Tonality* is the name of my research project into the mutual application of trans and queer phenomenology to historically-situated experimental music, in particular the enharmonic experiments of Nicola Vicentino (1511-1576).

Philosopher Paul B Preciado’s comparison of the Copernican revolution of heliocentrism to today’s multiple gender identities might be extended to Vicentino’s arguably non-binary enharmonic music, as a system that disorients by questioning tonal centres. My research approaches these questions by focusing on the themes of disorientation and decomposition in reference to Sara Ahmed, Emma Bigé, Donna Haraway, Jack Halberstam, and others. I believe this can help illustrate the interdependent relations between Vicentino’s sound world and queer theory, where both are tools for probing the norms established by the culture they grew from, namely, European ontologies of rigid, hierarchical classifications.