Private Music Theory

Abstract This essay examines how distinctions between “public” and “private” helped to form and sustain the discipline of academic music theory. Drawing on J. Daniel Jenkins’s concept of “liminal spaces,” I discuss two historical examples of public music theory that problematize traditional binary divisions of public and private, and how these examples intersect with—and depart from—the plenary articles featured in this issue. I conclude with some thoughts about “public” and “private” music theory in our era.