Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods. In a grand sense, music theory distils and analyzes the fundamental parameters or elements of music—rhythm, harmony (harmonic function), melody, structure, form, texture, etc. Broadly, music theory may include any statement, belief, or conception of or about music.

Quotes

• "The rhetorical process functioned in many areas other than speech: Curtius wrote about 'rhetorical landscape representations' while Serpieris speaks of 'la retorica al teatro' (the rhetorical use of theatrical space), and music historians have learned that the language and approach of musical theory in the Middle Ages were borrowed directly from medieval grammar and rhetoric."
  • Thomas Binkley (1997). "The work is not the performance", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165404.

• As a music theorist, I have always contended that the historical approach to music theory is not enough. The modern theorist should, of course, be able to analyze the music of the masters, to explain (as much as possible) the sources of their musical language. They should also, however, be able to suggest new paths, new theories, including those that break with creative and scholarly tradition....This attitude has puzzled some of my academic colleagues, since I am in my own composition essentially a traditionalist. I do not believe that this is a contradiction or an inconsistency.
  • Howard Hanson "A Romantic Symphony: The Autobiography of Howard Hanson", JSTOR, 9 January 2024  Editor Vincent A. Lenti Meliora Press at The University of Rochester Press/Boydell & Brewer, 2024 ISBN 9781648251030 Chapter 35, pp. 229-234 on JSTOR.org

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