Society for Music Theory
American learned society; open-access publisher
The Society for Music Theory (SMT) is an American organization devoted to the promotion, development and engagement of music theory as a scholarly and pedagogical discipline. Founded in 1977 by a group of distinguished theorists, among them Allen Forte and Wallace Berry, its members are primarily theorists in North American academic institutions and as of 2023 number over 1200. Among the SMT's publications are the Music Theory Spectrum and Music Theory Online journals, as well as the SMT Newsletter.
A member of the American Council of Learned Societies since 2000, the society's formation inspired the formation of similar organizations across the world. The SMT has a close relationship for the American Musicological Society; many members are in both, particularly during the SMT's early history. The SMT is based at the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University Bloomington.
Overview
In the 1970s, few schools had dedicated music theory programs, many music theorists had been trained as composers or historians, and there was a belief among theorists that the teaching of music theory was inadequate and that the subject was not properly recognized as a scholarly discipline in its own right. A growing number of scholars began promoting the idea that music theory should be taught by theorists, rather than composers, performers or music historians. In the words of Richmond Browne, a founding member of the Society and its first secretary, "Our goal was to create a profession." After a number of more informal discussions, there were two National Conferences on Music Theory, the first in 1976 in Boston and the second on October 19, 1977, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. While organizers were wary about collecting enough momentum, three hundred scholars turned up for the Evanston meeting, and the society was founded with an initial membership including almost 500 theorists.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7552177. VIAF identifies the subject as 149558589. The Library of Congress control number is n79128879. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 2023, 1200 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Society for Music Theory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.