Editor's Message

1. New Look!

2. Did you know...?

3. Memory upgrade

4. MTO NetAds

5. "New Musicology" papers


1. New Look!

This issue of MTO introduces a new look for our articles presented as Web documents, using HTML "tags." Robert Judd, MTO Manager, has developed a useful and attractive template for our HTML-formatted essays. The template includes several buttons at the top, one for moving to the listing of items for the current issue, another for viewing the endnotes of the essay, two more for jumping to the MTO and SMT home pages, and, most importantly, one for posting comments about the essay to mto-talk, the discussion list allied with MTO. Those who post comments to mto-talk should use a uniform Subject line so that a discussion thread, traceable by that Subject line, develops. The title of this issue's essay, "Schenker's Value-Judgments," by William Pastille, makes a good Subject line. In the future, the publication notice that precedes the release of each issue will suggest uniform Subject lines for each essay and commentary. The suggested lines may of course mutate as a discussion evolves. The mto-talk editor, Claire Boge, may need to adjust the line to maintain continuity. We hope the new template meets with approval, and invite suggestions for improvements.

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2. Did you know...?

Did you know that
MTO has nearly 1100 subscribers world-wide?
MTO's Web page was visited an average of 100 times a day over the last 6 weeks?
MTO is indexed by RILM (International Repertory of Music Literature)?
MTO is fully copyrighted?
MTO has in its short 2 3/4 years published 24 essays (not counting commentaries and reviews)?
MTO has an allied mailing list, mto-talk, for discussing articles?
MTO has a database of its contents, indexed by author, title, and keyword, searchable through the Web?
MTO is an official publication of the Society for Music Theory?

We invite you to show your appreciation and support for MTO by contacting the SMT Treasurer, Cynthia Folio, to join the Society. Watch the MTO Web page, which will soon have a Web form for joining.

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3. Memory upgrade

Subscribers may recall from the last Editor's Message that UCSB granted MTO $3000 to pay for editorial, technical, and clerical help during the current academic year. I am now pleased to report a donation of $750, which was used to purchase and install 16 megabytes of RAM, bringing boethius's memory to 32 megabytes. Many thanks to the generous donor, who has chosen to remain anonymous.

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4. MTO NetAds

At the recent annual SMT meeting in New York City, the Networking Committee, chaired by Aleck Brinkman (Eastman School of Music), proposed to the Publications Committee that MTO allow certain types of advertisements to appear in the journal. The proposal was passed by the Publications Committee and, on its recommendation, by the Executive Board. Beginning with the next issue of MTO, advertisements may be submitted for inclusion in a new department, to be called NetAds.

The NetAds for a current issue will be listed in the table of contents under the filename ads.current. Subscribers who use mto-serv to retrieve MTO items can order the ads by including the line "send ads" or "send advertisements" in a message addressed to mto-serv@societymusictheory.org. Those who retrieve items by anonymous FTP will find the ads.current file in the pub/mto/issues directory. Past NetAd files will be named according to the standard MTO filename, with the suffix .ads (e.g. mto.95.1.6.ads), and will be found in the corresponding subdirectory of pub/mto/issues (e.g. mto.95.1.6.ads would be in the pub/mto/issues/mto.95.1.6 directory).

We hope that subscribers will take advantage of the new NetAd service as a way of nofitying the music theory community of items of interest (for example software for CAI, analysis, music notation).

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5. "New Musicology papers"

One of the best attended and most thought-provoking sessions at the SMT meeting in New York City was entitled "Contemporary Theory and the 'New Musicology'." Patrick McCreless, immediate past President of the SMT, gave a ten-minute introduction to the session, which put the subject into perspective. Five invited speakers followed, Scott Burnham (Princeton Univeristy), "Theorists and 'The Music Itself'"; Marion A. Guck (Washington Univeristy, St. Louis), "Music Loving, or The Relationship with the Musical Work"; Matthew Brown (Louisiana State University), "Adrift on Neurath's Boat: The Case for a Naturalized Music Theory"; Joseph Dubiel (Columbia Univeristy), "On Getting Deconstructed"; and Kofi Agawu (Yale University), "Analyzing Music under the New Musicological Regime." The first four papers will appear in the next few issues of MTO. Professor Agawu's paper may appear at a later time.

The papers addressed vital matters regarding the ways music theorists think about, define, and carry out the tasks of their discipline. We hope that the papers will stimulate an active and productive dialog through the mto-talk discussion list (mto-talk@societymusictheory.org), and through formal commentaries submitted for publication in MTO. Watch for the first papers to appear in volume 2.1 (January, 1996).

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Lee A. Rothfarb, General Editor
Music Theory Online
University of California, Santa Barbara
mto-editor@societymusictheory.org