Music
Theory and the Epistemology of the Internet; or, Analyzing Music Under the New Thinkpiece Regime
William O’Hara
Over the past twenty-five years, the
growth of the Internet has completely transformed journalism
and media. «The relationship between new media and journalism», write Eugenia Siapera and Andreas Veglis, «has
become a close embrace to the point where it is difficult to imagine an
exclusively offline journalism» [Siapera-Veglis 2012, 1]. This relationship
has not only seen existing publications - from traditional newspapers like The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde,
and Der Spiegel to magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The
Paris Review, and The London Review of Books - move
partially or completely online; it has also seen the rapid rise of online-only
publications. Some of these digital platforms (such as Slate, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, and so forth)
mirror the structure of print media. Others take new, born-digital forms, often
oriented around specific approaches to culture or current events. FiveThirtyEight,
for example - deriving its name from the number of electoral votes contested in
each American presidential election - analyzes politics, economics, culture, and
sports from a statistical perspective. Vox (with its tagline, "Understand the News") focuses on
providing context for current events, producing simple explanations of complex
global and cultural phenomena, which it calls "Explainers". Still more publications
cater to specific audiences of hobbyists or enthusiasts, reporting on topics
from entertainment and gossip, to aviation, to business, to video games, to
music, interior design, and fashion. Many online media companies (including
Vice and Vox) run multiple "verticals": sub-websites
devoted to specific topics of interest (from food and fashion to video games
and real estate), hoping to compete with the many specialist websites and
publications that now populate the Internet.
In addition to current events and
commentary, many of the above publications devote substantial space to
reporting on and analyzing popular culture, from music, to television and film,
to comic books. And over the past few years, an increasing number of essays
have appeared that appeal to music theory in particular as a grounding device.
With two-part titles like "Skin Tight Jeans and Syncopation: Explaining the
Genius of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream - Using Music Theory" [Pallett
2014a] and "Ecstatic Melodic Copulation: Explaining the Genius of Daft Punk’s
‘Get Lucky’ Using Music Theory" [Pallett 2014b],
these essays sound almost as if they might be academic papers. But while these
general-interest music theory essays have mastered the art of the enticing
pre-colon hook, the present essay is more concerned with the second half of
these titles: using music theory. By simultaneuously instrumentalizing
music theory as a purely analytical tool, and treating it as if it were a
unified body of knowledge, essays like these cast music theory as a secret
decoder ring that is arcane and mysterious, and yet scientifically rigorous:
the equivalent, so these titles argue, of the statistics that drive websites
like FiveThirtyEight.
This paper will explore the epistemological conditions under which both
web-based subgenres like Vox’s
"Explainers", and a distinct strain of popular print non-fiction by authors
like Malcolm Gladwell, Jonah Lehrer, Steven Pinker,
and others, have risen to prominence over the past decade. Those conditions, I
will argue, have given rise to a wave of general-interest music theory,
propagated mostly online. Such writings offer fascinating reflections upon
music theory as it is practiced in the academy, particularly with regard to the
growing pains and disciplinary debates of recent decades, and the growing
movement within both musicology and theory to engage with non-specialist
audiences via practices from the digital humanities and public humanities.
While this essay focuses primarily on English-language websites and the articles
they publish, I hope it proves a productive starting point for further research
on music theory in general interest publications in other languages.
The Tree of Knowledge
In a certain genre of
early-twenty-first century non-fiction writing, nearly every phenomenon is the
province of secret knowledge. Freakonomics: A Rogue
Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything [2005] is perhaps the
perfect encapsulation of the prevailing epistemology of both the New York Times non-fiction best-seller
list, and of many contemporary general interest publications on the Internet.
Written by University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist
Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics features a series of
case studies that apply economic research and theory to societal issues from
real estate prices to childrens’ names, from the
ethics of cheating in Sumo wrestling to the illicit drug trade.
The book’s title is emblematic of an
entire subgenre of contemporary nonfiction: it posits that everything has a
"hidden side", a secret explanation waiting to be exposed to the public by
someone who is in the know. Implicitly, economics is the tool with which such
secrets are revealed. «What this book is about», its authors write in their
introduction, «is stripping a layer or two from the surface of modern life and
seeing what is happening underneath» [Levitt and Dubner
2005, 10]. Although economics is posed here as a kind of master discipline (or
at least meta-discipline, able to
model vast swaths of human experience and behavior), the book’s subtitle also
hints that the knowledge it contains is forbidden - that applying the analytical
tools of economics outside of their native realm of balance sheets and
commodity prices is somehow naughty. Steven Levitt is presented as a "rogue economist"
whose willingness to step outside of his discipline’s traditional domains - or
perhaps simply his willingness to address the general public - makes him a black
sheep.[1] The hidden knowledge he promises is presented as being somehow illicit:
the book’s cover image - featuring an apple that has been sliced open to reveal
the citrusy matrix of an orange beneath - not only makes the book’s argument
about "hidden sides" in visual form; it invokes the forbidden fruit of Biblical
lore. Levitt proffers illicit enlightenment, while with a wink and a nod
implying that in so doing, he risks expulsion from his Edenic
ivory tower.
Freakonomics’ focus on
overlooked connections and counterintuitive results exemplifies a trend that
has been growing since the mid-2000s. New
York Times writer Rachel Donadio cites Malcolm Gladwell, Steven B. Johnson, and James Surowiecki
as additional participants in this «highly contagious hybrid genre of
nonfiction, one that takes a nonthreatening and counterintuitive look at pop
culture and the mysteries of the everyday» [Donadio
2006].[2] A survey of titles cited by Donadio is
instructive: they are full of surprising juxtapositions and inversions: Everything Bad is Good for You [Johnson
2005]; How Little Things Make a Big
Difference [Gladwell 2000]; Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few [Surowiecki
2004]. And commercial nonfiction’s trend toward novel and counterintuitive
analyses of sociological and cultural phenomena is not only found in print: it
spills over to the Internet as well. The websites
named above publish dozens of short essays per week, focusing on analysis,
commentary, or contextualization. These essays have come to be known,
colloquially, as "thinkpieces". The word "thinkpiece" is not a new coinage; the Oxford English Dictionary traces it to a December 1935 issue of Harper’s magazine, and describes it
simply as «an article containing discussion, analysis, or opinion, as opposed
to facts or news». Thinkpieces have been found in
print magazines throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and with
the advent of the Internet, have moved online.
In recent years, the word has taken
on a distinctly negative connotation: in common parlance, "thinkpiece"
is now most often an ironic or self-deprecating label for a piece of short-form
writing about media or current events [Haglund 2014].
Another, less negatively valenced term for this
online form might be the "blessay": a portmanteau of
"blog" and "essay". As described by historian Dan Cohen, several qualities of
the blessay describe the kinds of writing with which
this article is concerned. It is «a manifestation of the convergence of
journalism and scholarship in mid-length forms online». The blessay
is frequently «informed by academic knowledge and analysis, but doesn’t rub
[the reader’s] nose in it» [Cohen 2013]. To their proponents, then, online thinkpieces productively blend the formal writing - and by
extension, formal setting - of academia with accessibility, flexibility, and
speed. To their critics, online thinkpieces do not
add constructively do discourse, instead drawing attention and gaining readers
by presenting sensational, surprising, or controversial ideas or opinions. From
a more cynical perspective, then, such essays in online venues are sometimes
called "hot takes" or "takes", again in a deprecating manner, which draws
attention to their reliance on provocative opinions or counterintuitive
analyses. John Hermann describes Internet "takes" as a "newsy glossolalia", a
spilling forth of opinions held only for their own sake: «the Internet’s
evolutionary defense against attention surplus» [Hermann 2014]. And within the
economy of the Internet, which rewards sheer numbers
of readers and statistically legible engagement such as comments or social
media posts, surplus attention represents a significant source of income for
most digital journalism outlets. There is thus great demand for "clickbait": concise, timely, and easily sharable content,
which many critics deride as having little redeeming quality other than virality. «Online media is so ruthlessly click-driven»,
writes Nathan J. Robinson,
The Millennial Whoop: An Introduction to
Thinkpiece Music Theory
In recent years, the explosion of
social media-ready "thinkpieces" has expanded to
include a significant number of essays that engage, in some form or another,
with music theory. The brand of analysis in which I am interested for this
essay is devoted almost exclusively to popular music. We will begin by studying
one particularly representative case, which illustrates many of the features
common to this online brand of "thinkpiece music
theory": a simple musical idea posited as having broad explanatory power;
numerous appeals to cognitive, social, or evolutionary psychology; and a rapid
spread to other online outlets, through which the idea is reified into a
concept, and quickly applied as a persuasive device to reinforce the aesthetic
convictions of authors or readers.
On 20 August 2016, Patrick Metzger
published an essay on a phenomenon he termed the "millennial whoop" on his
blog, The Patterning [Metzger 2016].
Metzger identifies this musical device as the alternation between the third and
fifth scale degrees of the tonic major triad (or scale), usually sung on an
open syllable such as "ah" or "oh" (hence the label "whoop"). It is unclear
whether he intends the label "millennial" to refer to his posited origin for
the trope, around the year 2000, or its prevalence among music by artists of
the "millennial" generation; perhaps it refers to both.

Figure 1. The ‘Millenial Whoop’ as heard in Katy Perry’s California Gurls
The structure of Metzger’s argument makes clear the connection between online music theory and analysis, and the larger Internet-era phenomenon of thinkpieces and explainers. It begins with an exemplar, a parody pop song cut from the mock-documentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), which features the melodic gesture. Via a series of embedded YouTube videos, Metzger then identifies a variety of songs, dating from the early twentieth century to the present, which use the millennial whoop (most emblematically, the chorus of Katy Perry’s California Gurls, from 2010). From there, he extrapolates broadly, embedding the gesture within a much larger claim about music and human nature. He writes:
Metzger’s essay exhibits many of the
qualities found in contemporary popular nonfiction, and online thinkpieces. First, it generalizes and names a simple,
widespread device. More importantly, it connects that simple device to an
ambitious account of an entire area of human experience: in this case,
listening to music. The Millennial Whoop, writes Metzger, exemplifies the
necessity for pop songs to be quickly and effortlessly understood, in order to
be successful. Pop’s tropes, he continues, form a field of background knowledge
to which its listeners are exposed practically from birth. These tropes
appeal - so the argument goes - both to physiology («driving heartbeat rhythms»)
and, more importantly, to psychology. That psychological appeal is both personal
(«you’ve heard this before»), and ambitiously linked to both evolutionary
psychology («the Millennial Whoop evokes a kind of primordial sense that
everything will be alright») and contemporary social conditions («In the age of
climate change and economic injustice and racial violence, you can take a few
moments to forget everything»). Overdetermined in the
extreme, Metzger’s arguments are designed to convince a broad readership of the
relevance of a simple, easily missed phenomenon: as they do in Freakonomics, the
little things make a big difference.
The events that followed the essay’s
publication are also emblematic. Metzger’s piece, originally published on 20
August 2016, spread quickly across the Internet in various
forms. A week later, on August 27, it was the basis for an article by Adam
Epstein on Quartz, a site that bills
itself as "a digitally native news outlet … for business people in the new
global economy. We publish bracingly creative and intelligent journalism". [4]
Epstein’s article adds a paragraph or two of context to Metzger’s original blog
entry. A day later, Quartz uploaded a
two-minute YouTube video entitled "The ‘Millennial Whoop’ is Taking Over Pop
Music", consisting of relevant excerpts. After the video appeared, the story
spread widely. Metzger’s original article was republished by Slate on 29 August 2016. As shown in Table 1,
derivative articles then appeared in USA
Today, The Sun, Paper Magazine, and News.com.au on 29 August; in The
Guardian on 30 August; in New Musical
Express (NME) on 1 September; and in the following weeks appeared on the
websites of venues such as Minnesota Public Radio, and the Canadian
Broadcasting Company’s arts and culture program Q (which featured an interview with Metzger himself). Nearly all of
the articles attribute the term to Metzger, and most reproduce passages from
his original essay. Many also mention the Quartz
article, particularly its accompanying video compilation; Paper even seems to credit the video’s popularity as a newsworthy
phenomenon in itself.
Author/Title |
Publication |
Date |
Social Media Stats (as of 15 Feb 2018) |
Patrick Metzger, "The Millennial Whoop: A
Glorious Obsession with the Melodic Alternation Between the Fifth and the
Third" |
The Patterning (personal blog) |
20 August 2016 |
N/A |
Adam Epstein, "The ‘Millennial Whoop’: The
Same Annoying Whooping Sound is Showing Up in Every Popular Song" |
Quartz |
27 August 2016 |
N/A |
"The Millennial Whoop is Taking Over Pop
Music" |
Quartz
YouTube Channel |
28 August 2016 |
993,649 views; 7,000
likes, 560 dislikes; 881 comments |
Patrick Metzger, "The Millennial Whoop, the
Simple Melodic Sequence That’s Showing Up All Over Contemporary Pop" |
Slate
(reprint of Metzger’s original essay) |
29 August 2016 |
57 comments |
Laura M. Browning, "Read This: Pop Music’s
Obsession With the Millennial Whoop" |
The Onion A.V. Club |
29 August 2016 |
130 comments |
Danielle McGrane,
"The Catchy Whoop in Nearly Every Pop Song". |
News.com.au (via Australian Associated Press) |
29 August 2016 |
N/A |
Jasper Hamill: "Driving You Loopy: This
annoying ‘millennial whoop’ explains why pop songs sound exactly the same" |
The Sun |
29 August 2016 |
0 comments |
Josiah Hughes, "A Musical Phrase Called the
‘Millennial Whoop’ is Eating Pop Music Alive" |
Exclaim |
29 August 2016 |
N/A |
Carey O’Donnell, "This Weird Music Theory
Will Blow Your Damn Mind"[5] |
Paper |
29 August 2016 |
N/A |
Gavin Haynes, "The Millennial Whoop: The
Melodic Hook That’s Taken Over Pop Music" |
The Guardian |
30 August 2016 |
703 shares, 129 comments |
Caitlin Schneider, "The ‘Millenial Whoop’: The Musical Trope That’s Suddenly
Everywhere" |
Mental Floss |
30 August 2016 |
N/A |
Larry Bartleet,
"What is the Millennial Whoop? Once You Hear This Virulent Pop Hook, You
Won’t Be Able to Unhear It" |
New Musical Express (NME) |
1 September 2016 |
N/A |
Katie O’Malley, "The Millenial
Whoop: This is the Reason Why Pop Songs Are So Catchy" |
Elle UK |
1 September 2016 |
608 shares (Facebook, Twitter,
e-mail) |
"Millennial whoop" |
Wikipedia |
3 September 2016 |
N/A |
"Have You Heard the Millennial Whoop?" |
Q (CBC
Radio Broadcast; interview with Patrick Metzger) |
7 September 2016 |
N/A |
Jay Gabler, "From
Beethoven to the ‘Millennial Whoop’" |
Minnesota Public Radio |
10 November 2016 |
1 comment |
Table 1. Articles concerning the "Millennial Whoop" published in Summer/Autumn 2016[6]
The myriad ways in which Metzger’s
simple idea was repeated and contextualized have much to teach us about the
ways in which content is disseminated online, and the demonstrate that music theoretical
explanations can be made to go "viral" in much the same ways as can YouTube
videos of cute animals or violent incidents, counter-intuitive explanations of
political or social phenomena, celebrity gossip, and other flavors of Internet
content.[7] The idea is simple and easily
understood; a variety of YouTube examples make the topic clear, and emphasize
its ubiquity. The montage compiled by Quartz
is an especially significant aspect of the story’s popularity. Running
through several dozen examples in only two minutes, the video makes a
compelling argument with very little commentary; only
music. By cutting across genres and presumed audiences, the video increases the
number of viewers who will identify with the video’s argument, whether by
ensnaring them with an example they know («hey, I love that song!») or
repulsing them with the trope’s ubiquity («ugh, I hate all of this music»).
Either way, the intended result is to provoke the viewer to
"like" or comment on the video, or share it with their own social circle
(whether as an enthusiastic endorsement, or righteous disdain).
The practice of other news outlets significantly excerpting (with or
without commentary) or even republishing essays such as Metzger’s is sometimes
known as "churnalism", conjuring the image of news
stories and columns recirculating over and over again.[8] Referring originally to the proliferation of wire services and the
increasing frequency of press releases being republished without commentary,
contextualization, or criticism, churnalism also
describes the practice of smaller or less-prestigious online outlets linking to
or heavily excerpting stories from more prestigious sources in order to attract
visitors or quickly and cheaply fill their own sites with content. «The
Internet has … facilitated a type of ‘news cannibalism’», write Jane Johnston
and Susan Forde [2017, 943], through which journalism insidiously feeds off
itself and swallows up rivals; consumes and regurgitates, or to put it more
politely: recycles, recontextualizes and repurposes.
In the many essays that cite it, Metzger’s concept of the Millennial Whoop is
framed as both ubiquitous (numerous venues highlight how it shows up in «every
pop song») and influential (The Guardian
writes that the Millennial Whoop is «taking over pop music», while the Canadian
website Exclaim! claims "The
‘Millennial Whoop’ is Eating Pop Music Alive"). Next, the musical gesture’s
simplicity and importance are heavily emphasized: the two headlines provided by
Paper, for example, speculate that
"The Theory of the ‘Millennial Whoop’ Might Be the Key to a Hit Pop Song", and
then claim (in language echoing the ubiquitous promise of «one weird trick» in
online advertising) that "This Weird Music Theory Will Blow Your Damn Mind".
And New Musical Express calls it a
«virulent pop hook» that you «won’t be able to unhear».
While many sites exalt over having unlocked a simple explanation for a great
deal of recent popular music, others turn the idea into critique, perhaps in
order to tailor the article to their intended audience. Both Quartz and the British tabloid The Sun proclaim the Whoop to be
«annoying», and The Sun posits it as
a reason «why pop songs sound exactly the same». The Guardian takes this latter claim a step further, attempting to
lend it a scientific air by linking to another article they had published
several years before, summarizing an academic study that made a statistical
argument about pop music’s alleged homogeneity.[9] Jay Gabler,
writing for Minnesota Public Radio, seems to tailor the piece for an omnivorous
audience of public radio listeners, titling his contribution "From Beethoven to
the Millennial Whoop". Sealing its notoriety for the Internet age, the
"Millennial Whoop" received its own Wikipedia entry, which according to its
"history" page was created on 3 September, 2016: approximately two weeks after
Patrick Metzger’s initial blog entry, and one week after the idea began to
spread widely. And finally, Caitlin Schneider’s 30 August post on Mental Floss seems to unintentionally
highlight the echo chamber of social media and churnalism:
calling the Millenial Whoop «the musical trope that’s
suddenly everywhere» seems to say less about the perceived prevalence of the
device in actual composition, and more about its ubiquity in various online
circles in late Summer 2016.
Re-Enacting the History of Music Theory, Online
While the phenomenon of the
Millennial Whoop is broadly representative of the argumentative style and the
cross-platform dissemination of online music theory articles, it does not
necessarily represent their scope. Many examples of Internet-based music
analysis do not describe broad phenomena, but instead apply the tenets of music
theory (by which is generally meant tonal harmony, or occasionally rhythm and
meter) to chart-topping hits, often arguing that the presence of textbook
techniques is the reason for their success.
Owen Pallett’s
essay on Katy Perry’s chart-topper Teenage Dream is emblematic of a broad
body of online analysis. Published in March 2014 on the website Slate, the essay responds to a playful
challenge from Pallett’s friends: «to write a ‘not
boring’ piece that explains a successful pop song using music theory» [Pallett 2014a]. Pallett chose to
write about Teenage Dream, asserting a simple thesis about its success. «This
song», he writes,
Pallett’s analysis
apparently proved popular: in the coming weeks, he wrote two more articles for Slate: one [Pallett
2014b] a treatment of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky (2013), the other [Pallett 2014c] a more wide-ranging study of Lady Gaga’s musical style, focusing on Bad Romance (2009).
These analyses draw on many of the most common tropes of music theory.
Commenting on the way in which the harmony of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream
avoids the tonic even as her vocals emphasize it, Pallett
writes «[Perry’s] voice is the sun, and the song is in
orbit around it». Here, he draws the same celestial analogy that has been used
to describe tonal hierarchy and movement throughout the modern history of music
theory, from the Neoplatonic speculations of Robert Fludd (1617-18); through the writings of eighteenth-century
French theorists like Jean-Philippe Rameau (1737) and Jérôme-Joseph
de Momigny (1803–06); and on into twentieth-century composer-theorists like Arnold Schoenberg
(1911/1978) and Paul Hindemith (1937/1945). «Tonality is a natural force»,
writes Hindemith [1945, 152], «like gravity», encapsulating a sentiment central
to hundreds of years of theorizing. More recent theorizations of musical
kinetics have left behind the mystical aemulatio between musical and planetary motion that
characterized pre- and early-modern theorizing and
persisted with some earnestness even into the twentieth century;[11] and have
instead recast the useful aspects of that metaphor in terms of perception and
cognition. Researchers like Lawrence Zbikowski [2005]
and Arnie Cox [2016] have built upon the cognitive metaphor theory first
proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson [1980],
while David Huron [2006, 59–89] has explained the enculturation of tonal
tendencies as a product of statistical learning.
Pallett’s follow-up piece, an analysis of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, asserts that the listener’s pleasure in the song derives from harmonic ambiguity and surprise, provoked by the tonal uncertainty of the song’s central, looped progression: a similar argument about the roots of musical interest and enjoyment as has been made, in more or less similar terms, by music theorists from Gottfried Weber to David Lewin, and reinforced by systematic musicologist David Huron’s ITPRA model.[12] Pallett argues that the progression (B minor – D major – F# minor – E major, shown in Figure 2) wavers between the F# Aeolian and B dorian modes, yet comes down on the side of the former: F# Aeolian. Pallett is correct in his assertion that the two modes contain the same pitch classes, and that the progression sounds off-kilter to classically trained ears. Hearing the F# minor triad - the third chord - as the tonic is a difficult leap, however. As shown in Figure 3, the four harmonies involved are central to the dorian modal system identified by Philip Tagg [2014, 291]. Viewed from this perspective, there is no real ambiguity, only the unusual sound of major IV and minor v chords in a minor-like context. As Figure 3 demonstrates, hearing the progression in B dorian has the benefit of placing the tonic chord first (giving it the formal and hypermetric priority that Nobile [2016, 160] emphasizes in determining harmonic function in pop harmony), echoing the prototypical minor-key movement from i to III, and explaining the progression-ending turnaround from IV to i as a pop-friendly plagal resolution.[13] Pallett cautiously cushions his words with the language of subjectivity - the song is tonally ambiguous «to [his] ears». Yet, to insist upon an ambiguous tonality for the four-chord loop seems to misidentify the sounds that characterize Get Lucky’s central progression: the parsimonious voice-leading that unites the first three chords, and the combination of a major IV chord and minor v chord. The "raised" scale degree 6 (g#) and natural scale degree 7 (a) sound striking together, but are strongly identified with the dorian mode, which in turn is made absolutely clear by the temporal arrangement of the four chords. Pallett’s bi-modal explanation - though attractively counterintuitive for its online medium - overcomplicates the situation. The song is tonally ambiguous only if one attempts to explain it from the standpoint of Classical harmony; as Tagg’s model shows, it actually traces a harmonic path that is well-worn in folk, pop, and rock music.[14]

Figure 2. Harmonic reduction and competing roman numeral interpretations of the primary loop from Daft Punk's Get Lucky

Figure 3. Harmonies in the Dorian mode (after Tagg 2014, 219)[15]
This analysis of Get Lucky - particularly if it can indeed be attributed to obfuscation - leads into another trope of music theory that is reflected in many online analyses: the notion of secrecy, of hidden knowledge or information known - or more often, concealed by - composers, which is available only to those who understand music theory (which, again, is presented as if it were a singular and monolithic body of research). Music theorists like Heinrich Schenker often cast their work as revealing arcane or specialized knowledge about music. Schenker subtitled his famous analysis of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, «its true content described for the first time» [Schenker 1994, 10] and he often wrote that «the masses" were ignorant of the true nature of music, lacking "the soul of genius»; such readers, he claimed, were thus reliant on his writings to reveal how master composers worked [Schenker 1979, 3]. The metaphor of depth, which is so prevalent in music theory, is relevant as well: just as the cover art of Freakonomics implies that economics holds the key to a wealth of knowledge hidden beneath surface appearances, so too do the worldviews left behind by some of music theory’s earliest and most influential practitioners imply that most musical knowledge is only to initiates.[16] Popular online music theory writings, then, take the subtext that has always been present in music theory, and render it explicit.
Finally, closely related to the notion of secrecy and specialized
knowledge is music theory’s image of itself as a scientific discipline.
Throughout the modern history of western music theory, the discipline has often
tried to position itself as a branch of science. In the eighteenth century,
Jean-Philippe Rameau aspirationally submitted several
of his treatises to the Parisian Académie Royale des
Sciences for official recognition.[17] Hermann von Helmholtz brought
psychoacoustics to bear on music theory in the 1850s, and theorists like Hugo
Riemann formulated many of their most influential ideas (such as harmonic
dualism) as a reaction against the arguments of Helmholtz’s acoustically
grounded music theory.[18] Later, in the twentieth century, Milton Babbitt wrote
influentially about the rigorous logic and formalization necessary for music
theory to claim its place among the sciences.[19]
Several video essays produced by Vox reflect such an instrumentalizing
view of music theory directly, reducing it to a set of building blocks that can
be used to reveal insights. These videos discuss "The Secret Rhythm in
Radiohead’s ‘Videotape,’" for example, or "The Secret Chord That Makes
Christmas Music Sound So Christmassy". And even when music theory is not
presented as revealing secrets, it is
still cast as an arcane specialty, far beyond the reach of the average reader.
Theory is positioned as a black box, or worse: a simple set of labels for
musical phenomena, to be applied in the manner of a secret decoder ring. As in
the trio of Slate articles cited
above, one simply «uses music
theory», and receives insight. This insight, in the case of the Vox videos - which each do
make interpretive claims about individual songs - is elevated to the level of a
secret compositional trick, in order to create the drama necessary to entice
readers or viewers to share the article or video. The rhetoric of "secret"
chords and rhythms occludes the fact that music theories are means of
interpreting the data that might be revealed by the application of labels; as
demonstrated in Heidegger’s famous analysis of tools (Heidegger 1996, 65–69),
such a view erroneously expects music theory simply to disappear into the
background. But music theory does not automate aesthetic interpretation, just
as the application of a prediction market or a statistical regression does not
automate political punditry. But when both are positioned as rhetorical black
boxes and appended to clickable, eye-catching headlines, music theory - and any
number of other specialized research disciplines - are reduced to soundbites and shallow, quickly sharable insights.
There are exceptions this this tendency, however, and cases in which music theory has been folded into nuanced cultural analysis. Alex Abad-Santos’ [2017] treatment of Luis Fonsi’s Despacito on Vox cites its central chord progression (a typical vi – IV – I – V) as just one of many factors that explain «how [it] became the biggest song of 2017». Abad-Santos consults numerous musicologists and critics, and accounts for factors from instrumentation and production style, to the remix’s place within the larger landscapes of electronic dance music as a genre, and online streaming as an economic force, to language and cultural interchange, in his long-form treatment of the song’s popularity. While not without hyperbole («Put simply», Abad-Santos writes early in the piece, «Despacito is magic»), the essay offers an example of how to position music theory alongside other musical factors, reflecting the musical, aesthetic, and economic overdetermination that characterizes contemporary pop stardom rather than treating harmony alone as a uniquely comprehensive "Rosetta stone" for interpretation.
Of all the disciplinary conversations recapitulated by popular online writing in music theory, the need for hermeneutic interpretation is perhaps the most notable. In the 1980s, musicologist Joseph Kerman criticized the tendency of musical analysts to purge their language of aesthetic judgments - and to ignore questions of meaning and value - as they strove for scientific purity and precision.[20] In the 1990s, Susan McClary, Lawrence Kramer, Gary Tomlinson, and other scholars began to crystalize an intellectual movement - often dubbed the New Musicology - that was interested in criticism and interpretation, cultural contextualization, interdisciplinary theorizing, and postmodern epistemologies. «The aim of postmodernist criticism», writes Lawrence Kramer, «is to understand the work of art, or any other cultural product or practice, as an instance of social, political, discursive, and cultural action that traverses a larger field - a heterogeneous and much-contested field - of such actions» [Kramer 1992, 3]. Though some scholars of theory and analysis at the time balked at the notion that musical analyses ought to be connected to or representative of some form of extra-musical meaning,[21] several new music-theoretical subfields have arisen (such as topic theory, narrative theory, and semiotics) that take musical meaning and interpretation as their primary concern. Although the emergence of these subfields seems to imply that music theory has in many ways internalized the lessons of the 1990s, it remains possible to write an analytical or theoretical study that is concerned primarily with hermetic readings of single works, or expositions of theoretical concepts, without recourse to intertextual, contextual, or narrative meanings.[22]
This is rarely the case in the "thinkpiece" theory found on popular websites, however: most
examples of popular music theory journalism are firmly committed to recovering
interpretive meaning from the structural elements they analyze. New
Musicology’s hermeneutics have been primarily historical in context - concerned
with reconstructing the context in which a work originated, and sharpening our
experience of that work against the whetstone of cultural or temporal
difference - these essays are concerned with the music of the present, and with
its ability to inspire specific reactions in its listeners, or to shed light on
larger cultural forces.[23] In nearly all cases, popular online analyses are
couched in affective terms, and these emotional effects are tied to implicit
(or explicit) musical narratives and semiotic gestures. Pallett’s
analysis of Teenage Dream speaks in emotional terms right at the outset,
invoking the notion of suspension not as a voice-leading phenomenon, but «in
the emotional sense, which listeners often associate with ‘exhilaration,’ being
on the road, being on a roller coaster, travel». The image of Katy Perry’s
voice as «the sun», around which the rest of the song is «in orbit» echoes the
images used by eighteenth century writers like Rameau and Momigny,
who sometimes presented tonal systems as groups of planets, held in
gravitational alignment by the orienting pull of the tonic. Furthermore,
centering Perry’s voice - and by extension, the singer herself - as an
always-withdrawing object of desire renders Teenage Dream’s tonal structure
as a mapping of sexual desire - another common image from music studies. As Susan
McClary [1991, 53] writes:
Pallett’s analysis thus
recapitulates several disciplinary conversations that have happened in music theory
over the past few decades: the excavation and revival of numerous historical
theories of music (such as the works of Rameau and Riemann); the fraught
relationship of music theory with science; and the discipline’s encounters with
feminist criticism and hermeneutics as new ways (among many) of making larger
meaning out of musical devices. At the same time, its premises are often
ignorant of the ways in which scholars today think, speak, and write about
music. Most shocking is his framing of his own conclusions, which would not be
out of place in one of Heinrich Schenker’s virulent
polemics: «As I argued earlier this week», he writes in the second of his March
2014 essays on Slate, «the reason
Teenage Dream went to No. 1 and remains in radio rotation is that it is a
textbook example of the excellence and supremacy of the rules of Western music
theory». For the many practitioners of theory who have worked hard to move the
discipline beyond such self-aggrandizing ethnocentrism, this casual framing is
a sharp reminder that music theory’s public image is still in dire need of an
update.
Such an image persists despite the
explosion of theoretically oriented popular music studies in the past 30 years.
Music theorists such as John Covach, Walter Everett,
Phillip Tagg, Nicole Biamonte,
Mark Spicer, Kyle Adams, and many others, have published detailed studies of
popular music from The Beatles [Everett 1999 and 2001] to Danger Mouse [Adams
2015] and beyond. These scholars often attempt to deal with pop music’s tonal
and rhythmic structures on their own terms - if not always independently of their
Classical analogues, at least without judgement about
their worthiness or deficiency by comparison. Pallett’s
claims are thus a surprising contrast with pop music theory as it is often
practiced today. Pallett, Patrick Metzger, and the
other authors mentioned above seem to have little doubt that popular music is good, and worthy of study; yet their
focus on «the excellence and supremacy of the rules of Western music theory» causes
them merely to re-inscribe the same boundaries of quality and worthiness that
most pop scholars seek to dismantle. The almost exclusive focus on harmony in
popular online analysis belies the current state of the field, which is
characterized by innovative approaches to a variety of parameters: Kyle Adams
[2009, 2015] and Mitchell Ohriner [2016] on meter;
Kate Heidemann [2016] and Megan Lavengood
[2017] on timbre; Michael Heller [2016] and Olivia Lucas [2014] on loudness;
and James Bungert [2016] on the connections between
music analysis and social issues.
Music Theory as Journalistic Source: Third Person Narrative in Online Analysis
Tonality’s hermeneutics of desire is
not the only relevant aspect of the passage quoted from McClary
above; the entire basis of online music theory journalism may be read in McClary’s paragraph. Essays like Pallett’s
make it their mission to elucidate the musical factors that often remain so
hidden in music’s effects on us. As McClary asserts,
musical structures are mirrored at the level of individual subjectivity,
interpersonal relationships, and societal forces writ large. Indeed, this
notion probably constitutes the red thread that connects the socio-political
orientations of Vox,
Vice, FiveThirtyEight, and others, with
the recent surge of interest in music-theoretical explainers. Connections
between musical and societal structures, for example, form the basis of an
essay by Rachel Kraus in the Los Angeles
Review of Books takes very seriously the ability of music to reflect social
structures. Kraus begins her essay by attempting to capture her ambivalent
relationship to American politics and society in 2017 via her reaction to the
national anthem: «The Star Spangled Banner still makes me feel something» [Kraus 2017]. What that something might be is initially unclear,
but Kraus begins to intuit a common genetic code among shared by various pieces
of patriotic music, such as the emotional and inspiring theme songs to the
television shows The West Wing
(1999–2006) and Band of Brothers
(2001).
The way in which Kraus chose to
confirm her perceptions is highly characteristic for online music analysis: she
consulted «musician Reuben Moss, who has a music composition degree from
Stanford University». With the exception of her essay’s short introduction, the
musical analysis she presents is second hand: she treats Moss as a journalistic
source, the subject of an interview. While the central idea of the analysis
isn’t wrong, her second-order recitation produces - whether through imperfect
memory or selective quotation - details that do not logically follow from one
another. «The perfect 5th and perfect 4th intervals you hear are the purest
intervals in music», begins one quotation, which then concludes: «In other
words, the major arpeggio is the most simple [sic] musical structure» [Kraus
2017]. This assessment is not entirely mistaken, but neither is it very
accurate: while those intervals are present (even if only as inversions of one
another), they do not define the major
arpeggio, but rather its constituent perfect fifth. Something has been lost in
translation.
After recounting her conversation
with Moss, Kraus attempts a hermeneutic reading based on their discussion:
Again, the basic idea of Kraus’
interpretation is plausible. Yet to draw such a sweeping conclusion misses much
of the complexity of the music at hand. Both W.G. Snuffy
Walden’s West Wing theme and Michael Kamen’s Band of
Brothers may present a simple façade, but each is actually saturated with
gentle dissonances, in the form of suspensions - which arguably bear as much
responsibility for the music’s affective signification as do any arpeggios, if
not more.[23] And as Kraus’ essay continues, she builds an entire argument on the
"major arpeggio" as a broad signifier, weaving it - via Moss’ comments - into a
spurious history of American music, ignoring its status as a simple building
block of harmony. Her point is not unappealing - she argues against predictable
and reassuring narratives - yet it is made via an oversimplification of the
materials of tonal music.
What is more, the essay’s exclusive
focus on melody and harmony mirrors the institutional failures of music theory
itself. This analysis of the West Wing
and Band of Brothers themes relies
upon melodic and harmonic elements, yet has nothing to say about, say, the
common instrumentation of the piece, nor about the changes in ensemble texture,
nor about the rhythms in which the pieces unfold. In this way, "thinkpiece theory" copies music theory’s own worst tendencies, reaching for a
shallow hermeneutic grounded in the nearly fifteen-hundred-year-old writings of
Boethius, and even pre-dating him.[24] Again in the thrall of science envy, music
theory’s origins in mathematics prove to be one of its most appealing qualities
to those writing pieces like Kraus’s; the sweep of strings and French horns
never enters the discussion.
The Sharing Ecosystem
The
online commentariat for which these essays are often
written is one final aspect of online musical analysis that is worth
considering. "Thinkpiece theory", like many forms of
digital journalism, exists in an ever-expanding ecosystem of social media
sharing, content curation, and linking or
re-publication. Catchy "before-the-colon" titles (recall Pallett’s
"Ecstatic Melodic Copulation") serve much the same purpose in online writing as
they do in academic writing: to draw the reader in. The types of titles that
stand out in the table of contents of an otherwise dry journal, or amid a long
list of concurrent conference sessions, are also generally successful at
drawing readers into websites, and enticing those readers to share content with
their own colleagues, friends, or families via social media. Many online
publications also host comment sections at the bottom of articles, or sometimes
on a separate page. Readers, again, are encouraged to have their say in a
manner that adds value to the site - by making its discourse more active and
vibrant - and also increases the statistical metrics that measure the monetary
value of a given site’s average user, for advertising purposes. The comments on
the articles discussed here are extensive and varied. "Ecstatic Melodic
Copulation", on the music of Daft Punk, has attracted 223 comments to date.
Some commenters note that, while the essay is intended to be easily digestible,
they still do not understand the technical terminology used. Sometimes this sentiment
is expressed constructively, with earnest questions and suggestions; sometimes
it is not. («I have no idea what this means», goes one single-line comment).[25]
Other commenters, however, participate enthusiastically in the analysis,
bringing their own existing musical knowledge or intuitions to bear. They argue
over ambiguities of key and chord, quibble with technical details, or express
admiration and agreement with Pallett’s arguments.
One reader even expresses admiration for the discussion holding forth in the
comments section: «Judging purely by the incredible comments section
discussion, I would judge this theory-based music criticism experiment a
rousing success».[26] (This echoes the "clickbait"
attitude cited above, which counts statistically legible audience engagement as
success.) Still more commenters argue that the music is simply not to their
taste, and that the author, his readers, and even the publication outlet would
be better off focusing on more worthy topics. «Breaking down the ingredients of
spray cheese does not make it taste any better», wrote one commenter.[27] Here,
again, we see that reified conceptions of "worthy" musical repertoire, and the
implicit judgments made for or against certain genres by traditional
conceptions of music theory, are reflected among the general public, who have
somehow developed a two-dimensional conception of the disciplines of music
theory and musicology as they actually exist.
Music
Theory’s Funhouse Mirror
The case studies undertaken in this essay reveal that the methodological issues that have often fueled disciplinary controversy within music theory are also, in many ways, vitally important outside the academy. The most fraught interdisciplinary relationships of music theory and musicology - with feminist criticism, with the philosophy of science - and the attendant controversies over the ontological status of music and the propositional status of music theory, are played out frequently, and in public, by non-academic writers on websites like Slate and Vox.
As Bonnie Gordon [2017] has written, scholars and teachers need to be diligent in equipping their students to recognize the ways in which various ideologies cloak themselves in music and spectacle, or even lie in plain sight, unexamined or taken for granted.[28] The same might be said of the tropes and tendencies of music theory, reflected as they are in the habits of thought, and writings, of journalists, amateur musicians, and non-academics. Declarations like Owen Pallett’s (about the «excellence and supremacy of the rules of Western music theory») ought to give us pause, and rouse us to action. Music theory’s history, its epistemologies, and its outlook on musical ontology are intertwined with larger cultural currents. Repeated without consideration by untrained writers in popular essays, these cultural ideas come to overwhelm music theory as it is practiced in the academy, producing problematic or overreaching arguments like those cited in this essay. This is not to say that all scholars have accepted popular music on equal terms with the Classical canon; in some corners, the innate supremacy of one genre over another is taken to be a defensible, attractive argument; take, for example, a 2016 paper in the journal Philosophy (the official journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, in London) entitled How Classical Music is Better Than Popular Music [Young 2016]. But to assume that the academy ignores and disdains pop would be to ignore the inroads made over the past few decades, by many exciting voices in the field.
This is
also not to say that those lacking
academic training, or those who view the discipline differently, do not have a
right to use, or write about, music theory; empowering others to express their
musical ideas, after all, is one of the highest goals
of most professors, and one of the most important reasons to teach music
theory. It should serve, however, as a call to arms to theorists and
musicologists, who may want to have greater control over how their
discipline - their research - is reflected in public. As have many humanities
disciplines, musicology and music theory have begun tentatively to reach out to
broader publics, striving to bring the lessons of the music classroom to those
outside the walls of the academy. It is clear from the examples cited in this
essay that there is great demand for sophisticated explanatory writing on
music; it is also clear that music theory scholars, trained in the nuances of
analytical language and well-versed in the cultural and historical weight borne
by various metaphors for describing musical experience, have much to offer to
the current state of discourse. Gordon’s injunctions might well be adapted to
the persistence of certain intellectual ideologies evident in the amateur and
enthusiast writings that currently represent music theory on Internet
platforms.
The
problem of the instrumentalization of theoretical
knowledge, for example, runs rampant in these examples. In many of these
essays - as indicated by the ubiquitous phrase "using music theory", - this
disciplinary knowledge is treated as an unimpeachable authority, an external
reference that justifies, reinforces, or explains the intuitions of readers, or
even writers. The scientific image of music theory that arose with Milton
Babbitt’s circle after World War II persists,
unchallenged, in the minds of many. Indeed, one of the most vivid lessons of
the case studies described here is the degree to which the ways music has been
described over the past 300 years (from metaphors of gravity and natural order,
to hermeneutic readings of tonal attraction-as-desire or
modal-inflection-as-signification, to essentialist readings of gender binaries)
have taken hold in popular discourse about music - often without the corrective
re-examinations and contextualizations that have occurred
in musicology and theory only for the past 30 years or so. Owen Pallett’s casual declaration of purpose in his Lady Gaga
essay, for instance, reinscribes outdated divisions
between the body and the mind, between affect and intellect. "Our mission", he
writes, is «to dissect chart-topping pop singles and weigh their trembling
flesh on the scales of Western music theory» (Pallett
2014c).[29] His choice of metaphor is no accident: popular music, ascribed to
bodies that move - and which in this case tremble with intensity or desire, or
perhaps simply the suspicious excess of mass popularity - is to be objectified,
rationalized, and judged by the cold empiricism of music theory.[30]
It is
not difficult to draw a line between appeals to natural order - and to music
theory as a reflection of such order, as in many of the articles cited
above - and reductive essentialisms or cultural chauvinism. It is striking, for
example, to see how quickly Arnold Schoenberg moves from the assertion that the
analogous tensions between dominant and tonic, and tonic and subdominant are
«like the force of a man hanging by his hands from a beam and exerting his own
force against the force of gravity» to his assertion, only a page and a half
later, of the supremacy of the Western scale. The discovery of the major scale,
he writes «was a stroke of luck»; the fact that other
cultures, such as «the Arabs, the Chinese and Japanese, or the gypsies» have
employed different ones is one reason why «their music has not evolved to such
heights as ours» [Schoenberg 1978, 23 and 25].[31]
Yet, if
the reception of music theory and analysis in online venues is any indication,
it seems that a large number of readers and listeners to music - perhaps a
majority - are likely to hold some sort of "folk theory" about music, and about a
variety of musical topics: perception, expression, the place of music in
culture, the relationship between music and text, the assumed separation of
musical syntax from musical meaning, the innate and inarguable supremacy of
certain musical traditions or repertoires over others, and many other topics.[32]
Such ideologies are the very web of culture that musicologists address when
they write about cultural context, and music theory is not immune form their
effects. Music theorists and musicologists attempting to engage the public
might be tempted to hide their disciplinary apparatus and training: to simplify
their arguments, or gravitate towards "the music itself", rather than
complicated framing, out of a sense that critical discourse and academic theorizing
are less palatable to outside readers. I would argue, however, that they should
resist this impulse. While those rising to the challenge of engaging readers
and interlocutors outside of traditional disciplinary boundaries should be
careful to write clearly and attractively, they should perhaps feel less
pressure than they may currently, to hide their disciplinary expertise, or to
paper over the methodological disputes and uncertainties that characterize
professional academia, in favor of presenting a simplified, unified view of the
issues. But perhaps public music theorists and musicologists should place
greater emphasis on their own methods, and the debates which
unfold in seminar rooms and at professional conferences. Rehearsing the
disciplinary paradigm shifts that led, over hundreds of years, from Fludd’s mysticism to the present, might help to counteract
that the popular notion that music theory and its objects are fixed and
objective.
Meta-disciplinary
reflection is in fact essential to moving any field forward, whether it happens
in academic journals or the general press. One of the most fascinating
rhetorical turns in Kofi Agawu’s 1997 essay
Analyzing Music Under the New Musicological Regime finds him arguing that the
New Musicologists to whom he is responding - Susan McClary,
Lawrence Kramer, and others - frequently employ the very analytical methods that
they critique. He writes:
New Musicologists and music analysts, then,
are not natural enemies; to Agawu, they are often
engaged in the same endeavors. Yet the former group, by ignoring the current
disciplinary concerns of music theory, end up both reifying outdated paradigms,
and fruitlessly critiquing them, as strawmen.
The same might be said of the body of "thinkpiece analysis" described here; and, more importantly,
the same opportunity is available. The writers cited here rely almost
exclusively on conventional methods, and their insights as a result bear the
weight of conventional biases, such as regressive forms of Cartesian dualism,
reductive and binary hermeneutics, and smug declarations of the superiority of
western music and music theory. The proliferation of online musical writings
seems to indicate that there is great demand for well-informed musical
analysis, particularly with regards to popular music - a demand
which is currently being filled by journalists, amateurs, and musicians
without extensive academic training. While we should welcome a broad audience
to write about and engage with music, musicologists and theorists are also in a
unique position to provide greater historical context, and argumentative rigor,
and theoretical sophistication. In recent years, the field of music theory has
embraced a broad variety of diverse research topics and repertoires, yet the
image of the discipline being presented in popular outlets - presented, it should
be noted, by non-theorists - is one of staleness and rigidity, as either a set of
regulatory guidelines or a mysterious decoder ring yielding deep meaning with
minimal effort.
There is thus a great need, and great
opportunity, for scholars to present their own vision of music theory to the
public. If some popular online outlets are willing to devote significant
resources to publishing essays on music theory, and in other cases are willing
to engage in extensive meta-methodological reflections (as with the many
self-conscious essays published by FiveThirtyEight, reflecting on their own methods of statistical
analysis), perhaps it is time to propose that the two editorial impulses be
unified. Given the rise of the public humanities and the documented demand for
thoughtful coverage of music and the arts, perhaps it is time for a form of
public music theory that does not only analyze music using conventional
methods, but that lays bare those methods and exposes them for what they
are - theories, which are provisional and in need of constant evaluation and
revision. We should, in other words, not merely teach our students and our
readers to use our tools; we should proudly show them how the tools were
crafted, how they may be maintained and honed, and - most importantly - how new
tools may be forged, to handle new musical challenges.
References
Adams K. (2009), Flow in Rap Music, «Music Theory Online», 15/5.
Adams K., (2015),
What Did Danger Mouse Do? The Grey Album
and Musical Composition in Configurable Culture, «Music Theory Spectrum», 37/1, pp. 7–24.
Agawu K. (1997), Analyzing Music Under the New Musicological
Regime, «Journal of Musicology», 15/3, pp. 297–307.
Boethius A. M.
S. (1989), Fundamentals of Music, trans. by Calvin
Bower, New Haven, Yale University Press.
Brubeck
Bungert J. (2016), ‘When You Got the Yams’: Flow, Form, and Social Message in Kendrick Lamar’s ‘King Kunta’, paper presented to the Popular Music Analysis Interest Group of the Society for Music Theory, Vancouver, B.C., November 5.
Carlson D. (2003), The History of Online Journalism, in K. Kawamoto (ed.), Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 37–55.
Christensen T. (1993a), Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press.
Christensen T. (1993b), Music Theory and Its Histories, in C. Hatch – D. W. Bernstein (eds.) Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 23–51.
Cohen D. (2012), The Blessay, Personal blog, May 24, link.
Cohen D. (1993), Metaphysics, Ideology, Discipline: Consonance, Dissonance, and the Foundations of Western Polyphony, «Theoria», 7, pp. 1–85.
Cox A. (2006), Music and Embodied Cognition, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press.
Cross I. (1998), Music Analysis and Music Perception, «Music Analysis», 17/1, pp. 3–20.
Currie J. (2009), Music After All, «Journal of the American Musicological Society», 62/1, pp. 145–203.
Cusick S. (1994), Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem, «Perspectives of New Music», 32/1, pp. 8–27.
Davies N. (2009), Flat Earth News, London, Random House.
DiNardo J. (2006), Freakonomics: Scholarship in the Service of Storytelling, «American Law and Economics Review», 8/3, pp. 615–626.
Donadio R. (2006), The Gladwell Effect, «The New York Times», February 5.
Foucault M. (2005), The Order of Things, London, Routledge (orig. ed. 1966).
Fludd R. (1617–18), Utriusque cosmi maioris sclilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technical historia, Oppenhemii, Aere Johan-Theodori de Bry, Typis Hieronymi Galleri.
Gladwell M. (2000), The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, New York, Little Brown.
Gladwell M. (2005), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, New York, Little Brown.
Haglund D. (2014), «Why ‘Think Piece’ is Pejorative, «Slate», May 7, link.
Heller-Roazen D. (2011), The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World, New York, Zone Books.
Heidegger M. (1996), Being and Time, transl. by J. Stambaugh, Albany, State University of New York Press (orig. ed. 1953).
Heidemann K. (2016), A System for Describing Vocal Timbre in Popular Song, «Music Theory Online», 22/1.
Heller M. C. (2016), Between Silence and Pain: Loudness and the Affective Encounter, «Sound Studies», 1/1, pp. 40–58.
Hermann J. (2014), Take Time, «The Awl», link.
Hindemith P. (1945), The Craft of Musical Composition, Book I, transl. by A. Mendel, New York:, Associated Music Publishers, Inc. (orig. ed. 1937).
Huron D. (2006), Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
Hyer B. (1996a), Before Rameau and After, «Music Analysis», 15/1, pp. 75–100.
Hyer B. (1996b), Second Immediacies in the Eroica, in Ian Bent (ed.) Music Theory in the Age of Romanticism, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 77-104.
Johnston J. – Forde S. (2017), Introduction: Churnalism: Revised and Revisited, «Digital Journalism», 5/8, pp. 943–946.
Johnson S. B. (2005), Everything Bad is Good for You, New York, Riverhead Books.
Kerman J. (1980), How We Got Into Analysis and How to Get Back Out, «Critical Inquiry», 7/2, pp. 311–331.
Korsyn K. (2003), Decentering Music: A Critique of Contemporary Musical Research, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.
Kramer L. (1992), Haydn’s Chaos, Schenker’s Order: or, Hermeneutics and Musical Analysis: Can They Mix?, «19th-Century Music», 16/1, pp. 3–17.
Kraus R. (2017), How Music Reveals the Pitfalls - and Possibilities - of Patriotism, «Los Angeles Review of Books», June 1, link.
Kuchera B. (2016a), Marvel is making the best Superman movies, «Polygon», November 16, link.
Kuchera B. (2016b), How Music Makes Captain America a Hero and Superman a Mope, «Polygon», link.
Lakoff G. – Johnson M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press.
Lavengood M. (2017), A New Approach to the Analysis of Timbre, Ph.D. diss., CUNY Graduate Center.
Lehrer, Jonah. 2007. Proust was a Neuroscientist. Boston: Mariner Books.
Levitt S. D. – Dubner S. J. (2005), Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, New York, William Morrow and Co.
Levitt S. D. – Dubner S. J. (2009), Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, New York, Harper Collins.
Lewin D. (2006), Studies in Music With Text, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.
Lucas O. (2014), Maximum Loudness Yields Maximum Results, «Journal of Sonic Studies» 7, link.
McClary S. (1991), Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
McClary S. (1993), Narrative Agendas in ‘Absolute’ Music: Identity and Difference in Brahms’ Third Symphony, in R. Solie (ed.) Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, Berkeley, University of California Press,pp. 326–344.
Metzger P. (2016), The Millennial Whoop: A Glorious Obsession with the Melodic Alternation Between the Fifth and the Third, «The Patterning», August 20, link.
Michaels S. (2016), Pop music these days: it all sounds the same, study reveals, «The Guardian», July 27, link.
Momigny J.-J. (1803–06), Cours complet d'harmonie et de composition d'après une théorie neuve et générale de la musique, Paris, the author.
Moreno J. (2004), Musical Representations, Subjects, Objects, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press.
Nobile D. (2016), Harmonic Function in Rock Music: A Syntactical Approach, «Journal of Music Theory», 60/2, pp. 149–180.
Ohriner M. (2016), Metric Ambiguity and Flow in Rap Music: A Corpus-Assisted Study of Outkast’s ‘Mainstream’, «Empirical Musicology Review», 11/2, pp. 153–179.
Pallett O. (2014a), Skin Tight Jeans and Syncopation: Explaining the Genius of Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’ - Using Music Theory, «Slate», March 25, link.
Pallett O. (2014b), Ecstatic Melodic Copulation: Explaining the Genius of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ - Using Music Theory, «Slate», March 28, link.
Pallett O. (2014c), Bad Romance, Great Tritone: Explaining the Genius of Lady Gaga - Using Music Theory, «Slate», March 31, link.
Ragusea A. (2015), All I Want for Christmas is Diminished Chords, «Slate», December 18, link.
Rameau J.-P. (1737), Génération harmonique, ou Traité de musique théorique et pratique, Paris, Chez Prault fils.
Rameau J.-P. (1750), Démonstration du principe de l’harmonie. Paris, Chez Durrand & Chez Pissot.
Robinson N. J. (2016), Keeping the Content Machine Whirring, «Current Affairs: A Magazine of Politics and Culture», February 24, link.
Saridou T., Spyridou L.-P., Veglis A. (2017), Churnalism on the Rise? Assessing Convergence Effects on Editorial Practices, «Digital Journalism», 8/5, pp. 1006–1024.
Scott B. (2005), A Contemporary History of Digital Journalism, «Television and New Media», 6/1, pp. 89–126.
Schoenberg A. (1983), Theory of Harmony, transl. by R. E. Carter, London, Faber and Faber (orig. ed. 1911).
Siapera E.–Veglis A. (2012), The Handbook of Global Online Journalism, Hoboken, Wiley-Blackwell.
Surowiecki J. (2004), The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few, and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations, New York, Doubleday.
Tagg P. (2014), Everyday Tonality II: Towards a Tonal Theory of What Most People Hear, New York and Huddersfield (UK), The Mass Media Scholars Press.
Taleb N. N. (2007), The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House.
Tomlinson G. (1993a), Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Tomlinson G. (1993b), Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer, «Current Musicology», 53, pp. 18–40.
Weber G. (1817–21), Versuch einer georgneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst, Mainz, B. Schott.
Young J. O. (2016), How Classical Music is Better Than Popular Music, «Philosophy», 91/4, pp. 523–540.
Zbikowski L. (2005) Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, Analysis, AMS Studies in Music, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press.
n.a. (2016), The Secret Chord That Makes Christmas Music Sound So Christmassy, «Vox», December 21, link.
n.a. (2017),The Secret Rhythm in Radiohead’s ‘Videotape’, Vox», August 4, link.
Copyright (c) 2018 William O'Hara

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
---
Analitica - Rivista online di studi musicali
Se non diversamente indicato, i contenuti di questa rivista sono pubblicati sotto licenza Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.
ISSN: 2279-5065