Talk:Music theory/Archive 6

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Alternative Outline

Jerome and Hucbald--Ever since Jerome wondered why this article struggles through definitions of basic elements of music, it’s been rattling around in my head. Instead of working through the theoretical interest element by element, another way to outline this might be:

Lead: Definition of the term “music theory,” and introduction of the cross-cultural problem.

History of music theory: Where did and does it come from—internationally and multiculturally

Methods of music theory: What theorists actually do: descriptive and prescriptive, principal methods

Use of words like pitch, notation, scale and so on would all link to specialized articles and we would presume readers either understand them well enough or look them up. This would be far more concise and a whole lot easier to write—especially if we can avoid digressing into minutiae. Any thoughts? Jacques Bailhé (talk) 01:06, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Jacques and Jerome, either I did not see this message, or I didn't find the time to answer it four months ago. I'm still there, though, and still interested. Jacques' suggestion sounds sensible to me, but I'm afraid it would entail reviewing the specialized articles (pitch, notation, scale and so on) as well. As it seems hard to do all that at once, we probably should begin with the specialized articles and progressively replace segments of the Music theory article with links to these corrected articles. Wuddya think? Should we begin by choosing one of these other, specialized articles, and check that it includes what we need?

I have had a first look at the Pitch (music) article, which not only seems to include so to say everything that is needed here, but also usually expresses it better. Some of its sections are weaker, though, e.g. Scales or Other musical meanings. The definition of Pitch standards fails to clearly say that they necessarily involve 'naming' the pitches – as does the concept of pitch itself, I think: a frequency is not a pitch, a named frequency is...

I won't begin making changes before we discussed this some more; also, I may be a trifle to busy with other things just now.

Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 11:44, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

The way I understand Wikipedia, it is right and proper that the more specific article (e.g., the one on pitch) should include everything that is needed here, and also go into more detail. If it expresses things better than is the case here, then we need to do some work to bring that section of this article up to standard; if there are weaknesses there, then they should be fixed there, rather than trying to create a section here that explains things better. One thing that worries me a little is that this article is beginning to grow beyond its natural size. Although music theory is a very large subject, I don't think this is the place to put every detail about every aspect of music theory. It should summarize the main issues (rather like a collection of the lead paragraphs of all the offspring articles), and then direct the reader to article where more ample discussion may be found.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:16, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is exactly what I meant: we should not try to give more details here, on the contrary we should link to more specialized articles and, in the end, significantly reduce the size of the Music theory article. My point only was that we should first make sure that these other, specialized articles, are up to our desired standards. In the case of pitch (music), this wouldn't be much work; other cases might be more complex. But we should first be sure about what we want to do. Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:37, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

While I appreciate anyone pointing out errors or asking for a better reference in the History article (or elsewhere), remarks like "Citation needed|date=December 2014 !--Who says any of this demonstrates anything at all about theory?" seem argumentative and rudely condescending. I don't think they're helpful--besides which, in that particular case, it is widely accepted that artifacts of all kinds tell us a great deal about the history of music theory. Many of these remarks are causing the article to include detail and references that are probably unnecessary and lead to the "Overly detailed|date=December 2014|section=yes" flag that now appears. The section needs to cover a lot of ground to make clear the world-wide history of the development of music theory. Demanding explanations of information that is widely accepted and referenced by other Wikipedia articles seems simply argumentative. If someone wants to argue a point, let's do that here and decide what we think is necessary or not. Jacques Bailhé (talk) 19:15, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Am I correct that specific page numbers are appropriate and necessary when citing a quote or specific passage from a reference, or identifying where in a journal or other compilation an article may be found, but that when paraphrasing an overall point from, or referencing a text for its overall support of a point, specific page numbers are not possible and as such, not required? Jacques Bailhé (talk) 03:51, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Not necessarily. When referring to the entire contents of a source (and in this sense, "paraphrasing an overall point"), then it is not necessary to give a page citation, no. If in doubt, use "passim" in place of a page reference. However, paraphrasing a point that does not in fact concern the entire content of the reference does require a page citation. Did you have a particular example in mind? On the other hand, in a list of references (what people used to call a "bibliography"), articles in journals or contributed chapters to collected works require inclusive page numbers in all cases. Newspaper articles, articles in popular magazines, and dictionary or encyclopedia entries cited by title do not traditionally require page numbers, though it is increasingly customary (and on Wikipedia virtually universal) to provide page references for newspaper and popular-magazine articles.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:18, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Jacques, I too think that the article includes unsubstantiated claims, namely that "artifacts of all kinds tell us a great deal about the history of music theory". These artifacts may tell us something about the state of music in their times, but they don't tell us in any way that this state of music was backed up by theory. Your claim that it is "widely accepted" that they do tell us about theory cannot be accepted without serious references. If the claim "is widely accepted and referenced by other Wikipedia articles", then a reference to these articles is all what is needed in this general article – as I think you suggested yourself when you proposed the "Alternative outline" to which this section is devoted.

Even if the general philosophy of Wikipedia is to accept statements when referenced in existing publications, I do believe that we should be more critical about the references. When the article says that "carefully placed finger holes in bone flutes found in Germany and dated 33,000 BCE, indicate consideration of pitch relationships and intervals within scales", it says something that certainly cannot be ascertained: how do we know that the holes were placed "carefully"? what is it that allows claiming that the notes played by these holes were thought to form "intervals within scales"? Any reference claiming such things should be considered suspect (even if printed and possibly reprinted), because the claim is mere speculation and certainly cannot be proved. One cannot describe the pitches played by a wind instrument with finger holes unless one knows how it is fingered; the number of holes doesn't even give a clear indication of the number of pitches that can be produced.

In any case, such considerations do not belong to a general article about music theory, they must appear in specialized articles. And such claims never are "overall points" that merely can be paraphrased: they must be specifically justified. What Jerome reproached, I think, is when specific points are treated merely as overall points. To end where I began, I don't think that the statement "artifacts of all kinds tell us a great deal about the history of music theory" is a mere overall point. Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 21:56, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I now have read the paper about the German prehistoric flute mentioned in the lead of the article (Conrad, Malina and Munzel, 2009). It appears that the flute did not have four holes, but at least five: it is broken at the fifth hole; the paper says that "several centimetres from the flute are missing at this end". The holes indeed appear carefully made, and carved markings may indicate that measurements were taken to determine their location. The paper stresses that "the surface of the flute and the structure of the bone [...] reveal many details about the manufacture of the flute", but says nothing of "intervals, scale, aesthetics and other aspects of music theory". In other words, to quote this paper as reference for the claim is misleading, perhaps even dishonest. Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 11:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I have marked that citation as failing to verify the claim, which I think is the appropriate action in such a case. This gives the editor who placed it the opportunity either to find a different source that does support the claim, or to modify the statement to conform to what the source actually says.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I have hopefully addressed issues in the lead and history section. Some discussion has been requested:

1. Anasazi and other flutes playing “a much larger range of notes within an octave and in octaves above the fundamental octave,”[17] "Relevance-What has this discussion of flute technique to do with music theory?" I suggest this is important to understand to get a better picture of musical possibilities of performance when it might otherwise be assumed a four hole flute can produce only four tones. All sorts of theoretical implications arise from octave duplication and at least doubling the number of tones available.

2. An interpretation of the only substantially complete Hurrian Hymn, h.6, performed on a lyre by Richard Dumbrill, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Institute of Musical Research, may be heard here. "relevant? – discuss Relevance- What has this speculative reconstruction by a modern theorist to do with the subject of Babylonian/Assyrian/Hurrian music theory?" I suggest inclusion of media wherever sensible and authoritative is invaluable. It’s a multimedia world.

3. Music theory in ancient Africa can also be seen in instruments. "Citation needed date December 2014 The mere existence of instruments does not demonstrate anything about theory. Who claims that anything at all is known of the music theory of the ancient instruments (as opposed to their modern counterparts?" I disagree. If we have an instrument that reveals something about interval relationships (e.g. finger holes in a flute), or images in paintings, pottery, or other media that show ensemble performance, or a set of bells, as from China, that tell us something about intervals, pitch relationships and scales, then we most certainly know something about the music theory of the people who made them. Arguing the contrary is nonsensical and contradicts widespread academic practices and acceptance, as copiously referenced in the article. Now exactly what, and the reliability of what we may be able to determine about prehistoric or ancient theory from such artifacts is certainly open to question, but clearly there is physical evidence of some theoretical thinking, however naïve it may have been in comparison to contemporary ideas about what constitutes music theory. If anyone can provide a reference to the contrary, please do. Otherwise, I suggest it’s time to close the book on this debate that has been long running on this talk page.

RE: the section title, adding the words “and prehistory” seems contradictory since, obviously enough, we do have a considerable amount of HISTORY in artifacts and other sources. Is there any question that artifacts are among the primary sources of history throughout all disciplines? If the insertion of “prehistory” was intended to distinguish between written and unwritten history, I suggest that’s an argument that should be taken up in some other article, perhaps on the article of history as a discipline. Again, it seems time to close the book on this point since it’s been discussed a great length for some time on this talk page and arguments that history must be written don’t stand up.Jacques Bailhé (talk) 23:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, this is all very diverting, and I'm sure there is much to be said about the earlier bits, but this last paragraph really gets to the nub of our problem, which is that we have not first carefully defined what we mean by "music theory". Without this, all the rest is fruitless. I suggest first of all that you read the lede paragraph of the Wikipedia article History, which ends with "Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory." Do we subscribe to this view here, or not? If so, then theory history refers to its written record. Bone flutes are not a written record, and neither are the scales produced by them. It is a well-known problem in the archaeology of prehistoric whistles and such that their status as musical instruments is often in question. Even when it is certain, how do we know that their makers were not still imitating bird calls, as similar whistles undoubtedly were used by contemporary hunters? I submit that it is only the written record of theoretical ideas that qualifies as the history of theory, however much artifacts like musical instruments may contribute to the understanding of that written record.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:30, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

RE: Defining “music theory,” I think we’ve done that satisfactorily in the lede and hope others agree. As for the question of how that definition is understood in the History of music theory section, it seems plain enough that if we have, for instance, a flute of some kind, well-established as such and not a whistle for hunting or other non-musical purpose, and we reasonably contemplate or speculate (words used in the definition of music theory) that the maker necessarily contemplated what pitches to include, we can reasonably deduce the maker’s contemplation constitutes theoretical thinking about music, however naïve we may imagine it to have been. Does anyone really think some theoretical thinking about music, however simplistic, wasn’t fundamental to making these instruments? I think that some of the doubt that has arisen about the flutes I include stems from identification of their origin as “Germany” leading to the incorrect assumption that I was discussing what is commonly misnamed the “Divje Babe Flute” and others of similarly dubious provenance. That flute and its cousins have not been established as human made artifacts and so, I have not discussed or referred to them at all.

I don’t agree that “only the written record of theoretical ideas … qualifies as the history of theory, however much artifacts like musical instruments may contribute to the understanding….” Even confined to Western theory, countless aspects of theory have been derived from artifacts, not written record. Please enjoy Forsythe’s writing on The Phagotus of Afranio (C. Forsyth, Orchestration, finale couple pages). We know the origin and related music theory aspects (performance, tuning, dynamics, social implications, etc.) of most instruments only through deductions from artifacts and their construction. As I’ve hopefully made clear in the article, considerable scholarship establishes the instruments I cite as musical and cautiously contemplates implications of construction, decision-making about and measurement of intervals, aesthetics, as well as social effects—all of which are included in the definition of music theory. The same is true, for example, of a painting depicting ensemble performance on stringed instruments which, obviously enough, indicates sophisticated theory. Adopting the attitude that we don’t know and can’t really say anything about the music theory deducible from these artifacts seems out of step with contemporary scholarship. I have avoided making overly-specific statements about what theoretical ideas may be gleaned from these artifacts and hope that the information I do include allows readers to contemplate on their own.

I don’t want to put too fine a point on the question about the title of the section, but ironically, that’s why I argue the following. The lede to WP’s History article opens with, history is “…an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events…. Events occurring prior to written record are considered prehistory.” I read that as allowing what can be gleaned from artifacts whether from periods before or after writing. The quote does indeed draw a line between history and prehistory and that line is written record. For formal purposes, I see usefulness in the distinction, but since we recognize history comes in many forms other than written (e.g. geologic, etc.), the formal distinction simply differentiates between history that is written and unwritten, not necessarily a different form of, or less reliable and foggy history. When we say, “history of the world,” or “human history” we commonly understand that to mean all history, including both prehistory and written history. For the purposes of the music theory article, it seems to me that readers will clearly understand we are covering music theory’s development in the wider meaning and so, making the distinction between written and unwritten history seems unnecessarily precise. A more philosophical argument is that since most all written history is written after the fact, writings I cite about these artifacts and their implications may draw them out of “prehistory” and into “history.” Of course, I happily defer to whatever the general consensus may be. The issue of over-specificity does, however, lead to one of my concerns with the history section as it now stands.

I feel the calls for ever-more precision and detail have caused unnecessary clutter. If you read the original draft (above on this talk page and unperfected as it is), I think you’ll find the information is thorough enough. I do understand the need to be accurate and avoid and correct anything that may be misleading or unclear, and I appreciate everyone’s help in that regard, but I think we may have gone a bit further than necessary for an overview article on such a broad topic. It’s beginning to read like it’s trying to be an academic paper, rather than an encyclopedia entry. I take responsibility for all clumsiness in the current writing because quite frankly, rather harsh comments on what I wrote pushed me to include additional citations and clarifications to defend statements that seem obvious enough and I’ve struggled to do so with a minimum of additional words. A case in point is all the argument about whether we can know anything at all about the theory behind ancient artifacts. As WP says in the History#History and prehistory section, “By studying painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information can be recovered even in the absence of a written record,” and it does so without any demand for support with quotes and citations because it is commonly understood and accepted--as I’ve argued at great length here.

I hope that as we consider the History of music theory section further, we may find some detail that can be removed.Jacques Bailhé (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I think we will have to agree to disagree about archaeological evidence constituting actual theory (as opposed to offering interesting data that may be used to confirm or amplify existing documents), but I heartily agree that this whole "history of theory" section is far too long and detailed. This is why I flagged it as such several weeks ago. I think it needs to be cut to less than one-tenth of its present size, with links to the main articles discussing the topics (especially the ones peripheral to music theory as it is usually understood). Organology and acoustics, for example, while impinging on certain aspects of music theory (orchestration and scale structure, for example), belong properly to musicology and physics, respectively. Another aspect of this is that the deluge of indiscriminate data is sometimes losing the forest for the trees. For example, in all of the archaeological stuff about surviving Chinese artifacts I see nothing at all about the written record of early Chinese music theory, which is fairly extensive. There is one vague reference at the end of the lede, and again China is lumped together with a number of other cultures at the very end of the "history" section, but not one writer or document is actually named anywhere in that section, even though one "avalanche" source (that is, a passim citation to a 200-page book) has a very precise description of a 5th-century BC theory document on p. 25—a plain example of a "written record" and therefore an "historical" document in the narrow sense. I do not even see a reference to the New Grove article on Chinese music, which has a large section (the second of four main divisions) devoted to "History and theory". Surely this is more pertinent that splitting hairs over whether a bone flute can tell us anything about musical rhythm or counterpoint.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:33, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Like Jerome, I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Like him, I think that much of what appears here (both in the lead and in the specific section) as history of theory should better be found in specialized articles, either on archaeology and/or history/prehistory at large, or on the archeological artifacts themselves. And the Music theory article merely should echo our disagreement, stating that while some do believe that archeological evidence constitutes actual theory, others consider that theory only begins with written documents. Both sides of the statement should be referenced: could we start looking for this kind of specific references and compare our results within a few days or weeks? Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 12:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I encourage any corrections or improvements of citations, or additional citations. In some papers related to the Chinese bells in the article, there is discussion of related music theory that is written, but I saw no compelling need to discuss that in light of the actual music-making instruments themselves and since the article had previously established the earliest known written example of music theory. Certainly Grove has an article on Chinese music. Does a citation to it add anything, since I imagine its references are papers similar to, or the same as those cited? Nowhere does the article assert “a bone flute can tell us anything about musical rhythm or counterpoint.” I imagine that exaggeration is simply to make a point, but apparently you miss the point. Isn't the phenomenon of tuning a critically fundamental aspect of music theory? The fact that a Hohls Fels flute bears markings that indicate careful calibration, and so tuning, of an instrument to produce a set of pitches, thus a scale, doesn’t seem to be splitting hairs or less pertinent since it tells us a great deal about music theory in the upper Paleolithic. These extremely ancient artifacts are certainly of interest to archeology and other fields, but I really cannot understand how we could conclude they are of negligible interest to an article on the history of music theory.

As discussed before, even within the comparatively short confines of Western music history and its development, so much of what we know comes from examination of instruments that have no written history. Instruments are not some curiosity of acoustics or some such. They are the embodiment of the music theory extant at the time they were made because they require selection and calibration of pitches and therefore, creation of scales, all of which are fundamental to music theory and its history. Current or historical argument to exclude ancient artifacts from a discussion of the history of music theory can only be based on arbitrary and unfounded criteria.

The notion that “theory only begins with written documents” seems counter to the definition of “theory,” but I imagine there may well be a crusty old quote discoverable somewhere. If so, and you decide to rely on it, we may need to remove any discussion of Pythagoras from music theory, or the rest of history for that matter, since we have no written record of his contributions, other than legends and hearsay written centuries after his existence. Sound preposterous? I contend removing ancient artifacts from a history of music theory is equally nonsensical.

If you would consider for a moment that we don’t have any idea when writing began, using "written" and "before writing" as a demarcation of historical eras is useless; and further confining “history” to written descriptions of that history written contemporaneously is also useless since so much history was written long after the fact, you might conclude that using either of those criteria in regard to the history of music theory is also pointless. Ancient history comes predominantly form artifacts – not written documents. As one of a thousand possible examples, I might take the historical record of the appearance of the arch in architecture, often cited as c. 2,000 BCE (Wikipedia). When did a written description of the first arch or any of the early arches for that matter, occur? Apparently, no contemporaneous, or even nearly contemporaneous written description exists. Does that remove this development from history? There is also an arch among the ruins of Tel Dan in Israel c. 4,500 BCE. http://www.haaretz.com/travel-in-israel/tourist-tip-of-the-day/tourist-tip-195-tel-dan-arch.premium-1.511255 Is it somehow less reliably an arch because no written description or other written record of it exists? Of course not. Our understanding of history has simply been improved, just as it has been in music theory by ancient artifacts.Jacques Bailhé (talk) 21:15, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Jacques, you obviously refuse to take our point. I'll be short. You write "The fact that a Hohls Fels flute bears markings that indicate careful calibration, and so tuning, of an instrument to produce a set of pitches, thus a scale, doesn’t seem to be splitting hairs or less pertinent since it tells us a great deal about music theory in the upper Paleolithic."

So far as we can tell, these markings probably indicate where to bore the holes. You claim that they indicate "careful calibration, and so tuning", but that is never claimed in the article quoted. The position of a hole certainly does not suffice to calibrate a tuning: its diameter, its internal shape, and the way it will be fingered, are equally important; and on these we have not the slightest information. So far as we can tell, the positioning of the holes may merely result from a consideration of the spacing between the fingers.

You add that the aim was "to produce a set of pitches, thus a scale". A set of pitches, perhaps; but we certainly remain ignorant of their numbers, which may or may not be the same as the number of holes (which we don't know, as the object is but a fragment of a flute), because it may or may not involve fork fingerings. And whether a set of pitches means "a scale" is claiming to be able to read the minds of these people. A scale is a theoretical concept, for sure. But it is well known that folk players of wind instruments even today have no notion of a scale. Their "pitches" are so mobile, depending on so many factors, that they cannot conceive of them outside given melodies played on their instruments. To conceive of pitches as forming a scale would entail (a) that the pitches be more or less stable; (b) that one would think of them in a regularly ascending or descending order; none of this can seriously be deduced from markings near the fingerholes.

What you claim is that the reason for the location of the holes is to produce calibrated pitches, and that these pitches were conceived as resulting in a scale. But you know NOTHING of this, and the source cited says nothing of the kind. All this is mere fantasy.

Let me add that one problem with Wikipedia articles is when people begin to thing themselves owners of the articles. I have no time to work on this just now, and I hoped that you would refrain for a while... Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 22:11, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree with everything Hucbald has said here. I would like further to observe, Jacques, that all that is required on Wikipedia to establish even the most preposterous claim is a reliable source. However, the source must actually verify the statement it is being used to support. Repeatedly, you cite sources that establish, for example, the facts that prehistoric flutes were carefully made, that there are incised striations that may have been made to guide the placement of fingerholes, and so on. However, it is a "leap of faith" (or, in Wikipedia-speak, "unwarranted synthesis" or "original research") when you draw the conclusion that this is evidence of the presence of what we today would call music theory. Hucbald has given several examples of this kind of extrapolation. If the cited source itself draws such a conclusion, then there is no difficulty with putting it into this article. One of the sources you have cited actually puts the position quite well: artifacts such as these can be useful in interpreting theoretical writings when they exist. The attempt to extract a theory directly from such artifacts is something that, so far, none of the cited sources has been so reckless as to assert is possible, let alone actually to attempt such an extraction.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:35, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Education and careers

Two sources were added indicating that a PhD is required for university music theory prof jobs. In both webpages cited, the advertisements state that a PhD is required for music theory prof positions. Why then is there a "not in citation given" tag on these two citations? ThanksOnBeyondZebrax • TALK 14:51, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Simple. The claim is that this is true for 2,015 US and Canadian institutions. Neither of these job announcements states that any job other than the one actually being advertised requires a PhD. While I do not doubt the truth of the statement (at least as far as major universities and colleges are concerned), "the threshold for inclusion on Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." If you wish to modify the claim to say "the University at Buffalo and Western University in Toronto, Canada, both require a PhD", then the cited sources will verify this. As it stands, they do not.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:39, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

I also wonder to what extent Wikipedia in English is an American Wikipedia. Much of what is claimed in this section (a) would not be true outside the US; (b) corresponds to an American view of what "music theory" is (especially as a discipline in higher education); (c) is hardly understandable to anyone less familiar with the American system. That a College advertises that "equivalent professional experience in composition" may replace a PhD in theory becomes less surprizing when one sees that the job advertized is one in "Music, Theory and Composition". Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Why is §Education and careers even in this article? A cursory look through the articles in this search result shows that education and careers is not a topic covered in those articles. So why here?

Similarly, why §Music subjects and §§Notation? What do they have to do with theory? Would Notation better be listed in §See also?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:13, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

While this article is ridiculously bloated and could certainly do with some trimming, I think there is a certain logic in the "careers" section that does apply to any of the search results offered, and that is that music theory is an academic subject usually taught by separately designated faculty ("Departments of Theory" or "Departments of Theory and Composition") in music schools. The relevant comparison would be to articles like Musicology or Conducting. The former has got a "careers" section, like this article, and the latter has a section on "training and education", which covers much the same ground.

Your second question is a bit more complex. On the one hand, this article defines music theory in the broadest possible terms (too broadly, in my opinion, which is what has produced the bloat mentioned above). On the other hand, one of the sections you name, "Music subjects", is either poorly formulated or written in a code that even a PhD music theorist like myself does not understand. The other is defensible as a subcategory of theory only at one of two extremes. At the most elementary level, rudimentary theory as taught in colleges begins with the basics of notation, since most entering freshmen are deficient at least to some degree in the ability to read music. At the other extreme, notation is one possible aspect of music and the overly broad remit of this article admits any and all such areas as the legitimate concern of theory. Whatever happened to the middle road?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:37, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I think that I disagree. You have noted that this article is in need of trimming (I agree with this). A good way to begin that, it would seem to me, is to keep only that which is so firmly on the topic of music theory that it can't go anywhere else. Education and careers is more closely tied to Music education methinks, so put it there with a link from this article's §See also (Conducting and Musicology should do the same; that latter already has the link in its §See also).

Similarly, Wikipedia isn't a text book. We don't have to start with remedial notation as educators may have to do in real life. There is a Musical notation article and the term is used in a few places in this article so links to the musical notation article are appropriate. Add Sheet music to §See also and there is another section gone so you can focus on the topic at hand, music theory.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:30, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, so now tell me where we are in disagreement. All I meant to do was point you in the direction of some parallel articles (with regard to the "careers" section). When I said there is a "certain logic" I did not mean to imply that I endorse the idea wholeheartedly. As far as remedial education is concerned, I certainly agree that even though rudiments are in the curriculum, they are not really what music theory is about, any more than being able to recognize a piano when you see one has anything to do with the technique of playing the instrument. I think we need to be careful, however, in trying to narrow the scope of this article. There have been precious few editors working on it, and attempts to lure the Music Theory Project members here (which should be their central article of concern) has had little effect. I imagine they take one look at this mess, throw up their hands, and run away. As a result, a very small number of opinions has guided the article up to this point (as can be seen elsewhere on this Talk page, including the archived discussions), and these have not been entirely harmonious, precisely on the subject of how broad or narrow the article should be. I suggest we might start by looking at the website of the (American) Society for Music Theory, to see if they have a succinct definition of what the field is deemed to cover. If nothing else, it can be cited as a source to support weeding out the less relevant materials. I'm sure there are resources from other countries as well (both print and online), but this is easily accessible and the first one that pops into my mind.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:10, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

In my experience, someone saying that something has a certain logic to it generally indicates that they support or accept that something. So I took it as an indication that you accept that §Education and careers has a place in this article. I do not think that it does and think that it is better placed in another article, perhaps Music education.

My purpose for being here has ended. I came to this page because of cs1|2 deprecated parameter errors. I cannot explain why I jumped into this conversation except to say that I perceive education and careers as off topic and that the article might be better served without §Education and careers and §Notation.

Back to the mines.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to say that I weakly support the section on careers, but I am certainly not a vehement proponent. Your thoughts on the subject are helpful, even if they came about only secondarily to your purpose in coming to theis page. Perhaps other editors with a stronger interest in this article will chime in with their views on these issues, so that consensus might be established. If the questions are never raised, they will never be discussed, will they?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

This article as a whole, I am sorry to have to say, becomes worse and worse. I have no particular opinion about the section on careers, unless that it might be made more international (but how?). I certainly wonder whether it has its place here. But I become more and more convinced that the article needs complete rewriting. We cannot open many such worksites at the same time, though, and I think that we should first complete the work begun on tonality (User:Hucbald.SaintAmand/Tonality); I have been busy with other things recently, but intend soon to come back to work. Or would someone else open a sandbox for "Music theory"? Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 08:58, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps, Hucbald.SaintAmand, it's not entirely that the article is getting worse, but also that our standards and expectations are steadily rising? Jerome Kohl has put his finger right on the spot with his "take one look at this mess, throw up their hands, and run away" comment – that's exactly my experience here. I'd welcome anything that made the whole thing easier to come to grips with, and some severe pruning would certainly have that effect. So I'd support complete removal of the current education and careers section, as suggested by Trappist the monk. It should probably be replaced with content about music theory education, particularly its rôle in the education and training of musicians in different societies. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:21, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

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A new provisional page on Western Music Theory

I just opened a new sandbox page, User:Hucbald.SaintAmand/Western_music_theory. Have a look there and, please, do participate. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 14:47, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Article in need of rewriting

I don't know whether it's that our standards and expectations are rising, as Justlettersandnumbers just wrote, but I do believe that the article gets worse. The reason is, IMO, that the definition(s) of "Music theory" is not clear in our minds, that the article includes things that hardly could count as "theory" properly speaking (and I am not particularly thinking here of the "Education and careers" section), and that recent additions at times have concerned some of these remote things. Let me quote a few examples:

• The discussion about whether "canon" is a form, or a genre, or a texture, etc., has no place here. Not that the article should not discuss the matter of form, but because any discussion of individual forms belongs to an article on forms and not to one on theory. What belongs here is a discussion of the theories of form, a discussion which for the time being is utterly lacking. In passing, it certainly is not true that Encyclopedia Britannica calls "canon" a form: so far as I know, articles in the EB are signed; therefore, somebody says in EB that canon is a form, and I'd be interested to know who.
• The following statement at the end of the "Genre and technique" section needs rereading: "For example, triads and sevenths teach how to play chords with accuracy and speed. Scales teach how to move quickly and gracefully from one note to another (usually by step). Arpeggios teach how to play broken chords over larger intervals. Many of these components of music are found in compositions, for example, a scale is a very common element of classical and romantic era compositions." What sense does this make? What has this to do with music theory?
• The caption to a recently added illustration reads: "A Classical piano trio is a group that plays chamber music, including sonatas. The term "piano trio" also refers to works composed for such a group." Chamber music? Including sonatas? and what does a string trio do, or a wind trio? What is "chamber music"? What is a sonata? What has this to do with music theory? Or is this article some sort of a hotchpotch?
• Why a portrait of Roman Jakobson who, unless I am mistaken, hardly ever wrote about music? Why not Peirce, or Saussure, or Benveniste (or all of them)?
• The presence of the illustration showing Apollo and the Muses has been (rightly) challenged as having little to do with theory.
• The figure illustrating the section on Mathematics is hardly intelligible. The notations under the series of number from 1 to 16, "U1 U2 P5 U3 M3", etc., appear to mean "Unison 1", "Unison 2", "Unison 3" (which makes very little sense); "Perfect fifth", "Major third", where the figures 5 and 3 have an utterly different meaning than, say, in U3 or U5; and would "P7" mean "Perfect seventh", while this, the 7th harmonic, produces a sound that is unusable in a music based on 12 tones in the octave? Why are frequencies indicated, while these intervals obviously are independant from frequencies? And how does the figure illustrate " the simple fractional nature of non-octave harmonics" – what, by all means, could "the fractional nature of harmonics" mean? And wy is such a figure supposed to illustrate a secton on Mathematics that never mentions harmonics>
• Etc.

All of the above concerns change made during the last two weeks! None of this has brought us any closer to what "Music theory" really is. I know that one should not criticize without improving. The task here, however, is enormous. I don't think that correcting here or there could really improve the article, I think that we should, severall of us, sit, think and discuss what could be done... Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 07:48, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Hucbald makes excellent points. A year or so ago, Jerome Kohl, Hucbald, a few others, and I cut this article down after concluding it should be limited to:

1. a lead to specify what “music theory” is as best we can without Western biases (and considering that a definition of music itself is made very wide for good reason) and an overview its applications

2. A history of the subject, again ensuring an international and multi-cultural perspective (to wit: neither Pythagoras nor Boethius invented the subject)

3. A brief discussion of issues in music theory such as the inherent problems of applying Western theory to non-Western music

4. Within all the above, terms such as “pitch” and “orchestration, ornamentation, improvisation” link to articles on those topics

We specifically removed topics discussed in other articles because they’re redundant here and in many cases, as has been pointed out in comments above, are well off the topic of music theory itself. Music theory is, of course, a subject that many musicians and especially music theorists are consumed with and so naturally have A LOT of thoughts about what is essential to understanding it – as well they should. However, this is an article for general readers, not experts. “Musical analysis” is certainly an application of theory, but should be covered under the article on “Musical analysis,” not here. In this article, analysis should simply be mentioned as one application. Same for most of what’s currently here as subtopics.Jacques Bailhé 17:19, 11 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbailhe (talk • contribs)

Citations

Editor Jerome Kohl has reverted my edit with this edit summary: "cite repair: revert change of citation style, made without the discussion and consensus required by WP:CITEVAR".

If, pursuant to WP:CITEVAR, the article's established style is chaotic, then I plead guilty. The established style is a mix of Citation Style 1 templates (19 by my count), Citation Style 2 (18 of these), the unnamed style that is {{wikicite}} (39 of these) with the remainder untemplated (29 of these) for a total of 105 in §Music theory#Sources and §Music theory#Further reading.

I came to this article because Module:Citation/CS1 (the engine that renders cs1 and cs2 templates) had identified one or more cs1|2 templates that are using deprecated parameters. There are 12 of these, all of them using |separator=. This parameter is no longer functional. Its purpose was to allow editors to specify the character that terminates the various portions of the rendered citation. In both cs1 and cs2, the separator character is defined in Module:Citation/CS1 according to the type of citation. All cs1 templates ({{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, etc.) use a period as the separator character. For cs2 ({{citation}}), the separator character is a comma.

Where |separator= is used in the Music theory article, it always specifies a period (|separator=.). There are 12 instances of this parameter, 9 of which are {{citation}} templates with the remaining 3 being {{cite book}} (2×) and {{cite web}}. As originally implemented, this made the 9 cs2 templates render in the style of cs1 (for the 3 cs1 templates with this parameter, it did nothing because cs1 by definition uses a period as the separator character.

So here I am with these facts. What to do? My goal is to fix the errors identified by Module:Citation/CS1. Because editors of the Music theory article have chosen to make a significant number of cs2 templates render in the style of cs1 I chose to convert all of the {{citation}} templates to appropriate cs1 templates.

That being done, I notice that these Harvard style links in §Notes don't work (the links in §Notes should link to matching citations in §Sources):

Music_theory#cite_note-FOOTNOTEZhang.2C_Harboolt.2C_Wang.2C_and_Kong1999passim-7

Music_theory#cite_note-FOOTNOTELloyd_and_Boyle1978142-48

Music_theory#cite_note-FOOTNOTEStevens.2C_Volkmann.2C_and_Newman1937185Josephs196753.E2.80.9354-50

Music_theory#cite_note-FOOTNOTECavanagh1999-55

Music_theory#cite_note-FOOTNOTETouma1996.5B.5BCategory:Wikipedia_articles_needing_page_number_citations_from_August_2014.5D.5D.3Csup_class.3D.22noprint_Inline-Template_.22_style.3D.22white-space:nowrap.3B.22.3E.5B.3Ci.3E.5B.5BWikipedia:Citing_sources.7C.3Cspan_title.3D.22This_citation_requires_a_reference_to_the_specific_page_or_range_of_pages_in_which_the_material_appears..7FUNIQ--nowiki-000000C3-QINU.7F_.28August_2014.29.22.3Epage.C2.A0needed.3C.2Fspan.3E.5D.5D.3C.2Fi.3E.5D.3C.2Fsup.3E-56

Music_theory#cite_note-FOOTNOTETouma1996.5B.5BCategory:Wikipedia_articles_needing_page_number_citations_from_August_2014.5D.5D.3Csup_class.3D.22noprint_Inline-Template_.22_style.3D.22white-space:nowrap.3B.22.3E.5B.3Ci.3E.5B.5BWikipedia:Citing_sources.7C.3Cspan_title.3D.22This_citation_requires_a_reference_to_the_specific_page_or_range_of_pages_in_which_the_material_appears..7FUNIQ--nowiki-000000C7-QINU.7F_.28August_2014.29.22.3Epage.C2.A0needed.3C.2Fspan.3E.5D.5D.3C.2Fi.3E.5D.3C.2Fsup.3E-57

The last two of the above list also suffer from this bizarre construct:

{{sfn|Touma|1996|loc={{Page needed|date=August 2014}}}}

{{Page needed}} doesn't really belong inside of {{sfn}}. I did not fix this but should have. (I did however, fix similar constructs in the cs1 templates.)

So, with the exception of the 2 Touma {{sfn}} templates, I fixed all of that.

But then comes Editor Jerome Kohl who accuses me of doing bad things. Clearly I disagree. What bad things have I really and truly done?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:37, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, I obviously don't know how some of the template parameters are supposed to be used (embedding "page needed" templates apparently is not correct, for example, though it produces the desired result—where is the correct place to set this with the SFN template, anyway?). However, I do know what citation formats are supposed to look like in Chicago Style, and many of the things you changed did violence to this citation style. Some also produced formatting that is nonstandard according to any style guide I have ever seen. For example, one template feature of which I was unaware until this edit, is that the "cite book" replaces the author line of a second entry for the same author with a pair of spaced em-dashes. This would be dandy, if only it were the standard 3-em dash used in such circumstances. Do you know of any way to correct this template parameter? Another nonstandard feature (for Chicago Style, at least) is positioning names of editors, translators, authors of prefaces, introductions, and postfaces immediately after the year of publication, instead of after the item title. Yet another matter has to do with delimiters in the inline citations. Chicago Style uses commas between names in case of multiple authors, and the word "and" rather than an ampersand. Other styles of course differin this regard, and I have no idea at all which style (if any) the devisers of those templates had in mind; I do know that most of them accommodate at least two different styles—one for use in footnotes (the "author" parameter) and the other for use in alphabetical reference lists(the "last"/"first" parameters)—though the vast majority of editors on Wikipedia don't know the difference, and consequently end up using the right ones in the wrong places. I spent a huge amount of time making these citation formats conform to one style in this article, and used the cite templates where I could make them work properly. If the devisors of these templates have got a different idea of how citation templates should be done, then perhaps the best option would be for me to replace them all with "wikicite" anchors, which permit correctly formatted citations in any style, under the "reference" parameter. This template, of course, is not intended for amateurs, but you may rest assured I am not one of those.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:01, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I suppose, in retrospect, that there is no reason that {{page needed}} can't be used within {{sfn}}; it's just that the link produced is very ugly since it contains a category link, html, and css.

Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 are based on Chicago style, APA style, and perhaps others. Most of the cs1 templates were developed somewhat independently and then all were modified to use a common core template {{citation/core}}. For performance reasons, cs1|2 were then migrated to Module:Citation/CS1. As far as I know, it has never been possible for cs1|2 to faithfully reproduce Chicago or APA or any other style. I have not read in any of the archived discussions that the ability to faithfully reproduce a variety of different styles was a goal of the developers.

The positions of authors, editors, and others in cs1|2 renderings were fixed by the original template developers probably as a compromise. One of the things that cs1|2 does that isn't obvious is that it emits metadata in a format usable by citation tools like Zotero. Taking Aristoxenus as an example, setting |others=edited by Henry Marcam deprives downstream users of the metadata of that piece of information; |others= is not included in the metadata while |editor= (or its aliases) is.

A weakness of cs1|2 is how it handles |others=. It is suggested from time to time that common 'other' names be given their own parameters, for example: |translator=, |foreword=, |photgrapher=, etc. The community have not spent much time considering this topic so we end up with a variety of annotations to describe these various 'other' contributors in the rendered citation.

{{cite book}} does not automatically [replace] the author line of a second entry for the same author with a pair of spaced em-dashes. That is an option in all cs1|2 templates and is the function of the parameters |author-mask= and |editor-mask=. Setting these parameters to a number instructs the template to replace the author/editor name in the rendering with that number of em dashes. I used 2 because that is the number that is most commonly used by other editors. These parameters can be enumerated to match enumerated author and editor parameters.

I do not know why the developers of {{sfn}} and the {{harv}} family of templates chose the ampersand over 'and'.

Yep, you could (presuming that the other editors of this page agree) go to the effort of converting all of the templated citations to manually composed versions – there are editors who do that and then mantle over them like a hawk with a fresh-caught mouse. Attempting to bend cs1|2 as is done with Aristoxenus may visually satisfy but may also be technically crippled. A mix of cs1|2 templates and {{wikicite}} and untemplated citations will, I suspect, lead to further conversations of this type.

I think that you should restore my edits so that all of the links in §Notes work and all of the deprecated parameter errors are cleared.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:52, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I will certainly go over all of the links to make sure that they work. If that involves restoring some of your edits, and it does not adversely affect the consistency of the citation formats, I have got no problem with that, but I will have to check them one by one. Most of the rest of what you say means absolutely nothing to me at all. What I am concerned about is what readers, using human eyeballs, actually see on the page when they look at it. As a specific example, the reason I used the (apparently now deprecated) "separator=." parameter is that, after looking at an entry I saw it had comma-delimiters instead of the period-delimiters found in most of the other entries (which the Chicago Manual also specifies for bibliography entries, as opposed to full-footnote style, where commas are used instead). I could not explain why some turned out that way while others didn't, but I found that override in the template documentation, and used it. I think this is what you call a "kludge", but it worked, and that was all that mattered to me. I can only suppose that what you are describing ("cs1|2", "emits metadata", "{{citation/core}}", etc.) is technical jargon about coding, which is of interest to me only so far as it affects how humans read the page. I suppose there must also be some utility in what machines can and cannot do, but to give them priority over human beings seems perverse to me. I have from time to time, but without success, tried to find those developer discussion pages you describe. Perhaps I should have tried harder, but the waters seemed so deep and muddy it did not seem worth the effort.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:55, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. I just found another example of what can happen to human readers if the machines are not programmed correctly. When I clicked on the link in your last sentence ("... so that all of the links in §Notes work ...") it took me to a disambiguation page. From a music theorists point of view, the most logical association is Musical note, though we do not ordinarily preface this with a § mark. I think you must mean the links in the SFN templates which, in this article, display their contents in a section titled "Notes".—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:06, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, my error. That last link should have been §Music theory#Notes. Now fixed.

The reason that some entries in the bibliography had commas while the rest had periods is because those with commas were cs2 ({{citation}} while the rest were cs1 ({{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, etc) or were hand-crafted. The possible solutions as I see them are:

1. make all entries in the bibliography either cs1 (periods) or cs2 (commas)
   1. to convert cs2 to cs1 add:
      • |mode=cs1 – this tells the underlying code to render the {{citation}} template with periods, capitalized static text, and a terminal period
      • |ref=harv – optional; not required if this citation is not a target of a {{harv}} or {{sfn}} in-line citation
   2. an alternate method (the one that I used) is to convert {{citation}} to the appropriate cs1 template ({{cite book}} for books, etc)
   3. to convert cs1 to cs2 add:
      • |mode=cs2 – this tells the underlying code to render the {{cite xxxx}} template with commas, lowercase static text; omits terminal punctuation

      directly converting cs1 to {{citation}} can be problematic because {{citation}} lacks the ability to render all of the various details associated with the cs1 templates

2. toss all of the templates in the rubbish bin and carefully hand-craft each citation

You have repeatedly referred to Chicago's way of doing things. If you and the other editors of this page are committed to a strict adherence to Chicago then perhaps templates are not for you. The purpose of the cs1|2 templates is to provide editors with a relatively simple way to produce stylistically-consistent, mostly maintenance-free citations so readers can pursue referenced sources and so editors can get on with the job of content creation which, I've repeatedly heard, is their raison d'être as Wikipedia editors. Are cs1|2 perfect? No. Do they fully adhere to a particular published style guide? No.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:50, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, that is very helpful, especially the straightforward explanation of what these template are really designed to do. I had been led to believe that the {{citation}} template was a newer, preferred alternative meant to replace {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}}, and all the rest. I suppose that's what I get for reading the template propaganda documentation. I did discover that it is apparently impossible to get {{citation}} to display an article title in Roman type and enclosed in quotation marks, which is one reason for the mix of templates used here. The phrase "static text" is unfamiliar, but I gather it must refer to the various texts meant to be displayed as titles, author names, and so on.

I don't know about the "other editors" of this page (which for the past year or so have numbered only two really active ones) but I am basically satisfied with the established style, though I prefer parenthetical citations to SFN format because I find that footnotes are needlessly distracting, involve one more click-level of departure and return, and create an unsightly, useless rubble at the bottom of the page. One way and another, I do find an alphabetical list of sources to be crucial in a broad-ranging article like this one, since it is the only practical way of quickly determining if anything vital has been overlooked, as well as assessing the relative weight of reliability in the sources used. Such a list can (and in my view should) be used in articles using full-footnote citations, but I find this a very rare practice on Wikipedia.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:08, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

By 'static text' I mean the text that the template itself adds to the rendered citation: the text associated with archives, accessdates, editors and the like:

cs1:

{{cite book |title=Title |author=Author Name |editor=Editor Name |chapter=Chapter |url=//example.com |archive-url=//example.org |archive-date=15 March 1996 |accessdate=2015-07-22}}

→Author Name. "Chapter". In Editor Name (ed.). Title. Archived from the original on 15 March 1996. Retrieved 2015-07-22. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

cs2 (slightly tweaked):

{{citation |title=Title |author=Author Name |editor=Editor Name |chapter=Chapter |url=//example.com |archive-url=//example.org |archive-date=15 March 1996 |accessdate=2015-07-22 |dead-url=no}}

→Author Name, "Chapter", in Editor Name (ed.), Title, archived from the original on 15 March 1996, retrieved 2015-07-22 {{citation}}: |author= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |dead-url= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)

The static text in these examples is 'In', 'in', 'Archived from the original', 'archived from the original', 'Retrieved', and 'retrieved'.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:41, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Aha! I see, and of course it is capitalised or not depending on wheter it is preceded by a period or a comma. Once again, I am grateful for the explanation. Thank you.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:10, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

These short cite links are broken in §Notes:

37 (Confucius 1999)

73 (Benward & Saker 2003)

77 (Brandt 2011)

80 (Bent 1987)

81 (Bernard 1981)

85 (Lewin 1987)

86 (Tan, Peter ,and Rom2020)

96 (Wong 2011)

109 (Whittall 2008)

110 (Grant 2001)

118 (Semiotica 1987)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:12, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for going to the trouble of listing these. I see what happened: Material was imported from other articles, without bringing in the references proper—only the inline author-date citations. (One case was a simple typo.) They are all fixed now, though a couple are only dummy entries, since I have not succeeded in discovering what they are meant to be (that Semiotica entry, for example, which obviously refers to a journal, but needs author and title information.).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

96 (Wong 2011)?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I thought I had, yes, when I found a typo in the template. I should have checked to make sure the link had gone live. It hadn't. I gather that "cite web" is one of those templates that require jiggering to make it link to SFN templates. I dismantled it and rebuilt the citation manually, and it works now.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 02:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes: |ref=harv or if you want comma separators |mode=cs2 because it is one of the Citation Style 1 templates.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:54, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Jerome -- In reviewing my research material on the Jiahu flutes, I cannot find the sentence that appeared in the article in quotes. "Tonal analysis of the flutes revealed that the seven holes [in some of the flutes] correspond to a tone scale remarkably similar to Western eight-pitch scales."[7][8] I checked the sources today and just don't see it, so I must have made an error when I wrote the section. The statement does accurately summarize the research, so I removed the quotes and left the citations. I hope that makes sense.Jacques Bailhé 20:59, 11 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbailhe (talk • contribs)

If you also removed the square brackets indicating a clarification/interpretation of the rest, then, yes, that makes sense. Paraphrases do not require such things. However, there is not a lot of point making changes here, when the entire article is under detailed discussion elsewhere.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:03, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Jerome –- For the record, the quote, “Tonal analysis of the flutes revealed that the seven holes correspond to a tone scale remarkably similar to the Western eight-note scale” comes from a news release posted by Brookhaven National Laboratory which can be found at https://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/1999/bnlpr092299.html where acoustic tests were made. That article is the source of the audio file link in the History section which takes a reader to the Brookhaven article quoted and links to the audio recorded from playing the flutes. My original draft of the article places the references and quote in an order that was clear. I must have fouled this up in later edits. My apologies. I will be happy to rewrite the paragraph to put the references and quote back in the original order so there is no further confusion. Let me know if you’d like me to do so.--Jacques Bailhé 16:09, 17 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbailhe (talk • contribs)

A dishonest article?

Several of us agree that this article, Music theory, is very much in need of rewriting. In order to measure the extent to which this was true, I began a systematic checking of the references given, at least so far as I could reasonably do in between other occupations. My work is only in an early stage, but I reckon that most of what I have checked up to now merely is false, or even dishonest. The provisional result of my work can be found on this page and I invite anyone interested either to participate, or to add comments on either the talk page or that page, or here. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Editors may err, but to assume they are being dishonest is out of line. Seems to me that every contributor is sincerely doing their best to get things right. If you find something that is incorrect, by all means correct it or ask the contributor what they meant and then help them improve what they wrote. Isn't that what a good editor does? Making disparaging remarks like the above is discouraging, unhelpful, and inappropriate. Jacques Bailhé 16:41, 14 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbailhe (talk • contribs)

Jacques, I can only briefly repeat here what I wrote on the special page that I devoted to this, that most if not all of the references that I have been able to verify did not support the claims made in their name. I have had students who quoted in their papers a lot of references that they obviously had not read, in the vain hope that I would not notice. This I call dishonest. I would very much like to believe that the case is different here: let me therefore remove the word "dishonest". Remains that most of the references are false – that is a fact, call it as you want. Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:24, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Hucbald, on THIS PAGE where you criticize the music theory article, I have, I hope, replied to all your questions about references in the History section which I wrote. If you would point out any other specific references you question, I'll be happy to do my best to satisfy your curiosity -- as I did at great length a year ago when I first drafted the section and you raised these same questions. As I've said before, I'm happy to have your help correcting any error I have made, but you don't seem interested in correcting or improving the History section of the article. I begin to think you're simply determined to quash the international view of the history of music theory I've tried to give because it doesn't agree with your preconceptions. You offer no reference that contradicts anything I've written in the History section, but instead comment about your doubt that any people other than Europeans ever considered music theory. I can't understand that when the evidence is abundant--if not obvious. If you can cite an authoritative source that contradicts anything in the History section, please do let us know. Jacques Bailhé 05:40, 17 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbailhe (talk • contribs)

Jacques, you'll see on User_talk:Hucbald.SaintAmand/Music_theory#Additional_comments.2C_17_October_2015 why I cannot consider that you have replied to all my questions, which remain numerous. You will see that I still have many references to question. And I am very much interested in correcting and improving the History section of the article. I gave references contradicting your claims, but you obviously don't want to consider them. And let me stress that it is up to you to justify your references. My main concern up to now, indeed, has been that too many of your references do not support your claims. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 12:42, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you are not reading additional rebuttals to your questions and arguments at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hucbald.SaintAmand/Music_theory where you asked me to reply. --Jacques Bailhé 18:33, 21 October 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbailhe (talk • contribs)

Excellent paper on theory from artifacts

Alexander Rehding kindly pointed me to his recent paper, "Music-Historical Egyptomania, 1650–1950" which discusses the issue of drawing conclusions about theory from instruments, as well as what has been a long-running debate here about written vs. non-written sources (artifacts, etc.). (Rehding, Alexander. 2014. “Music-Historical Egyptomania, 1650–1950.” Journal of the History of Ideas 75 (4): 545–580. doi:10.1353/jhi.2014.0037) available in PDF at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:22580861. Jacques Bailhé 14:51, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

I do not have the same reading of this paper as yours, Jerome, and I don't see it drawing "conclusions about theory from instruments". The article starts recounting Verdi's deception at being unable to draw any conclusion about Egyptian music from an instrument preserved in the Egyptian Museum in Florence, despite Fétis' claim that "the entire system of ancient Egyptian music could be gleaned from this instrument". From this, Rehding develops a discussion of how music historians from the 17th to the 19th century fancied that they could tell something about Egyptian music, and of how revealing this all can be for the modern historiography from Kircher to Hickmanm. But the paper is nowhere concerned with Egyptian theory as such, and Rehding himself admits that the Egyptian remains "a musical repertory about which we have no knowledge whatsoever". The paper, in short, is not about "theory from artifacts", but about modern historiography and about the extraordinary egyptomania of the recent centuries in Europe. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 17:59, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Draft of New lead

I think we suffer from a couple problems that we can clear up without too much controversy (I hope). IF we could come to agreement on what this article should cover, and therefore what the lead should say, we'd be in better position to outline and write the article itself.

First off, music theory is not "the study of" anything. That is certainly one of the many things we do with music theory, but "music theory" is a thing, not an action. It is a body of knowledge and theoretical speculation. Assuming there is agreement, I think we need to make that more clear in the lead. Second is clearing up confusion about what is meant by the words "practices and possibilities." I originally chose those words to describe "practices" in the sense of music theory being derived from how people make music—derived from their practices demonstrated in actual music both notated and not. It was not intended to refer to "performance practice" exclusively. I also suggest that a discussion of performance practice may not be appropriate in this article because that seems better covered as a performance art in a separate article. Regarding "possibilities," that word was intended to describe the speculations, theorizing, and so on, that is such an important part of the field—historically and presently. Ancient instruments, especially those from the Paleo and Neolithic have also been a bone of contention here. I don't see how we can sensibly omit some discussion of them since they tell us a great deal about the earliest known existence of music. Many have been measured and acoustically analyzed with various sophistication to determine pitch selection, possibilities of the playable scale types, and so on. Whether principles of music theory can be drawn from them is something we won't know until more research is done specifically addressing music theory, but I don't see how it can be denied that these instruments provide the potential for understanding something of the music theory with which they were made—as is commonly done in organology. Criticism, whether scholarly or not, is an aspect of music theory that I believe is also important to mention. Some have argued Confucius' writing is not an exposition of theory, but I think it's fair to say most scholars disagree. Artistotle's and Plato's writing is quite similar. All are essentially criticism of music and so, I suggest, appropriate to mention in the article. Lastly, although there is no end to fascinating aspects of pedagogy and details about theory (e.g. what is pitch, orchestration, etc.) and the many other applications of music theory, those seem to me to be topics that need their own articles, not only to keep this article from becoming a bloated mish-mash, but also to allow thoroughness on those topics. I suggest this article is about music theory as a field of knowledge and inquiry, and so, is best restricted to that specific topic. Following is the rough draft for a revised lead:

REVISED LEAD DRAFT

Music theory is a body of knowledge and field of inquiry that considers the practices and possibilities of music. Practices include usages of types of scales, rhythms, forms, harmonies, criticism, and other elements of music as used in different cultures, styles, and eras to create, appraise, and understand music. Possibilities include speculation about, experimentation on, and exploration of elements of music, as well as the nature of music itself.

Music theory is a subfield of musicology, which is itself a subfield within the overarching field of the arts and humanities. Etymologically, music theory is an act of contemplation of music, from the Greek θεωρία, a looking at, viewing, contemplation, speculation, theory, also a sight, a spectacle (OED 2005) Most commonly, the term refers to that body of knowledge comprised of the components of music including tuning and tonal systems, scales, melody, harmony, rhythm, performance, orchestration, ornamentation, improvisation, and electronic sound production, and criticism.[2] As a field of inquiry, the term is defined in three interdependent parts: 1)…; 2) …; 3)… (summarize the full definitions in Harvard Dictionary of Music 4th edition 2003 and Oxford Companion to Music 2002).

Cultures around the world, ancient and contemporary, have developed music theory. Its history is preserved in oral traditions and artifacts such as instruments and artwork. For example, ancient instruments from Mesopotamia, China, and Paleolithic sites around the world reveal details about the music they produced and, potentially, something of the musical theory that might have been used by their makers (see History of music and Musical instrument). Many cultures, at least as far back as ancient Mesopotamia, Pharoanic Egypt, and ancient China considered music theory in more formal ways, such as written documents.

A person who writes about or otherwise considers music theory is a music theorist. Among many other notables in the field are: (names from Asia, Middle Eat, Africa, Europe, the Americas). Jacques Bailhé 19:53, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

While this might be a useful talking point, it would be the wrong way about to start from a lede section and then write the article to conform. First of all, the lede is meant to summarize the contens of the article, and not (for example) the contents of the "Music Theory" article in the Harvard Dictionary of Music. Second, this is exactly the way we started before, with the predictable proliferation of unmanageable detail in section after section. We should also be taking into account the considerable number of points already made about this on Hucbald.SaintAmand's music-theory sandbox page.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:24, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Jacques, let's begin with your first point. You write:

First off, music theory is not "the study of" anything. That is certainly one of the many things we do with music theory, but "music theory" is a thing, not an action. It is a body of knowledge and theoretical speculation.

And you assume we can agree about that. Can we agree, at least, that this must first be raised as a question: "Is theory a thing, or an action"? I refer you to the WP Theory article, which begins saying that "Theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking." That is, theory is an action ("thinking") and a thing ("the result of that action"). But the order of course must be in this sense, the action first and its result as second, certainly not the other way around.

This also is the etymology of the word: θεωρία, the same WP Theory article says, "meant 'a looking at, viewing, beholding'", which are actions. And when theory is opposed to practice (another point that we might have to discuss), it is not in order to oppose a thing ("theory") to an action ("practice"), but to oppose two types of action, "reflecting" vs "doing".

We should keep in mind that behind any theory, including a theory in music, there is a hypothesis. Theory cannot be inductive, as philosophers demonstrated, it always is hypothetico-deductive (or "abductive"). One must keep in mind that, describing a musical scale, for instance, as part of a theoretical discourse necessarily involves a set of hypotheses on the role of scales in general or of this scale in particular. One may for instance describe many musics of the Far East as "pentatonic"; but doing so becomes theory only if, explicitly or implicitly, it involves hypotheses on how these musics function, how these scales were produced, how they may be tuned, etc. The existence of a pentatonic scale is not in itself a theory, for theory begins with the hypotheses made about it.

This is my opinion, Jacques, and I am ready to discuss it, and to hear what others think about the whole matter. But, for the time being, I don't think we can agree about the idea that theory is a "thing". — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 08:14, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Jacques, may I propose this revised version of your draft?

Music theory is an abstract or generalizing thinking about music, its practices and possibilities, or the result of such thinking. It extends from a contemplation of the practices (including usages of types of scales, rhythms, forms, harmonies, etc.) to an abstract reflexion on the nature of music itself.

Music theory is one of the main disciplines of musicology (understood in a wide meaning; in a narrower meaning, "musicology" often is understood as "historical musicology"), and as such a subfield within the overarching field of the arts and humanities. Etymologically, music theory is an act of contemplation of music, from the Greek θεωρία, a looking at, viewing, contemplation, speculation, theory, also a sight, a spectacle (OED 2005). Most commonly, the term refers to a body of knowledge about the components of music, including tuning and tonal systems, scales, melody, harmony, rhythm, performance, orchestration, ornamentation, improvisation, musical sound production, and criticism.

Cultures around the world, ancient and contemporary, have developed music theory. Oral traditions may suggest its existence in artifacts such as instruments and artwork. Many cultures considered music theory in more formal ways, mainly in written documents.

A person who writes about or otherwise considers music theory is a music theorist. Lists of music theorists can be found in the following articles: List_of_music_theorists, Chinese music theorists, Ancient Greek music theorists, Musical theorists of medieval Islam, music theorists, Austrian music theorists, Belgian music theorists, British music theorists, Danish music theorists, Dutch music theorists, English music theorists, French music theorists, German music theorists, Irish music theorists, Italian music theorists, Mexican music theorists, Norwegian music theorists, Polish music theorists, Russian music theorists, Spanish music theorists, Swiss music theorists, etc.

I agree however with Jerome Kohl's opinion that the lead should be written only in the end. The above can at best be taken as programmatic and will serve mainly for our discussion of the article. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 17:04, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Hucbald, I like your wording and agree with the contents. Very good. Your wording is fine for a draft to help guide writing the article. It may not be important now, but I hope we eventually find a way to make the opening sentence more direct and easier to understand for general readers. I suggest we need a concise, simple statement first, then explain. Assuming your proposed language reflects agreement that "theory" is a thing, a noun (see the OED if in doubt: theory vs. theorize), I wish we could come up with something like, “Music theory is a body of knowledge and field of inquiry concerning the practices and possibilities of music.” I think it’s important to stress and make plain the “body of knowledge” aspect as well as speculation. Your proposal does so. I just wish we could find a way to plain and simple language that avoids complex concepts, then explain further. I don’t know that the caveat, “(understood in a wide meaning; in a narrower meaning, "musicology" often is understood as "historical musicology")” is necessary because it seems commonly understood that "musicology" means the study of music in general and placing music theory as one its subdisciplines makes that clear. I also suggest the sentence in the 3rd paragraph reads, “Oral traditions and artifacts such as instruments and artwork may suggest its existence.” Oral traditions and artifacts are different things, each one separately capable of suggesting, so oral traditions don't really "suggest...in artefacts." Perhaps a minor point, but one I think should and can be easily clarified to avoid confusion. Additionally, I included the idea of summarizing the Harvard and Oxford definitions not only as authoritative reference to our simple definition, but because they include subsections that would introduce some of the other sections we’ve discussed possibly including in the article (e.g. contemporary issues in theory). If on the other hand, everyone decides to restrict the article to definition and brief history of development, that may be unnecessary. Lastly, I understand Jerome’s point about not putting the cart before the horse, but in this case, I think at least tentative agreement on a rough draft of the lead is needed to help us determine what and what not to include – as you also seem to think. We can always go back and revise to suit the finished article, and the draft shouldn’t limit discussion, but I do think it will help us focus.

Jerome mentioned bloating and that we've already been down this road to no avail, and he's right to do so, but I disagree with his appraisal. As all remember, we started by trying to clean up the mish-mash that existed up to 2014. We re-wrote the lead, then began trying to clean it all up, but eventually concluded most sections weren't germaine, are handled better in their own articles, and cut them. Since then, no doubt well-meaning editors added miles of sections that most of us seem to agree shouldn't have been kept. Perhaps in the future, it's necessary to politely explain to a writer why their addition should have been placed somewhere else, or is already covered in another article. I don't know if it's appropriate, but the Talk page might begin with a permanent statement about the scope and content of this article and encourage people to have a look at existing articles before adding. That's probably understood by most editors, but obviously not all. Jacques Bailhé 18:43, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Jacques, there is no question that "theory" is a noun, but it does not necessarily follow that it is a "thing". After all, "action" is a noun too. Therefore, I'd prefer a formulation of the type "Music theory is a field of inquiry and a body of knowledge...", in this order, the knowledge resulting from the inquiry. The matter is at the core of our discussion. You seem to believe, for instance, that playing music in a given scale (say, pentatonic) is a proof of theory – that the pitches themselves (the "thing") are the theory. I am confident on the contrary that theory arises only with hypotheses made about the scale, the first hypothesis being that the notes or pitches used form a scale. I agree with you that one may be able to ascertain which pitches a prehistoric flute was able to produce; but there is no way to say whether the prehistoric musicians considered these notes as forming a scale. The case has been reported with 19th-century "clarinet" players in the Maghreb: when asked to play "the scale" of their instrument, i.e. to play its notes in ascending or descending order, they merely did not understand how such a thing could be done.

You are right about oral traditions: when I wrote "Oral traditions may suggest its existence in artifacts", I actually meant "Prehistoric traditions". If Prehistory is defined by the absence of writing, we are left only with artifacts; but it is true that in modern oral traditions, we have the music as well. Let me however repeat that the fact that notes can be arranged to form a scale does not necessarily entail that they are so arranged by the musicians, nor that a theory of scales exists in that culture. And the main way to verify that a theory (of scales, or anything) exists is when it leaves written traces.

You write "it seems commonly understood that 'musicology' means the study of music in general". I don't know who you are thinking of when saying "commonly", but consider what follows. Several countries in the world have on the one hand a "Musicological Society" (such as AMS in the US) and on the other hand a "Society for Music Theory" (SMT), whith their respective conferences, international associations, etc. Several American universities have separate departments of musicology on the one hand, music theory on the other hand. The English word "musicology" was not used before the 20th century, I think (the earliest usage seems to be in 1909). Musikwissenschaft was coined by J. B. Logier for his book of 1827. Musicologie is first documented in 1898. Etc. Some would even argue that musicology properly speaking does not exist before, but one may admit that musicology predates its naming by several years, perhaps a century or two. Music theory, on the other hand, obviously existed in Antiquity. This all considered, I think that a better wording might be "Music theory is one of the main disciplines of the study of music (the other main discipline being historical musicology), and as such a subfield within the overarching field of the arts and humanities."

But let's leave that for now: these things will clarify as we progress with other sections of the article. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 09:36, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Extremely long!

To begin with, this article is extremely long! Most of the topics discussed can simply be moved to "See Also", as they are already covered on their respective pages. This article is in danger if it does not get shorter. e.g. Dissonance does not need to be discussed here as it has its own article. --Xavier (talk) 00:02, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

To continue, a brief history in the history section is all that is required as there are many pages that can be referenced from to aid the reader in further research. The reader does not need to be bombarded with all of this extra information as they can research further using wikilinks and the "See also" section. --Xavier (talk) 00:07, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

That Lead is too large!

The Lead is extremely large. It really can be explained in a much simpler fashion. It took me many years to fully comprehend all of these subjects of music theory and this Lead makes it confusing again. It is actually scary for a reader who does not know anything about music theory and discourages anyone from reading except those who are experienced in the matter. --Xavier (talk) 00:12, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Which lead is the one you find too long, the one in the present article, or User:Jacques Bailhé's proposed replacement, above on this Talk page? Both are three paragraphs, though Jacques's is somewhat shorter. You should also be aware tht ther is a running commentary on the entire article on Hucbald.SaintAmand's music-theory sandbox page.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:57, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Hucbald.SaintAmand: This discussion does not need to go further. The afore mentioned are WikiPedia Guidelines, which is why I stated "danger". --Xavier (talk) 09:46, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Xavier enc: I agree that the provisional lead, in one or several of the versions suggested above (rather than the existing version in the article itself) are of proper length. I also agree that we don't need to discuss this any further, before we have agreed on the rest. Let me however second Jerome Kohl's question above about which of the proposed leads you found too long: your advice may eventually help us make the final choice. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 21:29, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Hucbald.SaintAmand: Yes the lead in the present article. I will look over the proposed lead again. --Xavier (talk) 21:39, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Hucbald.SaintAmand: Here is an example of an article that has a very broad study but really has an academic readability to the lead, ignore the rest. --Xavier (talk) 21:44, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

As I stated earlier the intricate subjects of theory should be condensed into either a "See Also" section or simply just referenced to in the content. --Xavier (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

This is not an article to teach music theory

Remember, this is not an article to teach music theory but rather, an article that describes what music theory is and its development. The subjects contained within music theory have their own respective articles and should be referenced to in the content, or a "See also" section. It is not necessary to teach the laments reader all of the intricate concepts of music theory, rather they should be given the option to read further after they have read a description of what music theory is.

I cannot express this enough times. --Xavier (talk) 21:54, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Xavier, I think most of us here agree with you. Links will point readers to separate articles where they can get more detail. At present, our overview seems to be lead, history, and then perhaps a brief discussion of issues facing contemporary theory, e.g. problem of applying Western theory to non-Western music, etc. Last year, we had cut his article down to lead and history, then list of links. It's delirious growth and digressions left most of us gasping in exasperation. --Jacques Bailhé 22:09, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Xavier, could you please first read the talk page above and its archives? This is a point we have been discussing at nauseam since months – even although perhaps not exactly in these terms. Don't argue about what we should have done, please do something about all this yourselve. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 22:43, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

@Hucbald.SaintAmand: I'm sorry to reply that I cannot repair this entire page myself. It will take the help from many Wikipedians such as yourself. This article is of the highest importance to the Music terminology project so you will see some proposals to this lead from me very soon. I aso want to thank you for your concern with this article as it is of high importance. --Xavier (talk) 22:58, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Proposed organization of a section on the History of theory

What follows is a suggestion for a possible organization of the section on the History of theory; it is open to criticism, suggestions, additions, etc. No attempt has been made to fill in the subsections, their present content consists merely in a few incomplete notes taken at random. It must be stressed that the existing History section says nothing of the history of Western theory, which seems unacceptable. The subsections listed below give an idea of the size that the article would take if each of them was to have an extension in proportion to that given up to now to Prehistoric theory.

History

Prehistory

Main article: Prehistoric music

Preserved prehistoric instruments, artifacts, and later, depictions of performance in artworks give insight into early music-making and as such, might implicitly reveal something of a prehistoric theory of music. See for instance Paleolithic flutes, Gǔdí, Anasazi flute.

Other links to WP pages may be added here, but any specific information should be reserved for these other pages.

Antiquity

Mesopotamia

Akkadian tablets do include musical information of a theoretical nature: lists of intervals, tunings, notation...

China

See also Music of China; Chinese musicology

India

See also Music of India

The Natya Shastra (200 BCE-200 CE) discusses intervals (Śrutis), scales (Grāmas), consonances and dissonances, classes of melodic structure (Mūrchanās, modes?), melodic types (Jātis), instruments, etc.

Greece

See also List_of_music_theorists#Antiquity

The list of Antique music theorists also includes early medieval ones...

• O. J. Gombosi, Tonarten und Stimmungen der antiken Musik
• Th. J. Mathiesen, Apollo's Lyre. Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

See also List_of_music_theorists#Middle_Ages

The list of medieval theorists includes a few Arabic theorists, but none from other civilisations. This section may be subdivised in "Western" (or "Latin") theory on the one hand, "Arabic" theory on the other. Other theories (e.g. Byzantine, Turkish, etc.) probably must be envisaged in this or later subsections of this chronological review, but one must beware not to get lost in details.

Arabic theory

See also Arabic music

Latin theory

• H. Abert, Die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters und ihre Grundlagen

Renaissance

See also List_of_music_theorists#Renaissance

• A.-E. Ceulemans and B. Blackburn ed., Music Theory and Analysis 1450-1650"
• C. C. Judd, Reading Renaissance Music Theory

Modern

See also List_of_music_theorists#17th_century; List_of_music_theorists#18th_century; List_of_music_theorists#19th_century

Contemporary

See also List_of_music_theorists#20th_century; List_of_music_theorists#21st_century

Another, following section of the article "Theory of music" should envisage theory by topics.

— Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 18:01, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Hucbald, I think you've got it largely right. Here are some thoughts. As much as possible, proceed chronologically--as I originally tried to do. It seems this should all be taken as the progressive development around the world of music theory, and by that I mean, avoiding breaking this into separate theories of music from different culture. Of course they exist, but for the article, I'd suggest trying to just chart the world-wide development through time and avoid getting bogged down in discussions of differences between theories of different cultures as much as possible. In many cases, that takes at least a little expertise to understand and would probably just be confusing to general readers. Regarding Europe, I'd suggest a description that is in balance with mentions of other cultures. For example, discussing Renaissance and skipping to Modern leaves out Baroque, Classical, etc. Maybe better to just discuss European development at a whole. I do like the idea of touching on contemporary theory, especially because much of it incorporates ideas from world musics: Reich and African percussion; minimalists and South Asian forms and styles, etc.; and of course, the older modernists and serialism, noise music, etc. Not that those are mentioned in particular, rather that the influence of world musics and extremes of experimentation on the nature of music itself have become such a fertile part of contemporary theory. --Jacques Bailhé 22:01, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I see that my comment gets placed between the end of your outline and footnotes. Don't know how to fix that. --Jacques Bailhé 22:04, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Jacques, I am afraid there is no way to move this discussion after the footnotes. This is, I think, a permanent defect of the organization of talk pages (which are not supposed to include footnotes). I therefore removed them: they are not useful at this stage and, if needed, we will find them back in the history of this page.

I don't think it possible to word chronologically exclusively, because different cultures developed their theories at different paces. Mesopotamian and Greek theory obviously ceased to develop about two millenia ago. Arabic theory took sinuous ways after the 14th century CE, and what followed between the 14th and 18th century for the time being is known mainly by still unpublished research (I can say this because I have been involved in some of it). From the Middle Ages onwards, Occidental theory developed in a way merely unknown anywhere else (because, as a matter of fact, theoretic thinking is much a characteristic of Western minds).

When I wrote "Modern", I understood it as many historians do, i. e. including Baroque and Classical (as my reference to lists of 17th- and 18th-century theorists should have made clear) – see Modern history. It seemed to me somewhat farfetched to dissociate Classical theory (whatever that may have been) from Baroque theory, and if we did so, we should also separately consider Romantic theory. I am open to suggestions about this, but my own suggestion was to assemble all that under the label "Modern", in which we might even include Renaissance.

I don't really follow what you mean when you say that "the influence of world musics and extremes of experimentation on the nature of music itself have become such a fertile part of contemporary theory": these influences and these experimentations certainly became part of contemporary music, but they do not appear to have produced corpuses of theory comparable to those about Western music. I had said it before (and you disagreed), but I can only repeat that the amount of theory produced by the West by far outpasses all theories produced in other cultures. This is not a value judgement, it merely ackowledges a fact.

Let's take the example of the theory of modality. This developed in the Latin Middle Ages and, to a lesser extent, in Arabic medieval theories which however were more concerned with matters of tuning, mathematics, etc. In the Renaissance, Western modal theory developed to include modal polyphony (about which there still is much debate today), while Arabic theory sort of came to a long pause. Arabic modal theory was rekindled mainly through Western influence, especially at the Cairo Congress of 1932 (and earlier by Turkish theory). I fail to see how such diverging developments could be treated, even at a general level, without making geographic and cultural distinctions.

But I remain willing to hear and consider your arguments. Note that one solution might be to write on the one hand an article on Music theory in general and on the other hand a specific article on Western theory; but you may not agree with that. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Hucbald and Jerome -- I hope I've been some help framing the article and steering it away from pitfalls of bias and out-dated concepts. I'd be pleased to offer a draft of the article, but from past comments, that seems unlikely to find favor and would likely lead to another year of argument over the same points. I'm not angry or upset about any of this. It just seems my time would be better spent on other efforts on Wikipedia. I sincerely wish you both smooth sailing and success in putting this article back together.--Jacques Bailhé 22:25, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Jacques, I do hope you will continue to work with us on this article. After all, the only thing that has been changed, since December last year, concerns the section on History. The Subsection about Prehistory has been quite drastically shortened in order to leave more space for subsections on history properly speaking, which had been dearly wanting before. But none of these subsections is complete by know – most of them remain empty. My feeling is that this article should serve mainly as a guide to other articles, providing links, possibly with commentaries. That is to say that Music theory should be rewritten not only here, but also in the articles to which it links. There remains a lot to be done, among others about Prehistoric theory, here or in the other articles, and I think there is a lot in which your help would be welcome. I can understand that you may for a while prefer to spend your time elsewhere; but don't leave us completely, this is a huge work, that nobody would be able to perform alone.

I just added a few lines about medieval Arabic theory. The articles on Arabic theorists to which these lines refer seem in general reasonably acceptable. But one should add information on the topics of medieval Arabic theory: aesthetics, ethos and musicotherapy, the construction of systems and scales, modality, etc. I am not sure the encyclopedic sources exist about this: a work will have to be done to synthesize various partial sources. This could be denounced as "original research", but I think that the best Wikipedia articles do include some of this kind of original syntheses. And we should soon begin reworking the second part of the article, at present "Fundamentals of music" but which I think should become something of the kind "Topics of music theory". — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 15:55, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Theory properly speaking

I added in the lead of the article a paragraph saying that the article is about "theory properly speaking". This is in partial answer to a remark made by Jerome Kohl on his own talk page, about the expectations of the average Wikipedia reader. I realise that the paragraph I added is not very well written and is improvable, and above all that people may disagree with what it is meant to indicate. I will gladly hear and discuss objections.

First of all, I don't think that the kind of things taught, say, in Benward & Saker's Music in Theory and Practice, would be considered theory properly speaking, here in Europe. Part A of their Vol. I, "The Fundamentals of Music", includes "1.Notation" (but without discussion of the more speculative aspects: why is music notated, why does notation mainly concern pitches and durations, etc.); "2. Scales, Tonality, Key, Modes" (but with hardly a discussion of what tonality may be, and none at all of modality which is implicitly reduced to the usage of unusual scales). "3. Intervals and Transposition"; "4. Chords" (without a discussion of the concept of chord; harmony is said to have originated in the 13th-century organum; Roman numerals are mentioned, but certainly not as a theory, and while "functional harmony" or "dominant function", etc., are mentioned later in the book, the concept of harmonic function is nowhere discussed). Part B is partly about tonal writing (harmony) and partly about tonal analysis. It is not clearly stated that this concerns Western common practice tonality almost exclusively.

Now, I understand that some would expect "Music theory" to deal with just that. And I realize that some of the misunderstandings of our previous discussions originated in a confusion about what was to be expected in this specific respect. I now understand better in what sense Jacques Bailhé considered that the very existence of music implied the existence of theoretical aspects: he must have viewed them in the sense of the "aspects", "elements" or "parameters" of music, while I considered that theory properly speaking began only when one began speculating about them.

In my opinion a mere description of the technicalities of music at a given stage (Western tonal music, for instance) cannot properly be said to form a Theory of music. In the American usage, "theory" appears as another name for what formerly was called "systematic musicology" – i.e. everything that is not historical or, more precisely in Adler's original description, everything envisaged in an ahistoric point of view (soon after Adler, Saussure would call this "synchronic"). More precisely, Adler described what I'd call theory properly speaking as "research and fundation" (Erforschung und Begründung) of the historical aspects, and the kind of "theory" covered by Benward & Saker as "pedagogy and didactics" (including tonality, harmony, counterpoint, composition, instrumentation, etc.).

The question that remains open, then, is what the Wikipedia article should do. I suggest that the article "Music theory" should deal with theory properly speaking, while the "aspects" dealt with in theory textbooks should be covered by an extended, completed (and probably renamed) Aspects of music article. This, by the way, corresponds to the description of "theory" at large in Wikipedia's Theory article. But others might think that the article should cover the kind of "Theory for dummies" covered in many elementary textbooks. The question, then, is whether the Wikipedia project itself is for dummies, or whether it aims at helping its readers to be less dumb... — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 09:59, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Hucbald and others, When I teach music analysis, one of the very first things I tell students is that learning all the names of intervals and chords is not "music theory" but part of the vocabulary needed to understand the workings of music theory. Unfortunately, based on what I've seen in a lot of American textbooks (and a number of German ones too), identifying and naming musical phenomena is considered music theory. This is especially unfortunate since the majority of music students rarely get deeply into issues which concern music theorists. This means there's not a separate term or phrase distinguishing between the naming of phenomena and music analysis, other than "music analysis" for the latter field. Coincidentally, I happen to be looking through a lot of very old books which are considered part of the history of music theory (1500-1700). In fact, a large part of those books are concerned with identification - so maybe the emphasis on names is part of the historical tradition of music theory instruction. Perhaps one could also start an article on "history of music theory." - kosboot (talk) 19:14, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

The idea of splitting the present article in two, leaving "Music Theory" to deal with a description of musical phenomena, and opening another, "History of Music Theory", that would busy itself with more speculative aspects and theories properly speaking, may be the best way out of recurrent problems in the conception of this article. Before doing so, however, I have additional questions which, I hope, may retain the attention of the many (???) participants to the Music Theory project:

1. A "Music Theory" article dealing with the phenomena of music would be somewhat redundant with other articles, mainly the one oddly named Aspect of music (see its Talk page for a recent discussion of this name), but also Outline of music (very much in need of a subsection listing parameters of music, or whatever one names them); see also Musicology#Music theory, analysis and composition. Shouldn't part of Aspect of music be moved to "Music Theory" – and perhaps another part moved to an article on "Universals of Music", to be created?

2. The present section on History could be moved more or less as is to the new "History of Music Theory" article. It would soon appear, however, that the History of Music Theory is mainly a Western feature, and that the historical periods considered almost necessarily are those of Western history. Would it not be better, in view of this, to create the new article as "History of Western Music Theory", moving the subsections about Prehistory, Mesopotamia, China, India, the Arabic countries, etc., to the specific articles concerning these musical cultures (with the appropriate links in the newly created article, of course)?

Such decisions must be taken as collectively as possible, to avoid renewed quarrels. I will therefore be grateful for any advice given. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 15:56, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I see Hyacinth created the Aspect of music article. There must have been a reason why he used that phrase, but I've never heard of it before, and it is certainly not generally used in music theory. If there were a consensus to move it to something more readily recognizable, he'd need to agree to it. - 21:18, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Source of confusion

I have gone through all the talk page discussion and I think it is great we are having this conversation about what a "music theory" article should cover. As a person who did a B.mus, the university courses titled "music theory" made very few references to scholars' THEORIES about music, with the exception of coverage of Schenker's theories on harmonic analysis of tonal music. Much of what goes on in undergrad university courses entitled "music theory" is instruction on basic harmonic analysis, counterpoint, voice leading and part writing. I think this is the reason that editors created sections on all these elements of music. I agree that we should direct readers to other articles that explain the basic elements of music, so this article can focus on theories ABOUT these elements made by music scholars.OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 16:58, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I enjoyed reading the discussion. I'm left with the question. What do sources define music theory as? What are the best sources to cite about the definition of music theory? And is there a major conversation or conflict within those sources that the article can discuss? Wikipedia is strongest as a secondary source which points to research by others. The more we can leave it up to the scholars, the better. The phrase in the article "properly speaking" leaves the question, when spoken about by whom? If we can answer that, the rest may follow more naturally. Thoughts? Sketchee (talk) 17:00, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm still dreaming that someday I'll have time to address "enharmonicism" but I agree, that we need to formulate a definition of music theory. Immediately I see one difficulty, that the term is of recent vintage and will need to address historic antecedents that we consider music theory today. - kosboot (talk) 18:29, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Spoken like a true medievalist! "Recent vintage" in English, perhaps (the OED gives no examples earlier than 1896), but when does the Latin equivalent first surface—14th century? Still, the point is well-taken, but I think the issue is not so much one of conflicting definitions as it is a question of emphasis. "Music theory" is a general expression that covers a lot of territory, and the extent of that territory varies not only over history but, even insisting on current thinking, also varies somewhat both geographically and from individual to individual.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Let's ask the question otherwise: what is there in common, say, between The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory directed by Thomas Christensen, and Music in Theory and Practice by Benward & Saker. It is by no mean evident (to me at least) that these books may be speaking of one and the same thing. "Music theory" may be "of recent vintage" (;–)), but "theory" certainly is not, and it would seem to me that what we call "music theory" should somehow conform to what we call "theory". Sketchee writes that "Wikipedia is strongest as a secondary source which points to research by others". We could agree on that, but for the fact that Wikipedia actually stresses the usage of secondary sources and discourages that of primary sources. The real question, then, may be how distant the sources used in Wikipedia are from the primary sources: the Christensen book, for me, is close to its primary sources; the Benward&Saker one, on the other hand, so to say has no primary sources at all. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 22:04, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm very tempted to go through 20th-century sources and just find various authors' definition of music theory. From that we can try to pull together something for which we can achieve consensus. - kosboot (talk) 23:18, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

In that case, can we simply state in the article Book A/Author A defines music theory as X. Book B/Author B defines music theory as Y. My thought is not to refer to primary sources at all. The idea is that we may want to avoid any original research or opinion on the subject. Simply point out the opinions and definitions that exist in various sources. =) Sketchee (talk) 18:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I think nevertheless that we would soon ascertain that the authors writing about music theory belong to one of two classes:

1 – Those who think that music theory is about theories about music, about the history of these theories, about their authors (i.e. about theorists), etc.

2 – Those who consider that music theory is a pedagogical discipline about elements of music that (in their pedagogy) are not treated historically. They have therefore to imagine a state of music that is itself not historical, usually "common practice Western music". Theory, for them is about reading and writing music (clefs, notes, signatures, etc.), about chords and their nomenclature, about elementary rules of harmony and counterpoint, etc. etc. They would certainly consider neither theories nor theorists about notation, chords, harmony, counterpoint, etc.: theory, for them, is not about theories...

My opinion about this is made clear by the descriptions above. But I see the problem and I think that the solution is to deal with these two types of "theory" in two separate articles. Without indulging ourselves to the crime of original research, we could at least collectively take an original position in deciding the names of these two articles.

It has been suggested that theory in definition 1 could be dealt with in an article on "History of music theory": this is a track worth examining more closely; I am not entirely satisfied with it, but... And what about "Music theories"?

It has also be noted that another article, Aspects of music, deals with some of the main topics of definition 2. The name of the article is puzzling: "elements", or "parameters", would probably be better.

If we could collectively decide for the best names of these two articles, then "Music theory" itself could be reduced to a disambiguation article, linking, say, on the one hand to "Music theories" (or something like that) and on the other hand to "elements of music", or whatever. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 23:19, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't feel too strongly one way or the other, so feel free to Be Bold and start making any edits. Might spark additional discussion. I'll throw out some ideas between those two choices, Theory of Music sounds most easily to fit here. A brief paragraph about Music Pedagogy that points to Music education is one thought. =) Sketchee (talk) 17:19, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

"Fundamentals of music" is a typical course title. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:05, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

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The reference had been contested since 2014 (self-published blog). I removed it. Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 12:51, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

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The article included no reference to this source. I removed it. Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 12:51, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Seriously missing from this article is any reference to any edition of: Helmholtz, H. "On The Sensation of Tone" ...just my newbie two cents — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:C501:2000:E8DE:E92E:97B9:E0EF (talk) 15:11, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Confusion between Academic and Colloquial Usage

I admire the sophistication of the discussion about music theory proper being speculations and hypotheses, but the article should also reflect that "music theory" in colloquial usage refers to the fundamentals of music. For example, the mass-market book "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory" (Michael Miller, 2005) says:

"In scientific circles, this word ["theory"] is used as the formulation of a hypothesis, such as Einstein's theory of relativity. While academic music theorists sometimes do formulate hypotheses in this scientific fashion, that's not what this book is about. In our context, we'll use the word "theory" to mean a study of the rudiments of music—the basic things that performers and listeners need to know to produce and enjoy this marvellous art." (p. 4)

I've also heard this usage of the term "music theory" in verbal cultures outside of academia, for example in discussions among rock musicians and fans, where "music theory" usually just refers to knowledge of scales, modes, and chords, and not to any kind of speculative or philosophical inquiry. I think the way this article could be most helpful is to navigate the difference between this colloquial understanding of music theory and the intellectual and academic studies that form the modern field of music theory. I've just rewritten the heading paragraphs to try to accomplish this. Feel free to edit my new version if I've left out anything important in the revision. Shugurim (talk) 03:29, 11 September 2016 (UTC)