Changing content in flagship music theory journals, 1979-2014⁽¹⁾

Since the founding of the Society for Music Theory in 1977, the Anglophone music theory discipline has extensively diversified, now encompassing manifold subfields. A pertinent question arises: how does the music theory discipline balance this diversity with a sense of unity and cohesiveness? An investigation into journal articles-one of the main ways music theory presents itself to the world-can serve as a useful entry point for this question. We develop and analyze a corpus of article abstracts published between 1979 and 2014 from four general-scope flagship periodicals: Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum, Music Analysis, and Music Theory Online.