Journal Articles by Clifton Boyd
Music Theory Spectrum, 2023
This response to Stephen Lett's article draws parallels between the institutional histories of th... more This response to Stephen Lett's article draws parallels between the institutional histories of the Society for Music Theory (SMT) and the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS). While both societies have struggled with racial diversity and inclusion, the structural racism that has pervaded the BHS since the civil rights era offers a potent and eerily familiar example of how seemingly innocuous, apolitical institutions can be sites of exclusion and inequity that plague the United States at large. Echoing Lett's sentiments, I urge my fellow SMT members to recognize the inherently political nature of our craft as we reassess and rebuild our Society's culture in this period of reckoning.
Theory and Practice, 2021
In the midst of the movement for racial justice reignited by the 2020 murder of George Floyd, mus... more In the midst of the movement for racial justice reignited by the 2020 murder of George Floyd, music departments and universities more broadly seek to address long-standing racial injustices in the academy. One such injustice is “identity-based service,” service labor that is expected from marginalized scholars but not from those with majority identities. This article proposes a new framework for identity-based service in which academic institutions distribute and value this labor more equitably. First, I explore the concept of identity-based service and the burden it places on Black and otherwise marginalized, or “diverse,” scholars. Second, I offer both short- and long-term actionable strategies for addressing the problems stemming from identity-based service, all of which involve either a redistribution or revaluation of this labor. Third, I map my arguments and those of other outspoken music scholars onto the Society for Music Theory’s recent ethical affirmations and commitments to encourage action that supplements the Society’s existing initiatives toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. I ultimately contend that through collective action we music theorists can cultivate an academic community that successfully retains those it claims to value as scholars, teachers, and change agents.
Music Theory and Analysis, 2021
This article explores the metrical and hypermetrical ambiguities present in the Scherzo of Brahms... more This article explores the metrical and hypermetrical ambiguities present in the Scherzo of Brahms's String Sextet in B♭ major, Op. 18 (1859-60). Drawing upon Lerdahl and Jackendoff's metrical preference rules, Mirka's parallel multiple-analysis model, and Ito's fractional notation, I argue that each hearing of material from the opening phrase (at the beginning, during its first repeat, after the Trio, etc.) affords the possibility of a different hypermetrical experience. Furthermore, rather than the metrical structure becoming increasingly clear over time, there are a number of hypermetrical irregularities that can lead listeners to question their previous interpretations. The article concludes with suggestions on how chamber ensembles can utilize metrical analyses of this movement to inform their performances and create varied listening experiences.
Book Reviews by Clifton Boyd
Music Theory Online, 2023
It has been a long four years in music theory. From Philip Ewell's 2019 Society for Music Theory ... more It has been a long four years in music theory. From Philip Ewell's 2019 Society for Music Theory (SMT) plenary talk to the publication of this review essay, our small-yet-scrappy field has somehow ended up more ba ered and bruised by recent discourses on race and racism than most other academic disciplines. (1) As Sumanth Gopinath (2023) wrote in response to Stephen Le 's (2023) piercing critique of the SMT, "It is not a good time to be a music theorist" (125; italics in the original). But maybe that is about to change: in Ewell's much-anticipated monograph, On Music Theory, the field has finally received a comprehensive guide on how to dismantle its white-male frame-or at least that is what many readers will likely hope for in this text. The book's subtitle, "Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone," certainly gestures toward this goal. Yet given Ewell's reputation as a polemical thought leader in the field, the subtitle strikes us as unexpectedly optimistic. Less charitable readers might even accuse Ewell of hewing dangerously close to the "Kumbaya" rhetoric that he argues is used too often in conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). In the opening pages of On Music Theory, however, Ewell clarifies that his focus is not DEI, which "leaves white structures intact and in control," but rather antiracism, which "focuses on the anti-BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] activities undertaken by white structures that kept whiteness in power" (3). In this vein, the monograph's conclusion acknowledges what might have been a more accurate subtitle for the book: "How the Many Mythologies of the Western White-Male Musical Canon Have Created Hostile Environments for Those Who Do Not Identify as White Cisgender Men" (278). To be sure, such an unvarnished subtitle would have come with its own host of problems, but for our purposes it offers a pithy summary of the thesis that Ewell puts forward in On Music Theory, a book more focused on reframing the discipline's past than envisioning its future. [2] The monograph is structured according to these priorities: after introducing the major themes and goals of the book (Intro) and discussing the state of race and race scholarship in music theory (Chapter 1), Ewell broadens his scope to examine the roots of whiteness in myths about Western civilization (Chapter 2). Ewell then demonstrates the danger of white mythologies through the case
Book Chapters by Clifton Boyd
The Oxford Handbook of Public Music Theory, 2022
This chapter examines how music theory has historically been utilized within the Barbershop Harmo... more This chapter examines how music theory has historically been utilized within the Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) to influence and arm the Society’s social and political values, in particular as they relate to whiteness, racial segregation, and racial discrimination in the United States. As evidence, the chapter cites Society-published style treatises written by barbershop practitioners with insider knowledge of their communities. The work of these practitioners determines the rules of the barbershop style for an international community of musicians. After introducing the concept of “invented traditions,” the chapter then discusses the Society’s early definitions of the barbershop style and culture; its practices of segregation and discrimination during the civil rights era (and the corresponding musical preservationism); and concludes with reflections on its present-day “Everyone in Harmony” diversity initiative (2017–).
Short Essays by Clifton Boyd
Music Theory Online, 2025
In recent years, the discipline of music theory has devoted a lot of attention to the role of soc... more In recent years, the discipline of music theory has devoted a lot of attention to the role of social and political issues in music-theoretical discourse. Indeed, if there remains "anyone naive enough still to think music theory and analysis . . . are insulated from any social, political, or institutional ideologies" (Christensen 2024, 100), the steady stream of scholarship in response to and/or bolstered by the U.S.'s 2020 racial reckoning (or awakening) attests to the "interconnectedness between music theory and worldview," as Daniel Goldberg ([0.3]) writes. Much of this socially, culturally, and politically informed work, including my own, has focused on how the discipline of music theory has historically aligned itself with a worldview that oppresses people marginalized by race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and other identity markers (
Being Black in the Ivory: Truth-Telling about Racism in Higher Education, 2024
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Journal Articles by Clifton Boyd
Book Reviews by Clifton Boyd
Book Chapters by Clifton Boyd
Short Essays by Clifton Boyd