evolution of Chromatic Mediants: A Baroque Origin of M8M Progressions.” Lee’s focus on one particular chord transformation, a major triad moving down by third to another major triad (i.e., a PL transformation), represents no small theoretic endeavor; rather, it is one that requires expansive treatment of Baroque harmony and affect as well as modern conceptions of sign, symbol, and meaning. The third and last entry in this grouping is Daniel Goldberg’s “Music Theory as an Instrument of Nationalism: Notation, Identity, and Systemization in Dobri Hristov’s Conception of Bulgarian Meter.” In fulfillment of the broad promise of its title, this article traces the origins and influences of the first systematic study of meters with unequal beats. It is a grand tale of Bulgarian history reaching back 150 years, with special emphasis made on illuminating how it worked to achieve independence from the Ottoman Empire and establish a national identity through linguistic and music-theoretical means.
[4] The other four articles in this issue, which call upon a broad range of methodologies to analyze works of remarkable length and complexity, are similarly ambitious. First, Guy Capuzzo invites readers to engage with “Texture, Rhythmic Synchrony, and Tonal Fusion in Henry Threadgill’s In for a Penny, In for a Pound.” Where Threadgill’s jazz-inspired and heavily-improvised music is typically examined from the perspective of pitch, Capuzzo relies on a texture-based approach—one, more specifically, that focuses on passages marked for salience by rhythmic concurrence and tonal fusion—to illuminate the hidden formal logic in this expansive, Pulitzer Prize-winning composition. Second, in “Eric Dolphy’s and Yusef Lateef’s Synthetic Formations,” Marc Hannaford introduces readers to an unusual two-octave, eleven-note scale formed from pitches drawn from two major-mode collections. (The scale, originally attributed to Dolphy, appears in Lateef’s 1981 Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns.) The account that follows of the structure and significance of this scale is impressively far-reaching, ranging from its more concrete (mathematic and tactile) aspects to its role in specific improvisations and compositions by Dolphy and Lateef, where it serves both as a source of local musical gestures and as a signal of grander, spiritual-political aspirations.
[5] In “Switch Up the Groove: Idiosyncratic Approaches to Form and Texture in Recent Popular Music,” Nathan Cobb examines the phenomenon of the mainstream popular music song that closes with a highly differentiated final section. Where previous analyses have largely followed Walter Everett (2009) in viewing such songs as truncated variants of compound AABA form, Cobb—in working to incorporate more EDM- and hip-hop-rooted sensibilities to pop analysis—argues for a compound AAB form that effects its own, novel aesthetic and expressive effects. The last article in this issue by Gui Hwan Lee is “Imaginary Folk Music: Investigating Unsuk Chin’s Gougalōn (2009/2012) through Cumulative Intercultural Analysis.” Here, Lee advances a new technique of cumulative intercultural analysis ideally suited to works like Chin’s that “draw upon plural perspectives,”—for example, explicitly non-Western versus Western informed music tropes—which are proposed by the music and subsequently accepted or declined. To visually and dynamically represent how the concept of idealized, imaginary folk music arises out of the tensions between multiple, negotiated conceptual frameworks, Lee creatively enlists the “Ghost Leg,” a two-dimensional, navigational game board space known from East-Asian lottery practices.
[6] In this issue, then, we are excited to set seven impressively weighty offerings before our readers. In light of our word limit and the articles now making their way towards publication, I fully anticipate this trend toward more meal- and banquet-sized offerings will continue. Of course, as this occurs, we will always make room at the table for beautifully crafted small-plate options as well!
[7] Having opened with introspection, I will close out this message with some boilerplate reminders. First, we encourage new and creative submissions to MTO: although we are especially well suited for the publication of articles that incorporate sound and visual files, animations, and other media, we also welcome text submissions in a variety of formats, including full-length articles, shorter essays and commentaries, and entire special volumes. Second, 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.
[8] Third and last: thank you for your support of MTO—a journal of the Society for Music Theory. We, the editors and staff of Music Theory Online, bid you hearty enjoyment of this summer issue!
Brent Auerbach, Editor-in-ChiefUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst