Im Oktober 2008 fand an der Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz (KUG) der 8. Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH) zum Thema »Musiktheorie als interdisziplinäres Fach« statt. Die hier vorgelegten gesammelten Beiträge akzentuieren Musiktheorie als multiperspektivische wissenschaftliche Disziplin in den Spannungsfeldern Theorie/Praxis, Kunst/Wissenschaft und Historik/Systematik. Die sechs Kapitel ergründen dabei die Grenzbereiche zur Musikgeschichte, Musikästhetik, zur Praxis musikalischer Interpretation, zur kompositorischen Praxis im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert, zur Ethnomusikologie sowie zur Systematischen Musikwissenschaft. Insgesamt 45 Aufsätze, davon 28 in deutscher, 17 in englischer Sprache, sowie die Dokumentation einer Podiumsdiskussion zeichnen in ihrer Gesamtheit einen höchst lebendigen und gegenwartsbezogenen Diskurs, der eine einzigartige Standortbestimmung des Fachs Musiktheorie bietet. / The 8th congress of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH) took place in October 2008 at the University for Music and Dramatic Arts Graz (KUG) on the topic »Music Theory and Interdisciplinarity«. The collected contributions characterize music theory as a multi-faceted scholarly discipline at the intersection of theory/practice, art/science and history/system. The six chapters explore commonalties with music history, music aesthetics, musical performance, compositional practice in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music, ethnomusicology and systematic musicology. A total of 45 essays (28 in German, 17 in English) and the documentation of a panel discussion form a vital discourse informed by contemporaneous issues of research in a broad number of fields, providing a unique overview of music theory today. A comprehensive English summary appears at the beginning of all contributions.

Music theory has acquired a unique position in between many fields, most notably composition, historical and systematic musicology and music pedagogy. Motivated by the topic »music theory and interdisciplinarity«, this essay explores the fields spanned by today’s music theory in seven short chapters. The first chapter describes changes of the discipline in German-speaking countries since the 1960s and its development from a simple synonym of practical harmony and a propedeutic means for music analysis to a postmodern, rich and scholarly ambitous field that can hardly be reduced to a common denominator. In the second chapter the author, drawing on Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, argues that music theory should not limit itself to purely »technical« issues, but must also address emotional or expectational realms of musical meaning. The third chapter further explores this point by discussing the opposition between musical theory and practice, suggesting that music theory indeed has the potential to let these two poles stimulate one another. The same is true for the often debated divide between »artistic« and »scholarly« aspects of music theory, explored in the fourth chapter: They are not mutually exclusive, but rather always have influenced each other, as evidenced by eighteenth-century treatises. Exchange with related disciplines such as music psychology has increased since the 1960s, as chapter five summarizes, although the relationship between music theory and musicology sometimes remains problematic. In the sixth chapter, a short analytical approach to four examples from the standard repertoire (Schubert, Bach, Brahms, Mozart) attempt to demonstrate the potential of specifically music-theoretical viewpoints. The final section advocates the strengthening of a specific profile for music theory: The liberation from dogmatic thought and systematic rigour should not lead us to overstretch music-theoretical questions.