Funksjonsteori – en musikkteoretisk tradisjon

Post-Riemannian function theory has held a strong position in Norwegian music education during the past fifty years. How has this tradition in Western music theory in general, and in Norway in particular, been historically constructed? The article provides a historical overview of (post-)Riemannian function theory, its pre-history and its reception. It does so based on the extensive literature on this topic in English-, German- and Scandinavian-language music research as well as central primary sources. In addition to providing the first survey of this literature in Norwegian, a central contribution of this article is to relate this field of research to the music theory context in Norway. The article discusses how Norwegian music theorists adopted function theory rather late (compared to, for instance, their Swedish and Danish colleagues) and how they preferred to adapt it in a manner that made the function symbols as similar to the older Roman numerals as possible. Drawing on the historical overview and the discussion of function theory in Norway, the final section of the article briefly addresses some general challenges with (post-)Riemannian function theory.