Pitch-Class Set Theory: An Overture

A Tale of Two Continents In the late afternoon of October 24, 1999, about one hundred people were gathered in a large rehearsal room of the Rotterdam Conservatory. They were listening to a discussion between representatives of nine European countries about the teaching of music theory and music analysis. It was the third day of the Fourth European Music Analysis Conference. Most participants in the conference (which included a number of music theorists from Canada and the United States) had been looking forward to this session: meetings about the various analytical traditions and pedagogical practices in Europe were rare, and a broad survey of teaching methods was lacking. Most felt a need for information from beyond their country's borders. This need was reinforced by the mobility of music students and the resulting hodgepodge of nationalities at renowned conservatories and music schools. Moreover, the European systems of higher education were on the threshold of a harmonization operation. Earlier that year, on June 19, the governments of 29 countries had ratifi ed the “Bologna Declaration,” a document that envisaged a unifi ed European area for higher education. Its enforcement added to the urgency of the meeting in Rotterdam. However, this meeting would not be remembered for the unusually broad representation of nationalities or for its political timeliness. What would be remembered was an incident which took place shortly after the audience had been invited to join in the discussion. Somebody had raised a question about classroom analysis of twentieth-century music, a recurring topic among music theory teachers: whereas the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries lent itself to general analytical methodologies, the extremely diverse repertoire of the twentieth century seemed only to invite ad hoc approaches; how could the analysis of works from this repertoire be tailored to the purpose of systematical training without placing too much emphasis on particular styles of composition? A late visitor entered the room, and seated himself on a chair in the middle of the front row. He listened for a while to the discussion, his face expressing growing astonishment. Then he raised his hand and said: “You guys are discussing methods of analyzing twentieth-century music. Why don't you talk about pitch-class sets?” He was American. The chairman, a professor from the Sorbonne, was quick to respond: “We do not talk about pitch-class sets, because we do not hear them!”

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