The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Theory [research group]
—
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
The title The New Lexicon names the need to reconsider the conceptual vocabularies through which music theory describes, organises, interprets, and evaluates musical experience. Established terms such as pitch, rhythm, metre, harmony, form, structure, function, transformation, coherence, style, expression, complexity, and musical value remain central to theoretical discourse. Yet their meanings cannot be assumed to be stable, self-evident, culturally neutral, or universally adequate today.
These terms have histories. They emerged within particular repertoires, aesthetic traditions, institutions, technologies, pedagogies, and relations of authority. They enable certain distinctions while obscuring others. A concept may illuminate one musical practice while misrepresenting another; a category developed for one archive may become normative when transferred elsewhere. New repertories, media, analytical technologies, collaborative methods, and modes of listening continually test the explanatory power of inherited language.
A new lexicon, however, does not entail replacing one vocabulary with another definitive system. The programme does not seek terminological novelty for its own sake, nor does it presume that inherited concepts have simply become obsolete. Its task is more demanding: to examine what existing words permit theorists to perceive, which assumptions they carry, where they generate confusion, whose practices they centre, and where new distinctions become necessary.
Lexical inquiry is inseparable from theoretical practice. To name a relation differently may be to hear, model, teach, and value it differently. To distinguish description from explanation, pattern from structure, hearing from evidence, or category from phenomenon is not merely to refine discourse after the fact. Such distinctions alter the questions a theory can ask and the answers it can recognise. Conversely, sustained analysis may disclose phenomena for which no adequate term yet exists.
The programme therefore treats vocabulary itself as a site of collective research. Participants will identify key terms within their practices, trace the assumptions attached to them, compare their uses across contexts, and formulate alternatives where necessary. The objective is not universal agreement, but greater conceptual precision without the erasure of methodological, historical, or cultural difference. A genuinely productive lexicon should make disagreement more intelligible, reveal the stakes of translation, and allow theories to remain revisable without becoming indeterminate.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC THEORY
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io