Conference Agenda

The past decade has seen a growing interest in the public-facing aspects of music theory, with books and articles on the topic; blogs, podcasts, and journalistic pieces that feature music theory; and new venues, such as SMT-V and SMT-Pod, that are aimed in part at the public.

This plenary session brings together five thinkers who engage with public music theory in a variety of ways. (The participants also come from a variety of professional and personal backgrounds, representing a broad cross-section of the discipline.) The main goal of the session is to foster a conversation about where public music theory is headed, what its strengths and challenges are, how it is practiced, and how it interacts with more academic forms of scholarship. Each participant will do a ten-minute presentation, after which there will be a discussion with the audience. Audience members will be invited to share questions via a QR code, provided at the start of the event.

Harald Krebs (University of Victoria) discusses the spectrum of audiences for public music theory; drawing on his own experience, he addresses various possible venues for public music theory presentations and summarizes the tools and techniques that he has found useful for connecting with different audiences. Cory Arnold (12tone) looks at the role of audiences in shaping creator output, the role of platforms in mediating audience feedback, and the roles of both in constructing the characteristics that define our understanding of public music theory. Using her podcast Her Music Academia as an example, Lydia Bangura (University of Michigan) discusses podcasting as a medium for presenting music research and reflects on what it means to learn in public as a current PhD student. Alyssa Barna (University of Minnesota) considers two key questions: who are the adjudicators of writing in music theory, and what can we learn from public music theory to more clearly communicate our ideas, promote inclusivity, and expand the definition of music theory? Finally, J. Daniel Jenkins (University of South Carolina) examines examples of public music theory that invite us to reconsider what it means to be a music theorist at all.