Afterword

The Treatise makes a valuable addition to the corpus of writings about SEAM that Savall and his colleagues have produced over the last half century. It leaves me with the following general impressions. First, reading the opening chapter by Savall and Zardet (SZ) reminds me that SEAM is a difficult theory for a novice to comprehend which must certainly contribute to why it is not well known in North America. SEAM consists of a plethora of foreign, nonintuitive concepts (e.g., “generic contingency”) that stand as a barrier for appreciating the richness and novelty of this theory because they do not travel well or easily. That being said, SZ’s chapter (along with others) will be invaluable to newcomers wanting to learn SEAM and for those writing about it because, in a single source, it provides updated and authoritative definitions, explanations, clarifications, and synthesis of SEAM’s key concepts.