[hooboodoo]

I find it interesting that all of your examples to help define the broadness of musical theory as you see it are all, themselves, descended from western musical thought. That might speak to the point being made in a different way than any of us consider it.

[mmcclimon]

Fair point; that's partly my own bias (I know basically nothing about non-Western musics), and partly because of the article I'm responding to ("Bach doesn't tell us anything about gamelan music" isn't an interesting observation).

But also: the majority of academic music theory at the moment does focus broadly on the Western tradition. That's changing, I think, but a quick scan of recent articles in Music Theory Online (https://www.mtosmt.org/issues/issues.php) reveals quite a broad spectrum of music, most (not all!) of it is from the Western tradition.

[coldtea]

>Fair point; that's partly my own bias (I know basically nothing about non-Western musics)

Well, let's expand this: how many do in the area HN has the majority of its readers (I presume US and, maybe, Europe)?

I happen to know about a couple of non-western music traditions (because of my geography).

But it's not like those are mainstream or even merely somewhat popular outside of the areas where they are a tradition. It's not like the Austrians listen to ragas, or the Chileans to balkan polyphonic choirs (some might, but then again if we look enough, some would also listen to noisecore or renaissance lute tunes).

[duped]

I think a trend in contemporary theory is the understanding that western music study is a like a philosophy for how it's been taught and understood for a few centuries. There are a lot of composers that have outright rejected the practice to bring in influences and learn from other cultures in the last half of the 20th century, and more recently schools will teach students some pedagogy from other cultures or perform works from non-western composers as a means of exposure.

The kind of downside is that until the late 20th century, music education (including theory) was basically a master/apprentice relationship and even today we have a lot of that tradition baked into the formal study.