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Example 1: Vasuchakra Raga modal harmony is an attempt to extend Berklee's modal harmony concepts to South Indian music scales (ragas, or melas). The Berklee method deals exclusively with the Greek modes, assigning to each one of them a characteristic pitch (CP). This characteristic pitch is one of the forming pitches of the tritone, and it gives the characteristic sound to each mode. All possible tertian and quartal chords formed on each of the pitches of the mode are evaluated in terms of their stability and whether they contain the characteristic pitch. Some people have tried to extend this to other scales ( see here ). My approach is an attempt to exhaustively examine all possible modes included in the melakarta scheme . Now, the tricky part: what is the characteristic pitch in scales that can potentially contain up to 3 tritones? This is where I had to make a personal, and probably temporal, concession. I just called characteristic pitches all pitches other than the tonic ...

This essay reviews the historical confrontation between postmodernism and contemporary music theory and analysis. To this end, it reviews how some of the notions considered pivotal to music theoretical discourse, such as subjectivity, authorial intention, organicism and unity, etc., have been problematized by new musicologists. Additionally it argues in favor of the re-assertion of these concepts as valid heuristic tools, especially with regards to recent music. The second part of the paper examines the music of the Catalan composer Hèctor Parra, whose particular compositional method mitigates the tensions between postmodernism and contemporary analytical thought. Published in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2008) Click here to download article.

My MA thesis in Music Theory is called Structural Modes of Analytical Thought . It was defended at the University of Amsterdam on Nov. 23rd, 2007. The study deals with the influence of poststructuralist thought in contemporary music theory and composition, and proposes some possible solutions wherever their ideological tenets collide. Download it .

Chapter 7: Mozart and the idea of absolute music Treitler begins by referring to 19th-century music critic E.T.A. Hoffman and his characterisation of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as ”Romantic” composers. The new art, born in the second half of the 18th century, was no longer expressive of something outside of itself, such as moods of affections, contrary to the Affektenlehre doctrine. The term "absolute music", originally created by Wagner, was coined for the new aesthetic. It was founded on the belief that instrumental music could stand on its own and free itself non-musical contents or linguistic associations. Around that time, absolute expression was also an ideal for poetry. This is the reason music came to embody the ideals poetry sought after: the expression of the ineffable, of that which is verbally elusive. It is not Treitler’s intention to try to pin down a taxonomy of traits that allow us to differentiate ”absolute music”, nor to claim that the new musical aesth...