Rehding, Alexander2017-10-162016Rehding, Alexander. 2016. “Three Music-Theory Lessons.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 141 (2) (July 2): 251–282. doi:10.1080/02690403.2016.1216025.0269-0403http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:34220771This article is an attempt to understand music theory from the perspective of written and sounding media. It examines three radically different music-theoretical practices, which operate with different forms of written notation and different musical instruments, and have surprisingly different purposes in mind: the monochord-based theory of Franchinus Gaffurius (1518), the siren-based theory of Wilhelm Opelt (1834) and the piano-and-score-based theory commonly practised in our age. The instruments used in these three music theories hold the key to a fuller understanding: they can be understood as ‘epistemic things’ – that is, in producing sounds, these objects simultaneously produce knowledge about music. From a media-archaeological perspective, I suggest, these three music-theoretical practices stand emblematically for Pythagorean, digital and textual approaches to music.en-USJournal Article2017-10-1610.1080/02690403.2016.1216025