Music theory in the American academy

This dissertation concerns the institutionalization of music theory as an academic discipline in the United States. Chapter One discusses the growth of music theory within undergraduate curricula between circa 1890 and 1945. I posit a continuity between music in public elementary and secondary schools and music theory as a collegiate subject. Central to this continuity is the legacy of Pestalozzianism, the formative educational philosophy of public-school musical pedagogy. I argue that the tenets of Pestalozzianism---experiential learning, individual creativity---abided within the academy through what I call musical theory. Chapter Two concerns the development of modern theory in New York City between circa 1930 and 1960. I describe modern theory as having fulfilled the educational mandates described in Chapter One---that theory, as a post-secondary curriculum, be reformed in favor of subjective, participatory pedagogy.;Modern theory was disciplined through the creation of doctoral programs in music theory at Princeton University and at Yale University; in Chapters Three and Four I describe the respective programs of Princeton and Yale through the 1970s. I critique the effects on these programs of institutional influences including the credit system; the rise of the doctorate as a professional prerequisite; and the scientism of the Cold War academy. Ultimately I associate the programs with conflicting educational paradigms---the empiricism of musical theory and the historicism of the liberal arts. Chapter Five describes the establishment of theory as an American academic discipline; this stage was consummated through the founding, in 1977, of the Society for Music Theory (SMT). SMT nominally codified theory as a discipline modeled after historical musicology; but the discipline, I argue, had a strong connection with American music pedagogy as well. I conclude this argument with a synoptic comparison between SMT and the Music Supervisors National Conference, an organization of public-school educators founded seventy years earlier.