Why do we need theory to explain music? “Actually, theory can be beautiful and illuminating (as opposed to complicated, obfuscating, quagmired, self-important, self-absorbed). And nothing could be more human: the desire to create systems out of chaos or near-chaos is a natural and (usually) noble expression of humanity’s ability to reason. And there are theories about everything: Goethe had one about color, Einstein had one about gravity, Eisenstein had one about film montage… Freud about dreams. Darwin even had a pet theory (literally). But music theory is surely the strangest. That’s the burden of trying to make sense of the most ethereal, ephemeral, abstract–one could argue the most free–art form.”