Music Theory Online Volume 32, Number 1

Volume 32 Number 1, April 2026

Editor’s Message

Articles

When Music Theory Forgets Its History: How We Got into “Escape Tones,” and How the Past Can Help us Escape	32.1.1
David Carson Berry (University of Cincinnati)

Structural and Rhetorical Closure in 1970s Rock Songs	32.1.2
Nick Braae (Waikato Institute of Technology)

A Context-Sensitive Analysis of the Pre-Dominant Function	32.1.3
Jenine L. Brown (The Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University) Daphne Tan (University of Toronto) Victoria Boerner (University of Toronto) Yeonju Lindsey Lee (The Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University)

Musical Distance, Anticipation, and Character Development in Kaija Saariaho’s Opera L’Amour de loin	32.1.4
Gabrielle Choma (University of Oregon) Jack Boss (University of Oregon)

Compositional Pluralism in Roger Sessions’s Second Symphony	32.1.5
David Hier (Oklahoma State University)

Modulation and Chromatic Mediants in Japanese Anime Songs	32.1.6
Joy Li (University of Pennsylvania)

Rore’s Arcane Counterpoint	32.1.7
Peter Schubert (Schulich School of Music, McGill University) Sylvain Margot (Schulich School of Music, McGill University)

The Semiotics of Glissandi in Video Games	32.1.8
Jeremy W. Smith (The Ohio State University)

MTO Personnel for the Current Volume

Updated April 18 2026

Music Theory Online, an open-access publication, is fully funded by the Society for Music Theory.

If you are enjoying and benefitting from the scholarship that we offer and have the means, please consider making a donation to the Society for Music Theory!