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Fhyve comments on Bad Concepts Repository - Less Wrong
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"Harmony" -- specifically the idea of root progressions -- in music theory. (EDIT: That's "music theory", not "music". The target of my criticism is a particular tradition of theorizing about music, not any body of actual music.)
This is perhaps the worst theory I know of to be currently accepted by a mainstream academic discipline. (Imagine if biologists were Lamarckians, despite Darwin.)
I have read around and I still can't really tell what Westergaardian theory is. I can see how harmony fails as a framework (it doesn't work very well for a lot of music I have tried to analyze) so I think there is a good chance that Westergaard is (more) right. However, other than the fact that there are these things called lines, and that there exist rules (I have not actually found a list or description of such rules) for manipulating them. I am not sure how this is different from counterpoint. I don't want to go and read a textbook to figure this out, I would rather read ~5-10 pages of exposition and big-picture
The best I can recommend is the following article:
Peles, Stephen. "An Introduction to Westergaard's Tonal Theory".In Theory Only 13:1-4 [September 1997] pp. 73-94
It's a rather obscure journal, but if you have access to a particularly good university library (or interlibrary loan), you may be able to find it. Failing that, if you PM me with your email address, I can send you the text of the article (without figures, unfortunately).
The defunct journal's web site is open access. Text (search for Peles). Table of contents of page by page scans; first page.
Wow, thanks!