Reimagining Music Theory

Reimagining Music Theory: Contexts, Communities, Creativities invites instructors to rethink how we teach music theory, challenging the traditional, classical canon-based pedagogy and offering new and alternative approaches.

The study and teaching of music theory are at a crucial and invigorating crossroads, as conversations are being held about contesting canons, transforming pedagogical practices, and finding meaningful ways to make the field inclusive and diverse in repertoire, methods, and student experiences. This book aims to reimagine music theory as an explicitly and radically dialogic, creative, nimble transdisciplinary space where thinking and acting can be both deep and broad, where pluralities of knowledge systems and ways of doing and being can interact and mutually inform one another, and where teachers learn from students as much as the other way around. Rethinking what counts as music fundamentals, opening music theory to a plurality of global practices, and considering music theory as a creative and community practice are all addressed.

Incorporating interviews with scholar-teachers at the forefront of innovative music theory pedagogy throughout, the book offers music theory professors and instructors frameworks for enacting meaningful change in the music theory classroom.

Chris Stover is Associate Professor in Music Studies and Research at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Australia.