The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Theory [research group]
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CENTRAL QUESTIONS
Participants are invited to interrogate the presuppositions that structure their theoretical practices and to develop the concepts, methods, and vocabularies through which those practices may become more precisely thinkable, communicable, and historically situated. The following questions establish a shared but non-prescriptive horizon for inquiry, comparison, disagreement, and methodological invention across musical and intellectual traditions.
Music Theory and Its Object
What does music theory take as its object? Does it study works, scores, sounds, performances, practices, perceptions, systems, conventions, or relations among them? Are objects discovered in music, constructed through methods, negotiated within communities, or produced through careful attention? What follows when the object changes?
Concept, Category, and Definition
How are theoretical concepts and categories formed? What do definitions include, exclude, stabilise, or transform? When does a category clarify musical relations, and when does it impose false equivalence? How should theory address concepts whose meanings shift among repertories, cultures, technologies, bodies, and historical moments?
Analysis, Interpretation, and Explanation
What distinguishes analysis from interpretation, description, modelling, or critique? Does an analysis reveal structures already present, construct a persuasive hearing, explain causal or functional relations, or propose a way of attending? Which standards govern adequacy, and can different explanations remain equally valid without becoming interchangeable?
Form, Structure, and Relation
What are form and structure, and how do they differ from pattern, process, organisation, or experience? Are relations properties of music, abstractions from listening, conventions of representation, or effects of method? How do theories of time shape what can be segmented, connected, remembered, and valued?
Representation, Notation, and Model
How do scores, graphs, diagrams, prose, equations, recordings, and computational models mediate theoretical thought? Do representations communicate relations already understood, or participate in producing what can be perceived, claimed, and authorised? Which assumptions, omissions, scales, and social hierarchies are built into a chosen representational form?
Listening, Embodiment, and Experience
What role does listening play in theoretical knowledge? Is hearing evidence, method, skill, interpretation, or historically formed practice? How do bodies, instruments, spaces, memories, abilities, and expectations shape experience? What happens when theories built around idealised listeners encounter situated, divergent, or inaccessible modes of perception?
Evidence, Knowledge, and Truth
What counts as evidence in music theory: notation, sound, testimony, corpus data, bodily response, historical document, experimental result, analytical intuition, or communal agreement? How are claims provisionally justified, revised, or falsified? Can theory pursue truth while acknowledging that its objects and standards are historically situated?
Institution, History, and Power
How do curricula, journals, conferences, archives, funding, technologies, and disciplinary borders determine which music becomes theorised and which methods acquire legitimacy? Whose concepts are treated as general, and whose as local? How are theoretical values entangled with histories of canon formation, exclusion, expertise, and authority?
Concepts Yet to Be Named
How might theoretical practice generate concepts for phenomena that existing vocabularies cannot adequately name? What distinctions are required by repertoires, media, and listening practices? Which inherited distinctions should be retained, revised, translated, or refused, and how can new terms remain precise without becoming restrictive categories?
These questions do not prescribe a theoretical agenda, methodology, or authoritative philosophy of music theory. They establish a field in which participants may formulate problems arising from their practices, test concepts against experience, challenge assumptions, and develop positions responsive to their objects and contexts.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC THEORY
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io