From Jonah Katz and David Pesetsky:
We are interested in starting a reading group based loosely around linguistics-inspired approaches to music cognition, especially structural approaches to music theory. The idea would be to start out by going through part or all of Lerdahl & Jackendoff’s Generative Theory of Tonal Music, a foundational text in this area. We would help ‘teach’ the book to some extent, because it’s dense and difficult, and we’ve both spent a lot of time with it. After going through GTTM, we’d like to keep meeting. Some ideas are to look at more recent literature in this area or, ideally, to encourage people to start and discuss their own projects.We want the group to be accessible to anybody with a minimal background in playing/studying music. For instance: if you can’t transpose an orchestral score on sight, don’t worry! But if you can’t read music at all, you’d probably need some remedial study — we’d need to assume that. If you can’t analyze chord progressions, fine; if you don’t know what a ‘chord’ is, this is probably not for you. Please let us know (e-mail jkatz and pesetsk) if you have any interest in participating in such a group this semester. Our impression is that there are lots of musical people in the department and increasing interest in this topic.