Global Music Composition & Music Theory Resources: A Bibliography

This bibliography is a work in progress and grew out of a need to understand composition and music creation at a global level rather than just through a Eurocentric and North American centric lens of composition and music production.

Discussions, pedagogy and curricula, and programming of compositions can be greatly enriched by these traditions which tacitly include diverse composers, musicians, instruments, and audiences and communities. Also, we can’t fully appreciate how Western Art Music (WAM) and Anglo-American, or Western Pop Music (WPM) ecosystems exclude diverse composers and musics without understanding systemic issues caused by centuries of colonialism, slavery, and systemic racism.

This version of the bibliography is split into this introduction, three sections, and two appendixes:

• Primary Composition Resources
• Selected Courses, Workshops, Seminars
• Selected References and Commentary
• Appendix A: Compositional Resources and Organizations
• Appendix B: Jon Silpayamanant’s Online Footprint Discussion Global Composition Traditions

The Primary Composition Resources is self-explanatory and will focus on textbooks, case studies, orchestration guides, and a few bios pieces of significant composers in these other composition traditions. The Selected Courses, Workshops, Seminars will focus on actual applied contexts and related shorter term workshops and residencies. These are becoming more numerous as we get into a virtual presentation world. The Selected References and Commentaries will highlight articles, and reviews (of e.g. textbooks).

Appendix A will list resources and organizations which focus on global composition, specific traditions, or organizations highlighting those topics and the composers who work in them. Appendix B lists some of my commentary about issues of global composition traditions that I’ve posted and published over the years.

For real time updates to the Bibliography please follow the Google Document or Twitter thread linked in References below.