ABSTRACT
Rock theory might be said to have come of age in November 1990, when a session on rock was included at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Music Theory at Oakland, California; papers were given by Graeme Boone, Matthew Brown, John Covach, Walter Everett, and Dave Headlam. As is the case with historically ‘authentic’ performances, then, the authority of the Urtext is a reflected one; its source is seen as lying in the composer’s intentions, and both musicologists and performing musicians use the language of intentionality with what must strike any literary theorist as gay abandon. The idea of the Urtext, like that of historical performance practice, goes back to the days of Brahms, but its acceptance as the norm of informed performance dates back hardly further than the 1960s. The text and a relatively continuous performance tradition, constrain the bounds of viable interpretation.
