The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Theory [research group]
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RESEARCH PREMISE
The New Lexicon proceeds from the premise that music theory is never philosophically neutral. Decisions concerning what may count as a musical object, which relations deserve attention, how categories are formed, where evidence is located, how representations mediate understanding, what kinds of explanation are accepted, and by what means value is established do more than organise an argument. Whether explicit or tacit, such decisions entail commitments concerning ontology, epistemology, temporality, embodiment, sociality, and the conditions under which music becomes intelligible.
A theoretical practice may treat the score as the locus of structure or regard it as one element within a network of sounds, actions, bodies, and technologies. It may understand analysis as discovery, reconstruction, interpretation, modelling, or invention. It may seek general principles, attend to singular events, or question whether the distinction between general and particular describes its object. Each orientation carries philosophical consequences, even where those consequences remain unstated.
The residency approaches music theory as an intellectual, perceptual, pedagogical, and social practice in which concepts of object, relation, structure, evidence, representation, explanation, listening, and value are actively produced, negotiated, and contested. Philosophy is understood neither as a framework imposed upon theoretical work nor as retrospective commentary added after analysis. It is approached as immanent to theory: a means of making assumptions legible, clarifying the concepts enacted through analytical decisions, and examining the historical, institutional, technological, and political conditions through which those decisions acquire their meaning and authority.
This does not mean every project must embody a philosophy or that musical knowledge requires abstraction. Instead, the programme asks what forms of thought become possible through theoretical procedures themselves. A graph may organise attention; a transformational network may propose a world of relations; a taxonomy may make some differences salient while suppressing others; an analytical hearing may disclose temporal connections that no notation fully captures. Models, diagrams, classifications, and acts of listening can function as philosophical propositions even when they are not presented as such.
The programme investigates the relation between philosophy and music theory. It asks not only how philosophy may evaluate theory, but also how theoretical practices may operate as conceptual, speculative, interpretive, and critical inquiry. Music theory is considered as an object of philosophical examination and as a practice producing new philosophical insight. The central question is not simply, “Which account best describes this music?” It is also: “What does this mode of theorising make perceptible and thinkable, and by what means?”
Such inquiry demands attention to the internal organisation of theories and the conditions enabling them. A project’s concepts, representations, corpora, operations, criteria, and modes of argument cannot be separated from the infrastructures making them possible. Theoretical possibilities are shaped by archives, notation systems, instruments, recordings, software, datasets, pedagogy, publishing, disciplinary boundaries, funding structures, and inherited narratives of musical value. To examine the philosophy of music theory is also to ask how these conditions authorise certain objects, methods, and histories while marginalising or rendering others unavailable.
The New Lexicon addresses this contemporary field without dissolving the specificity of music theory, seeking instead to describe that specificity adequately. Theory remains a practice of constructing objects, proposing distinctions, organising evidence, guiding attention, and offering explanations. Yet its identity cannot be secured by a single corpus, notation, method, institution, or definition. The field must be capable of addressing scores and performances, recordings and memories, gestures and environments, algorithms and instruments, interpretations and collective conventions, formal relations and social implications.
Philosophy of music theory becomes necessary where inherited definitions cease to account for plural contemporary theoretical practice. It provides space where the powers and limits of abstraction are examined, the relation between hearing and representation reconsidered, and the consequences of choices made explicit. The task is not to abandon rigour, but to ask what rigour means across objects and traditions; not to renounce explanation, but to clarify what explanations do, whom they address, and which musical realities they allow to appear.
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