I strongly agree with the alternate title for music theory being “the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians”. This is basically the extent of what is covered in all modern music theory classes you take at any university. It’s all Bach, Mozart, Brahms, but never any composers from places other than Europe. Even if you have to remain in the 18th century for theory classes, there are tons of other composers that aren’t white men. Take for example, Hampartsoum Limondjian, an Ottoman Armenian composer who lived from 1768 – 1839. Because of the music education I’ve received, I have unfortunately never heard of him, but he made great contributions to Armenian classical music. He created his own notation system that became the main system for Western Armenian and Ottoman music in the 18th century. He is responsible for writing out six books worth of Turkish music from the 1700s using his notation system. This wouldn’t be possible using Western notation due to the 14 tones per octave in said music. Another non-European composer from the 18th century is Brazilian composer José Maurício Nunes Garcia. While most of his music was inspired by the Western classical style, his music did have an influence from traditional South American style. If we move backwards from the 18th century, specific composers become harder to find, but musical traditions from all over the world can be discovered. Hundreds of years ago, a lot of countries had a unique musical style, even if it might be similar to neighbouring places. I think that by studying only 18th century European music, we are missing out on the full definition of music. There are tons of music traditions that we haven’t even heard of despite them being around for maybe even thousands of years. Not every style has to be enjoyed, but I strongly believe that many more should be included in “music theory” to broaden the term past European music. Before writing this prompt, I had never heard of the 2 composers I mentioned, despite their large contributions to music in other parts of the world. This needs to change.