Notes on Methodology in Music Theory

Abstract

Music theory, like any discipline or science, is a process of discourse. If those engaged in a discourse are not to end up talking each to himself, dissolving the discourse into monadic mutterings, certain hermeneutic principles enforce themselves. To understand a text (of course this can be an oral communication as well as a written one), one must give it a close reading. In a close reading, a respect for the author of the text ensures that a loving effort be made to find a construal under which that text may be believable or true, or at least under which it makes sense. effort to construe must globally encompass the text, so that minor flaws of execution or narrative divagations do not prevent the reader from understanding the whole. A difficult text may provoke reflexes of disbelief or disparaging dismissal. This text is too difficult, This is badly written, therefore we do not make sense of it. Such unworthy impulses would lead to premature closure of the text unless they are deflected, by the higher integrity of the reader, or by some sense of community of discourse which disciplines the reading. It is in this sense that we hope music theory is a discipline.

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