Traditional music theory rationalizes abnormal musical elements (like dissonant or chromatic tones or formal anomalies) with respect to normal ones. It is thus allied with a medical model of disability, understood as a deficit or defect located within an individual body, and requiring remediation or cure. A newer sociocultural model of disability understands it as a culturally stigmatized deviance from normative standards for bodily appearance and functioning, analogous to (and intersectional with) race, gender, and sexuality as a source of affirmative political and cultural identity. The sociocultural model of disability suggests the possibility of a disablist music theory, one that subverts the traditional therapeutic imperative and resists the tyranny of the normal. Disablist music theory is music theory without norms, and without a commitment to wholeness, unity, coherence, and completeness—those fantasies of a normal, healthy body. Instead, disablist theory brings the seemingly anomalous event to the center of the discussion and revels in the commotion and discombobulation that result: it makes the normal strange. In the process, it opens up our sense of what music theory is and might be.
{"title":"Music Theory’s Therapeutic Imperative and the Tyranny of the Normal","authors":"Joseph N. Straus","doi":"10.1093/MTS/MTAA030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/MTS/MTAA030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Traditional music theory rationalizes abnormal musical elements (like dissonant or chromatic tones or formal anomalies) with respect to normal ones. It is thus allied with a medical model of disability, understood as a deficit or defect located within an individual body, and requiring remediation or cure. A newer sociocultural model of disability understands it as a culturally stigmatized deviance from normative standards for bodily appearance and functioning, analogous to (and intersectional with) race, gender, and sexuality as a source of affirmative political and cultural identity. The sociocultural model of disability suggests the possibility of a disablist music theory, one that subverts the traditional therapeutic imperative and resists the tyranny of the normal. Disablist music theory is music theory without norms, and without a commitment to wholeness, unity, coherence, and completeness—those fantasies of a normal, healthy body. Instead, disablist theory brings the seemingly anomalous event to the center of the discussion and revels in the commotion and discombobulation that result: it makes the normal strange. In the process, it opens up our sense of what music theory is and might be.","PeriodicalId":44994,"journal":{"name":"MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/MTS/MTAA030","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46337772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Drawing upon Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, I apply the laws of mereology—the study of parts and wholes—to the analysis of time-consciousness in his On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), arguing that Husserl’s phenomenological solution to problems raised by empirical psychology in the late nineteenth century concerning the relation between subject and object was inspired by a rethinking of the notion of intentionality in terms of an extensional whole. Turning, then, to descriptions from Husserl’s careful analyses of tone and melody in On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), I claim that melody’s structure of expression pertains specifically to retention (which I distinguish from recollection) as a nonindependent part of a flowing whole. This mereologic reformulation helps us think through the problem of how a melody is perceived in time. Furthermore, I show how, according to Husserl, there is a unity of the sensation of “tone” and the “flow of consciousness,” and I argue that by understanding this unity as a whole of nonindependent parts, we grasp a significant insight that illuminates phenomenology’s overall aim of considering the evidence of empirical science together with the formal laws of logic.
{"title":"On the Nonindependent Parts of Time-Consciousness: Husserl’s Early Phenomenological Investigations and the Perception of Melody","authors":"Jessica Wiskus","doi":"10.1093/mts/mtaa022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtaa022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Drawing upon Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations, I apply the laws of mereology—the study of parts and wholes—to the analysis of time-consciousness in his On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), arguing that Husserl’s phenomenological solution to problems raised by empirical psychology in the late nineteenth century concerning the relation between subject and object was inspired by a rethinking of the notion of intentionality in terms of an extensional whole. Turning, then, to descriptions from Husserl’s careful analyses of tone and melody in On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), I claim that melody’s structure of expression pertains specifically to retention (which I distinguish from recollection) as a nonindependent part of a flowing whole. This mereologic reformulation helps us think through the problem of how a melody is perceived in time. Furthermore, I show how, according to Husserl, there is a unity of the sensation of “tone” and the “flow of consciousness,” and I argue that by understanding this unity as a whole of nonindependent parts, we grasp a significant insight that illuminates phenomenology’s overall aim of considering the evidence of empirical science together with the formal laws of logic.","PeriodicalId":44994,"journal":{"name":"MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/mts/mtaa022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45070728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The formal analysis of mashups is generally overlooked because their structures are assumed to be derived from one or more of their component tracks. This article explores the generation of original formal structures in one of the most well-known and complex mashup artists, DJ Earworm. We show that the form of his mashups can neither be derived from a singular work nor be analyzed by their thematic or harmonic construction. Instead, verse–chorus forms are revealed by correlating mashup sections to the formal origins of their borrowed material, which is based on the composer’s writings and interviews, a history of formal correlation in the mashup genre, and multiple analyses.
{"title":"Perceiving the Mosaic: Form in the Mashups of DJ Earworm","authors":"J. Yunek, Benjamin K. Wadsworth, S. Needle","doi":"10.1093/mts/mtaa016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtaa016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The formal analysis of mashups is generally overlooked because their structures are assumed to be derived from one or more of their component tracks. This article explores the generation of original formal structures in one of the most well-known and complex mashup artists, DJ Earworm. We show that the form of his mashups can neither be derived from a singular work nor be analyzed by their thematic or harmonic construction. Instead, verse–chorus forms are revealed by correlating mashup sections to the formal origins of their borrowed material, which is based on the composer’s writings and interviews, a history of formal correlation in the mashup genre, and multiple analyses.","PeriodicalId":44994,"journal":{"name":"MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/mts/mtaa016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46253122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Music, Analysis, and the Body: Experiments, Explorations, and Embodiments. Edited by Nicholas Reyland and Rebecca Thumpston","authors":"C. Trevor","doi":"10.1093/mts/mtaa023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtaa023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44994,"journal":{"name":"MUSIC THEORY SPECTRUM","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45547857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}