Sample Entry Topics
Whether a reader dips into the anthology for a single entry or reads entries in order, we hope to give vivid illustrations of musical “theorizing” on a global scale. But we also hope our sources inspire delight, wonder, and surprise in readers, unsettling and provincializing (Chakrabarty 2000) pre-conceived notions of what music theory can be by seeing all the different things that it has in fact been. A sampling of a few of our entries will hopefully illustrate this potential:
Several Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets from before 2000 BCE record the first known systematic account of tuning.
A set of 65 recently excavated bells from the Zhou dynasty (5th century BCE) allow for rotations of pentatonic scales within a chromatic aggregate.
Vase paintings from the middle period (100-400 CE) of the Moche culture, located in modern-day Peru, reveal the central role of music and musical instruments in that culture’s cosmology.
A 2nd-century (CE) document by Nicomachus contains the founding myth of Western Music theory in which Pythagoras learns the ratios of consonance as he passes by a blacksmith.
The sage Baharata outlines four primary instrumental groups of music in the 6th century CE Nāṭya Śāstra.
One of the first notations of classical Indian ragas is found chiselled into the Kutimiyamalai rock face from Tamil Nadu state (7th century CE).
Around 800/1400: al-Ḥaṣkafī discusses the categories of modes, types of musicians, and the effect of music.
Charlemagne founds a library in which classical texts of musica theorica are collected and studied (early 9th century CE)
An excerpt from a medieval Arabic text by Al-Fārābī explains Artistotle’s distinction between musica theorica and musica activa (early 10th century CE).
Fortolf von Wurzburg adapts Boethian arithmetic to create a numerical board game (rithmomachia) by which one learns the Quadrivial basis of musica (c. 1130).
Korean historians discuss the tuning of pitch pipes and other music instruments, as well as their use in court ceremonies (1433 CE).*
Tinctoris writes a regula del grado in which young singers learn how to make polyphony entirely without notation (c. 1480).
The fragmented notes of an unknown Eastern European student record the oral lessons of a certain Hollandrinus concerning the learning of chant (c. 1520).
1533: An excerpt of a Nahuatl song attributed to Don Francisco Plácido "in honor of the Lord Jesus Christ" appears in the Cantares Mexicanos, a manuscript documenting ninety-one songs from Central Mexico.*
One of the first known calculations for dividing the octave into 12 equal parts is described by the Chinese theorist Zhu Zaiyu (朱載堉) after taking inspiration from zither makers in 1584.
1613: The Welsh Robert ap Huw manuscript depicts the vernacular harmonic theory of medieval bardic elite.
Quechua nobleman Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala depicts an Andean haylli (agricultural song) in a manuscript illustrated ca. 1615.
1646: Hans Ravn pens the first explicitly Danish music theory treatise.
1650: Athanasius Kircher presents a new device for algorithmic composition in book viii vol. 2 of Musurgia universalis.
The first known explicit depiction of the circle of fifths is penned by the Russian theorist Nikolay Diletsky in 1677.
A Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, writes a musicopoetic work, “Romance 21,” that discusses harmony and rhythm’s numerical properties numerical properties.
A set of “ragamala” paintings offer a visual analogue to a classical set of Indian ragas c. 1750 CE.
Rameau’s theory of the basse fondamentale first appears in print in 1722, and is cited two years later in a Dissertation published in Sweden.
Küçük Arut’in Tanburi discusses the theory of music with the masters of Iran, Turan, India, and Sindh (c. 1739 CE).
A series of partimento exercises are jotted down by the Neapolitan maestro, Giovanni Furno (mid 18th c.).
William Little and William Smith first use shape notes in their Easy Instructor (, 1801).
A board game is designed and patented by a Scottish woman in 1801 to teach children the rudiments of music theory.
Ernest Gagnon publishes a study of his native Québécois Chansons populaires, arguing that their modal qualities stem from Medieval ecclesiastical chant (1865).
A report on a Riemannian Tonnetz makes an appearance in Meiji Japan (1894).
The Colombian composer Santos Cifuentes publishes Teoria de la musica (1897)
Two amadinda players are photographed performing interlocking court music in Buganda in 1902.*
The American composer Amy Beach discusses the use of birdsong transcription in musical composition (1911).
Hornbostel and Sachs outline a four-part categorization of musical instruments drawn from the classical 6th century Indian treatise, Nāṭya Śāstra (1914).
A mbira key from the Later Iron Age Age (1000-1700 CE) is excavated at the medieval city of Great Zimbabwe.
The Quechua/Aymara concepts of tara and q’iwa illuminate notions of social harmony in the Bolivian Andes.