Amy Bauer
Gavin Lee, chair
John Roeder
Martin Scherzinger
Music theory today is structured by the legacy of European and North American epistemologies, deeply interwoven with a history of colonialism. This panel proposes new comparative frameworks that attempt to depart from these epistemologies.
A new kind of global comparativism is clearly emerging across the music disciplines today, including global music history (Strohm 2019) and comparative ethnomusicology (Wood 2018a, 2018b). In music theory, comparativism can be said to have taken place in the emergence of world music analysis, including the deployment of Western music-theoretical approaches to world music (Tenzer and Roeder 2011), a continued interest in interculturalism (Everett), and explicitly comparative frameworks used to discover universals or commonalities across musics and cultural sites (Margulis). While the new diversity is encouraging in some respects, the panel attempts to supplement these developments with new ethical and epistemological frameworks.
Following the postcolonial theory of Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000), “provincializing” music theory as it is practiced (originally in Europe, but now globally) means destabilizing Eurocentric musical epistemology. This does not translate to a reflex turn to difference, however, as the latter term has been problematized as a function of commodification and colonial governance (Currie 2009, Scherzinger 2019). An anti-hegemonic and/or non-hierarchical comparativism would have to navigate similarity—and indeed universality—as well as difference, against the unstable ground of shifting but particularized epistemic contexts. This 180-min panel comprises four papers which adopt different angles in parsing comparativism in music theory. The four paper segments are followed by a response and floor discussion (the six segments are all 30-min in length).
The first paper (Martin Scherzinger) inverts the universalization of the Newtonian, unilinear conception of musical temporality (formalized in the 18th century) that is persistently privileged, even as the relative temporality of other musics is articulated in music theory. In this epistemic context, this paper argues that the only option is to universalize the temporality of the cultural (African) other.
The second paper (Gavin Lee) regards sonic objects (such as the pentatonic scale) as a multiplicity that is found across history and around the world. A “global sonic genealogy” is premised on an ontology of circulation that counters the conception of cultural siloes and discrete cultural identities that emerged in the 16th century (Sykes 2019).
The third paper (John Roeder) conducts a historically-grounded, cross-cultural comparative analysis of works of Chinese and German modernism. The personal interaction between two composers provides the justification for a spectrographic analysis of the flow of musical “energy” (qì in Taoist philosophy) in both Jia Daqun’s Whispers of a Gentle Wind and Helmut Lachenmann’s Allegro sostenuto.
The fourth paper (Amy Bauer) recognizes the global dissemination of post-tonal compositional techniques, as seen in the work of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez. Global modernists circulate within a cosmopolitan musical space that privileges musics and musical languages of Western origin, and their complex output is often mischaracterized by an insistence on cultural difference.
Through “reverse” universality, circulation, and contextualization, these papers rethink “difference” and propose a series of epistemic correctives—unique to music theory—against unqualified applications and blanket condemnations of comparativism.
Gavin Lee, chair
John Roeder
Martin Scherzinger
Music theory today is structured by the legacy of European and North American epistemologies, deeply interwoven with a history of colonialism. This panel proposes new comparative frameworks that attempt to depart from these epistemologies.
A new kind of global comparativism is clearly emerging across the music disciplines today, including global music history (Strohm 2019) and comparative ethnomusicology (Wood 2018a, 2018b). In music theory, comparativism can be said to have taken place in the emergence of world music analysis, including the deployment of Western music-theoretical approaches to world music (Tenzer and Roeder 2011), a continued interest in interculturalism (Everett), and explicitly comparative frameworks used to discover universals or commonalities across musics and cultural sites (Margulis). While the new diversity is encouraging in some respects, the panel attempts to supplement these developments with new ethical and epistemological frameworks.
Following the postcolonial theory of Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000), “provincializing” music theory as it is practiced (originally in Europe, but now globally) means destabilizing Eurocentric musical epistemology. This does not translate to a reflex turn to difference, however, as the latter term has been problematized as a function of commodification and colonial governance (Currie 2009, Scherzinger 2019). An anti-hegemonic and/or non-hierarchical comparativism would have to navigate similarity—and indeed universality—as well as difference, against the unstable ground of shifting but particularized epistemic contexts. This 180-min panel comprises four papers which adopt different angles in parsing comparativism in music theory. The four paper segments are followed by a response and floor discussion (the six segments are all 30-min in length).
The first paper (Martin Scherzinger) inverts the universalization of the Newtonian, unilinear conception of musical temporality (formalized in the 18th century) that is persistently privileged, even as the relative temporality of other musics is articulated in music theory. In this epistemic context, this paper argues that the only option is to universalize the temporality of the cultural (African) other.
The second paper (Gavin Lee) regards sonic objects (such as the pentatonic scale) as a multiplicity that is found across history and around the world. A “global sonic genealogy” is premised on an ontology of circulation that counters the conception of cultural siloes and discrete cultural identities that emerged in the 16th century (Sykes 2019).
The third paper (John Roeder) conducts a historically-grounded, cross-cultural comparative analysis of works of Chinese and German modernism. The personal interaction between two composers provides the justification for a spectrographic analysis of the flow of musical “energy” (qì in Taoist philosophy) in both Jia Daqun’s Whispers of a Gentle Wind and Helmut Lachenmann’s Allegro sostenuto.
The fourth paper (Amy Bauer) recognizes the global dissemination of post-tonal compositional techniques, as seen in the work of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez. Global modernists circulate within a cosmopolitan musical space that privileges musics and musical languages of Western origin, and their complex output is often mischaracterized by an insistence on cultural difference.
Through “reverse” universality, circulation, and contextualization, these papers rethink “difference” and propose a series of epistemic correctives—unique to music theory—against unqualified applications and blanket condemnations of comparativism.
