Women’s Labor and the History of Music Theory

If in recent decades the field of music theory has seen a reduction in inequalities in gender representation, its histories remain sites of stark imbalance. Rather than working to increase the representation of women as authors of music-theoretical texts, this article seeks to recognize the contributions of women to histories that we already (think we) know. Turning to Therese Marx and Jeanette Schenker, the spouses of two influential theorists, as case studies, I show how material, intellectual, and affective labor are entwined with the formal relations that theory posits between music and its representations. Situating these entwinements within the broader sociohistorical frames of Jewish-German assimilation further illuminates conditions that facilitated the production of music theory and shaped its culturally specific significance. Ultimately, these case studies demand a historiographic reorientation in which authors (of theoretical texts) are decentered in favor of a sociohistory of epistemic conditions in which women’s labor emerges as an essential framework for understanding the activity of music theory.