Ewelldämmerung
Music theory's woke emperor has no clothes.
Dear readers,
First of all, an apology for my absence from the airwaves of late. Conducting life has been busy. You will notice that as of a month ago, I put monthly subscription fees for paid subscribers on pause. I plan to return to regular programming in just a few weeks.
But in the meantime, I wanted to share my latest in City Journal—my review of the long-awaited magnum opus On Music Theory by the discipline’s woke emperor, Philip Ewell. Please read and share widely. We cannot continue to allow total nonsense in our field to spread uncontested. Ideas have consequences, and the consequences of Ewell’s are already being felt in concert halls and music departments across America.
DB
Good to see you on Substack again, Don! We missed you, but, if I may speak for my fellow readers, it's good to learn that it was a spate of conducting work that kept you away.
IRT Philip Ewell, it seems that he and those such as Ibram X. Kendi are caught making the same converse error over and over again. That is, if it's true to state, for example, that if there is systemic racism, then there will be racial disparities, it's false to convert that and state that if there are racial disparities, then there must be systemic racism.
I attended a top-notch Midwestern university music school in the before times, and I loved all those courses that you list in your third-to-last paragraph, in particular Schenkerian analysis, and that Ewell would do away with. Furthermore, if I had to do it over again now, I would take the same courses and would reject those new tracks offered by Ewell as substitutions. BTW, in music school I also took ethnomusicology classes, specializing in Hindustani raga music and Javanese gamelan.
I'm pretty sure I'm already a subscriber but can't find a place to open this.