The Marginalium | History of Music Theory

Reckoning with a Chinese Guidonian Hand

Addi Liu January 28, 2025

One of the global traces left behind by the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Tomás Pereira (1645–1708) in late seventeenth-century Beijing is

Recontextualizing Tertian Harmonies: A Preliminary Study on Western Harmony Discourse in Twentieth-Century China

Hon Ki Cheung October 2, 2024

An appendix with side-by-side translations of the original texts can be found at the end of this post for the

A History of Ecstatic Listening: What Arabic Ṭarab Has Taught Me about Musical Emotion

Issa Aji December 19, 2023

Beginning in the late 1930s, the first Thursday evening of each month marked a special occasion for those within the

Vernon Lee’s Psychological Aesthetics and Embodied Music Cognition (Part II)

Mariusz S. Kozak November 4, 2023

[…] Continuation of Part I […] In the previous post I showed that Vernon Lee’s theory of musical emotions—dramatic emotions

Vernon Lee’s Psychological Aesthetics and Embodied Music Cognition (Part I)

Mariusz S. Kozak November 4, 2023

“Musical aesthetics ought to be the clue to the study of all other branches of art” (Vernon Lee, Music and

Tuning the World: Pitch Lessons for the History of Music Theory

Fanny Gribenski July 11, 2023

Last January, I published a book entitled Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics

Towards an Ethics of Translation for Global History of Music Theory

Anna Yu Wang April 11, 2023

[This post is the lightly adapted version of a lightening talk I presented at the 2022 Business Meeting of the

Phonetic Logograms and Zigzagged Zithers (Part III)

Liam Hynes-Tawa March 1, 2023

[…] Continuation of Part II […] One of the things I find most fascinating about these dynamics I identified in

Phonetic Logograms and Zigzagged Zithers (Part II)

Liam Hynes-Tawa March 1, 2023

[…] Continuation of Part I […] I ended the previous post leaving open a question about the Kinkafu’s name. Let’s

Phonetic Logograms and Zigzagged Zithers (Part I)

Liam Hynes-Tawa March 1, 2023

恐。我天皇、猶阿蘓婆勢其太御琴。自阿至勢以音。 I am afraid. My emperor, play the great honored zither now. From 阿 to 勢 in accordance with

Rosa Newmarch, Musical Gossip, and Identity in Music Theory and History (Part II)

Kristin M. Franseen January 2, 2023

[…] Continuation of Part I […] Part II: “Hints are not facts”: Citing Gossip in Newmarch’s Analyses and Biographical Writings

Rosa Newmarch, Musical Gossip, and Identity in Music Theory and History (Part I)

Kristin M. Franseen January 2, 2023

Part I: “Isn’t it supreme!”: Newmarch and Musical Knowledge How do we glean knowledge from and about music? And how

Reckoning with a Chinese Guidonian Hand

Recontextualizing Tertian Harmonies: A Preliminary Study on Western Harmony Discourse in Twentieth-Century China

A History of Ecstatic Listening: What Arabic Ṭarab Has Taught Me about Musical Emotion

Vernon Lee’s Psychological Aesthetics and Embodied Music Cognition (Part II)

Vernon Lee’s Psychological Aesthetics and Embodied Music Cognition (Part I)

Tuning the World: Pitch Lessons for the History of Music Theory

Towards an Ethics of Translation for Global History of Music Theory

Phonetic Logograms and Zigzagged Zithers (Part III)

Phonetic Logograms and Zigzagged Zithers (Part II)

Phonetic Logograms and Zigzagged Zithers (Part I)

Rosa Newmarch, Musical Gossip, and Identity in Music Theory and History (Part II)

Rosa Newmarch, Musical Gossip, and Identity in Music Theory and History (Part I)

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