Editor’s Message

Dear MTO readers,

I am very pleased to announce the publication of Music Theory Online volume 18.3, a Festschrift in memory of our colleague Steve Larson. Stephen Rodgers (University of Oregon), Henry Martin (Rutgers University-Newark), and Keith Waters (University of Colorado Boulder) served as guest editors.

Steve Larson passed away in the summer of 2011, but his work continues to influence students and scholars in rich and diverse ways. This MTO Festschrift features nine papers from a memorial conference that took place in the spring of 2012, along with a chapter from Larson’s unpublished textbook on Schenkerian analysis and four original compositions. There are two articles on musical forces, by Matthew BaileyShea and Robert Hatten; four on jazz theory, by David Heyer, Stefan Love, Henry Martin, and Mark McFarland; and three that build upon Larson’s ideas about ambiguity and form, by Alison Hood, Gary Karpinski, and Keith Waters. The four compositions, dedicated to Larson, are by Robert Hatten, Henry Martin, Tim Pack, and Stephen Rodgers; recordings are included. A beautiful introduction by the guest editors recalls Steve’s playful, inquisitive, and generous nature, and provides an overview of the Festschrift articles, textbook chapter, and compositions.

We are pleased and honored to provide a venue for this work. It will no doubt be the place to go for all those who seek an ongoing engagement with the many facets of Steve Larson’s professional legacy.

With this issue, we also continue our record of publishing succinct and timely book reviews—to help you keep up with all that is new in music theory. Vasili Byros reviews Giorgio Sanguinetti, The Art of Partimento: History, Theory, and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2012); Kristina Muxfeldt reviews Suzannah Clark, Analyzing Schubert (Cambridge University Press, 2011); Robert Peck reviews Steven Rings, Tonality and Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2011); and Jason Yust reviews Richard Cohn, Audacious Euphony: Chromaticism and the Triad’s Second Nature (Oxford University Press, 2012). Matthew Shaftel kindly agreed to serve as guest editor for the review of Rings’s Tonality and Transformation.

I offer my sincere thanks to guest editors Stephen Rodgers, Henry Martin, and Keith Waters for proposing the Festschrift, selecting the papers, and sending them to us in highly polished form. I thank Karen Bottge (associate editor) and the dedicated MTO editorial board for their further input and oversight. My thanks to Steve Rings (reviews editor) for maintaining the ambitious pace and high quality of our book reviews, to Brent Yorgason (managing editor) for his tireless work bringing this all together behind the scenes, and to the editorial assistants for all their dedication, hard work, and attention to detail.

We would like to encourage new and creative submissions to MTO. Although we are especially well suited for the publication of articles that incorporate recordings, videos, and other media, we also welcome submissions in any number of formats, including full-length articles, shorter essays and commentaries, conference reports, and entire special volumes.

Comments in response to this issue’s articles may be submitted to the Editor for publication in the next issue. Also, please refer to our submission guidelines, if you are interested in submitting.

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All MTO volumes dating back to our first issue in 1993 can be accessed from the contents page at http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/issues.html. Thank you, as always, for your support of MTO - a Journal of the Society for Music Theory.