Introduction

Self-reflexivity is of course nothing new and nothing unusual in the humanities. It is possible that “postmodernity,” if it means anything at all, means a set of intellectual and cultural circumstances in which metatheory threatens to fully and irrevocably supplant first-order theorizing: there are no more grand narratives, only critiques of grand narratives; the text has no outside; and so on. The divided house that is modern music theory contains both those for whom music theory is a “normal science” that has a more or less well-defined and agreed-upon job to do and set of appropriate tools for getting the job done, and “Korsynian” proponents of critical self-reflection. The wide scope and diversity of the essays collected, the kaleidoscopic array of perspectives that they collectively put forward, will, the people hope, encourage readers to reflect critically on the scope and diversity of music theory itself.