Journal of Music Theory

For subscription information and information for contributors, please visit JMT's website at Duke University Press.

Founded by David Kraehenbuehl at Yale in 1957, JMT is the oldest music-theory journal now published in the United States. Originally a publication of the Yale School of Music, where it was officially housed for many years, JMT has always been edited by scholars associated with the Department of Music in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a relationship formalized in the last decade with JMT's move to the Department. The current editor of JMT is Ian Quinn.

JMT publishes research with important and broad applications in the analysis of music and the history of music theory as well as theoretical and metatheoretical work that engages and stimulates ongoing discourse in the field. Since its inception, the journal has fostered conceptual and technical innovations in abstract, systematic musical thought, and cultivated the historical study of musical concepts and compositional techniques. While remaining true to its original formalist outlook, the journal also addresses the influences of philosophy, mathematics, computer science, cognitive science, and anthropology on music theory.

The staff of JMT is particularly excited about some special initiatives we're announcing in connection with the journal's fiftieth anniversary. Later in 2008 we will publish a special anniversary issue edited by Daniel Harrison that features reflections on JMT's past, as well as an analysis symposium on J.S. Bach's chorale prelude Das alte Jahr vergangen ist ("The old year has passed"). This issue will introduce an updated design and format for the journal. We are also very pleased to announce the establishment of the David Kraehenbuehl Prize, to be given every two years to the best article in JMT by a scholar untenured at time of submission. The Kraehenbuehl Prize carries a cash award of $2000, made possible by a permanent endowment of funds at Yale.

Plans for Volume 51 and beyond include special issues on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century partimento tradition, on new developments in mathematical music theory, and on the analysis of early music, as well as the broad range of excellent articles that JMT's readers have come to expect.

JMT is published on behalf of the Yale Department of Music by Duke University Press.