Oh, it's not just a semantic hangup. Most people who start reading about "music theory" are, I insist, hoping to understand what music is and how it works. What they get is instead a treatise on common-practice patterns from classical European through American-based jazz and pop music with only a smidgen of insights into the nature of music.
Even if you just stick within one of those traditions, the "theory" is more of a post-hoc attempt to explain (and in some cases dictate) the patterns found in music practice. Rarely are those post-hoc explanations subjected to any rigorous sort of critical thinking aside from the history of debates between different theorists postulating their own variations of post-hoc explanations.
Okay, even that is a bit unfair. But I think it does a disservice to students when these things are presented as "music theory" without qualification and context.
Yeah, but this semantic problem has deeper ramifications. Since 98% of people who want an explanation of music get instead stuck down a rabbit-hole of culturally-biased music-pattern jargon/notation stuff, they don't know what they are missing. The market doesn't recognize its failure. And teachers don't learn that there even exists better insights to offer.
The core point: I can't just tell someone about this semantic problem and then they are just on the right track and all is fine. Instead, even when you recognize the semantic problem, there's not a robust beginner-oriented base of literature for music cognition. The semantic problem is an actual obstacle to the prosperity of the better approach that I'm suggesting deserves to be recognized as "music theory".
Even if you just stick within one of those traditions, the "theory" is more of a post-hoc attempt to explain (and in some cases dictate) the patterns found in music practice. Rarely are those post-hoc explanations subjected to any rigorous sort of critical thinking aside from the history of debates between different theorists postulating their own variations of post-hoc explanations.
Okay, even that is a bit unfair. But I think it does a disservice to students when these things are presented as "music theory" without qualification and context.