The Marginalium | History of Music Theory

Music Theory, Global Designs, and Modernity/Coloniality: Reading Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis in the “New World” (Part II)

Daniel Villegas Vélez January 27, 2022

Part II. The Musurgia universalis in New Spain […] Continuation of Part I. Musicosmopolitics […] The first copy of the

Music Theory, Global Designs, and Modernity/Coloniality: Reading Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis in the “New World” (Part I)

Daniel Villegas Vélez January 27, 2022

Part I. Musicosmopolitics Few music treatises circulated in the early modern/colonial period as broadly and efficiently as Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia

Madame de Pompadour as Music Theorist

Callum Blackmore January 20, 2022

The Querelle des Bouffons[1] was a music-theoretical dispute that took place in France between 1752 and 1754. The dispute was,

Should We Burn the Pianos?: Introducing A Collaborative Project Focused on Building “New Instruments for Theory”

Daniel Walden November 1, 2021

Enter just about any room of a Western-style conservatory or music department, and you will probably stumble into a piano.

The Planets Cannot Sing! : Al-Fārābī on Music Theory and Practice

Yasemin Gökpınar October 26, 2021

In his Great Book on Music, Abū Naṣr al‑Fārābī (d. 339/950) appeals to the science of nature (physics) and in

Time and Gesture in Lorenzo da Firenze’s Ita se n’er’a star: A Response to Davide Daolmi

Philippa Ovenden August 10, 2021

Philippa Ovenden Among late-medieval songs, Lorenzo da Firenze’s Ita se n’er’a is known both for its Ovidian text, which describes

The Singing Group: Polyphony and Power (Die singende Gruppe – Mehrstimmigkeit und Macht) (Part II)

Ariane Jeßulat May 19, 2021

(English Translation: Ariane Jeßulat and Thomas Christensen) […] Continuation of: Part I II. The Dux and Comes: or “how many

Ita se n’er’a star: Insights for a Fourteenth-Century Tactus (Ita se n’er’a star e un’ipotesi sul tactus nel Trecento) (Part II)

Davide Daolmi May 19, 2021

Davide Daolmi (English Translation: Giulia Accornero) […] Continuation of: Part I As we have seen in Part I, the differences

The Singing Group: Polyphony and Power (Die singende Gruppe – Mehrstimmigkeit und Macht) (Part I)

Ariane Jeßulat May 19, 2021

(English Translation: Ariane Jeßulat and Thomas Christensen) I. Participation in Harmony In the Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory,

Ita se n’er’a star: Insights for a Fourteenth-Century Tactus (Ita se n’er’a star e un’ipotesi sul tactus nel Trecento) (Part I)

Davide Daolmi May 19, 2021

(English Translation: Giulia Accornero) Since the end of the fifteenth century, mensural practice has relied on the use of a

Stories of Translation; or, Translation as Music Theory

Edwin K. C. Li April 2, 2021

Translation plays a key role in the circulation of histories of music theory across the globe; yet stories of translation

Reimagining Formalism for an Antiracist Music Theory (Part II)

Jade Conlee and Tatiana Koike March 18, 2021

[…] Continuation of: Part I In order to theorize high-level relationships within musical structure, music theory as it is currently