ABSTRACT
The field of music theory – which, for the last 100 years or so has principally concerned itself with discovering, demonstrating and explaining how sound is structured in musical contexts – is, arguably, at least as diverse as music itself. In part, music-theoretical diversity is an inevitable consequence of the variety of ways in which composers have sought to organize sounds. Yet, despite its diversity, and in so far as it exists as a distinct category of human endeavour, all music shares certain characteristics. Alan Walker, working in the same tradition, states: 'The whole point of an inspired composition is that it diversifies a unity. On the other hand, the whole point about musical analysis is that it seeks to show the unity behind the diversity.' In order to compare the role of repetition in different theories of music, whatever their conceptual basis, a new framework is required, capable of functioning metatheoretically.
