Music Theory, Asterisk

There is a silent asterisk after the words music theory. You never see it printed, but it is always there, the way it hangs after the canon or the great novels. When someone says music theory they mean one specific thing, and we have quietly agreed not to say the specific part out loud. Western. Tonal. Roughly 1700 to 1900. Twelve equal-tempered keys. Two staves. Mostly European, mostly men, mostly gone. All of it is real and most of it is beautiful and I have spent my life inside it. It is also one theory, of one music, from one place, paused at one moment, wearing the name of the whole. The asterisk is where the rest of the world's music went. I have been writing a music theory library since 2018, and refusing that asterisk was the point from the start. The tagline on day one was Music Theory for Humans. The very first code example in the very first README did not strike a key on a piano. It computed a single pitch two ways: in equal temperament as 440 times the fourth root of two,…