Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2019
Folk musicians are generally assumed to make music but not to think very much about it. Yet recent studies by Zemp (1978, 1979) and others demonstrate the existence of elaborate conceptual systems related to music in cultures without a written tradition. If the comparison between Western and a particular non-Western music theory seems invidious, it is partly because the West has a tradition of discourse about music (musica theoretica) that has existed for over 2000 years quite apart from practical music making (musica practica).