Music Theory Pedagogies Reimagined, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, July 8, 2026
Hermeneutics is making a comeback in music theory. For over a decade, Lawrence Kramer (2011; 2016; 2020) has been calling for a radically “open” variety of hermeneutics, arguing that “there is no hermeneutic circle” our musical analyses can follow from subjective interpretation to intersubjective fact. Since then, Gavin S. K. Lee (2024) has written about the “hermeneutic limits” to queer musicology, while Dylan Principi (2024) has used philosophical hermeneutics to critique topic theory’s “semiotic turn.” A recent edited volume from Oxford (Puri et al. 2025) uses hermeneutics to champion new perspectives on Musical Meaning and Interpretation. At the AMS-SMT conference in Minneapolis, Anna Yu Wang invoked hermeneutics as a “form of listening in contemporary politics,” and the AMS Philosophy Study Group held a crowded roundtable on “closing the gap between musical and philosophical hermeneutics.”
In a moment when truth seems so conflicted, perhaps it makes sense that music theorists are reimagining their relationships to hermeneutics—which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines broadly as “the study of interpretation.” For a field that has been pondering its conceptual frames for over a half decade, interpretation offers meaning without dogmatic certainties, knowledge without firm foundations. As a disciplinary trend, hermeneutics promises to open music theory to the increasingly global horizons of music studies. And as a classroom subject, hermeneutics gives students recourse in a brave new world of alternative facts and artificial intelligence. But it also poses an obstacle: How do you teach an interpretive practice that actively resists a fixed pedagogy?
In this presentation, I discuss the challenges—both theoretical and practical—to instituting a curriculum for musical meaning. I will also share my strategies for revamping our undergraduate courses on “Musical Meaning and Performance.” By teaching a diverse swath of analytical techniques and combining primary source readings in philosophy with student-led performances, hands-on analysis, and writing activities, these courses aim at a holistic introduction to musical hermeneutics: one that dares students to interpret no matter what comes their way (musical or otherwise).