黑料不打烊

听

听

In his essay, 鈥淢usic Theory and the White Racial Frame鈥� Philip Ewell pointed out some of the problems of racial bias in music theory and analysis (MTO听26.2.4).听听In this presentation some of the underlying causes of those problems will be described.听听Music theory is a largely inductive practice, derived from a small, unrepresentative corpus of pieces from the 鈥渃ommon practice period鈥� of tonal music. We (mis)use this repertory due to a combination of听implicit biases听that stem from our enculturation as practicing musicians,听explicit biases听that stem from broadly held aesthetic beliefs regarding the status of 鈥済reat鈥� composers and particular 鈥渕asterworks鈥�, and听confirmation biases听that are manifest by our tendency to use only听positive testing strategies听and/or selective sampling when developing and demonstrating our theories. The theories of harmony and form developed from this small corpus further suffer fromoverfitting, whereby theoretical models are overdetermined relative to the broader norms of a musical practice.听听All of which means that simply expanding our analytic and/or pedagogical canon will do little to displace the underlying aesthetic and cultural values that are bound up with the core repertory of the analytic canon, and that working toward greater equity, diversity, and inclusion in music theory goes hand in hand with addressing some of the problematic methodologies that have long plagued our discipline. Indeed, we cannot do the former without doing the latter.