Introduction
Thomas Christensen
Music theory, Carl Dahlhaus has warned us, is a subject that notoriously resists its own history. How, he challenges it possible to write any meaningful history of discipline whose matter shifted so dramatically over time? Topics musical pedagogy we today take for granted as integral music theory were not always considered – rules writing counterpoint or realizing figured bass, instance. Conversely, many the traditional components made up quadrivial science musica theorica are now peripheral subjects lying precariously close occult and esoteric thought, more benignly, perhaps, part some mathematical acoustical subdiscipline. Nor these contrasting allegiances mutually exclusive at given historical period. Widely diverging conceptions can often be found jostling with one another in same culture, within oeuvre writer, occasionally even publication.
Cambridge University Press eBooks