Recently in our department we've been talking about two main philosophical approaches to teaching theory. The first approach involves teaching students to become keen analysts by having them look at and study a lot of music and write about what they uncover. This approach is, of course, supplemented by a variety of part-writing type exercises. As a final project in a course like this, we might have students write a paper detailing their analysis of a Mozart minuet.
The second approach is compositional. Students are taught to emulate models from the past by composing original music that manifests a set of stylistic conventions. A final project in this class might involve asking the students to compose a minuet in the style of Mozart.
Certainly most theory curricula exhibit a balance between these two things, but it seems to me that the analytical approach is gradually usurping the compositional approach.* Forgive my generalizations, but it seems to me that the compositional approach stems from a time when composition and theory were basically the same thing, hence, this approach is favored by an earlier generation of pedagogues. It also seems logical to me that this approach is favored chiefly by composers. Music theorists (i.e., not composers who teach theory--again, I'm generalizing) seem to prefer the more analytically oriented approach.
This dichotomy raises the question (to me, at least): what should students be able to do when they complete the undergraduate theory sequence?
I've heard complaints from a variety of sources (sometimes myself included) that our students can't part-write. I'm forced to wonder, though, is that really so important to an understanding of how music works? What if they can't part-write their way out of a paper bag, but have a keen eye for uncovering the motivic structure in a Beethoven piano sonata? What if they can't part-write but can compose a prelude in the style of Chopin? Of course, both of these tasks would be difficult (but not impossible, I suspect) without a firm grounding in part writing. We might ask, which of these students has a greater understanding of the music that they are studying?
At Texas Tech, we have a very large music education department, and many of them are band people. Most of the literature that these people have played/will play/will conduct does not hail from the common-practice era, but rather from the last century or so. I think we could say the same about the choir students as well. And most of it is not strictly atonal in the Fortean set-theory sense. Will these students be able to engage their repertoire using the tools we give them in the undergraduate core theory sequence? We also have a Vernacular Music Center that trains people in the musics of a variety of cultures. Will part writing, stylistic composition, or anything we do in the undergraduate sequence help these people? I suspect not.
Part of the issue is understanding the repertoire the students bring with them into the classroom. In the past, students could be expected to arrive on campus and be more or less familiar with the canonical works of Western music. Students had the sounds of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Mahler in their ears, and could thus relate fairly easily to what was being taught in the theory curriculum, which was designed precisely to illuminate that kind of music. Today, however, it seems like the students come in with a much different repertoire--film music, video game music, wind ensemble music, contemporary choral music--and thus are baffled when Music Theory doesn't seem to tell them very much about their music.
During our summer session, Dr. Martens will be offering a Wind Music Styles class, which, as I understand it, will be a survey of wind band literature from the past 100-150 years examined from an analytical perspective. The class is targeted at Master's students who are returning to TTU for the Master's degree (we have a summer Master's program in music ed.) after being in the schools for any length of time. This course takes the repertoire which many of these students are probably familiar (I suspect they'll at least feel more at home with this literature--even if they don't know it--than they would with Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven) and examines it on its own terms.
Now there are certain elements that I think must be addressed regardless of instrument, major, favored repertoire, etc. Students should be able to read, spell scales (not just major and minor, but octatonic, pentatonic, whole-tone, the modes, etc.), identify intervals, read rhythms--basically that which is taught in a fundamentals class.
But what happens after that? Is common-practice harmony still so important? If not, what will take its place?
I'll speculate on these issues in the next few posts. I would welcome your speculations in the Comments...
*witness a variety of recent textbooks written by people who are predominantly theorists (Clendinning/Marvin, Gauldin, Roig-Francoli**) as opposed to those written by composers (Kostka, Kennan, Piston).
**Roig-Francoli is quite an accomplished composer, but it seems to me he has a bigger footprint in the theory world.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
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6 comments:
I'm totally for the Analytical approach myself. The other approach smacks of low self-confidence, I think - it's as if the study of music is not enough, we have to teach students to be musicians and composers too or we'll never get anyone to enroll. Compare with all the other arts disciplines: If a course in literature would start teaching people to be writers, film studies would educate directors, history of art teach painting and so on they'd be laughed at. There's conservatories and (at least here in Sweden) good-quality community college courses for that sort of thing.
By and large we are not educating future music critics but rather practicing musicians. In their careers, it is likely that most of our students will need both analytical and compositional skills to overcome whatever challenges may pop up in their careers.
In my own experience as a composer teaching the first year of music theory I generally favor a more traditional part-writing based approach, liberally sprinkling analytical work to tie the concepts to the music. I am comfortable with this approach and it fits the material which is dominated by fundamentals and harmony.
In the second year, students at my school are taught by my colleague who is a pianist rather than a theory/comp specialist. His approach fits the more analytically driven subject matter of the second year which includes much more discussion of style, form, and analysis.
I think our differing approaches work well with the evolving subject matter and over the course of the four semester sequence we achieve some of the balance that you mention.
I'll have more to say later (heading out with the missus to celebrate our second anniversary today!), but I will say two things now:
(1) In dealing with music by more avant-garde composers, I do discuss various analytical techniques, but we always make a point to perform and/or compose as well. In some cases (and I'm paraphrasing - and probably butchering - Berio here) analysis is best realized by performance/composition and vice versa.
(2) Miguel Roig-Francoli is indeed quite a composer as well. It's an honor be on a faculty with him (if only for the year).
OK, three things: I'd be interested to see Pete's wind styles class syllabus, materials, et al; I'm doing some work on Morton Gould and Clifton Williams (my first large post-diss projects).
WF
I can't speak for everyone, but from my experience (and being a composer) the compositional approach helps to codify/bolster analytical capacities. I'll say that common practice harmony will not be usurped, primarily due to its role as a frame of reference. Post-tonal techniques rely partly on participating in a narrative with, or in the context of commenting on common practice. Without that backdrop, your wind music piece: with all its pandiatonicism and chromatic mediant saturation would not be remarkable. For instance, it would be like when people mistakenly appreciated Duchamp's "Fountain" in an aesthetic way (in other words admiring its shiny surface, its beauty) rather than in a narrative way (as a comment/criticism of arthood).
Oh dear, where to start?
Well, you certainly have put your finger on it when you write:
Forgive my generalizations, but it seems to me that the compositional approach stems from a time when composition and theory were basically the same thing, hence, this approach is favored by an earlier generation of pedagogues.
Yes, indeed! The whole distinction on which your post is premised, namely that which is alleged to exist between "compositional" and "analytical" approaches to music, exists only because, once upon a time, "theory" (or "analysis") stopped yielding insight into composition! And instead of saying "Oops, we must have gotten our theory wrong" and fixing the problem, which would have been the proper thing to do, people instead decided that they were involved in a new distinct field of study called "analytical theory". That way, they didn't have to discard the erroneous ideas to which they had become attached; they could simply relabel their occupation and move down the hall.
Sadly, people do this kind of thing all the time, and not just in music. The modern concept of religion is another example. Once upon a time, people believed that supernatural agents such as gods were needed to explain the natural world; then along comes science and what do people do? Instead of simply biting the bullet and admitting that the whole God theory was just plain wrong, they invent the concept of non-overlapping magesteria and assign new purposes to religion ("it gives us morality" or "provides meaning and purpose", etc.).
Like the religious, music theorists are also adept in the art of post-hoc (re)justification. Thus, when harmonic theory (which holds that music is constructed out of "progressions" of "chords" built on "roots") was finally and utterly disproved by 20th century music, theorists continued to teach it anyway, on the (newly invented) grounds that studying old music is a sort of "separate magisterium" from learning how to make new music.
Which brings us back to your post. If different musical repertories are all separate magisteria, then a student with a particular interest in only some of them may legitimately wonder why he/she should bother studying the others. The answer is that they aren't separate magisteria; and in fact it isn't a question of repertory at all. Different repertories do not have different theories of music, just like different planets do not have different theories of physics.
The reason musical study should begin with strict species counterpoint has nothing to do with any special virtue possessed by music of the sixteenth century; in fact it has nothing to do with the sixteenth century at all! (Despite generations of misunderstanding.) The actual justification is to be found in section 4.0 of Westergaard ("What Species Counterpoint Is And What It's For): it is that species counterpoint is simpler than actual music. Even more to the point, it is a way to approach the study of music systematically. One concept at a time, in logical order. It has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with a particular "style" of music!
I read your post as advocating, or leaning towards advocating, a kind of eclecticism in music pedagogy: let's bring in a lot of different complex things to throw at the students. In fact, let's even throw different complex things at different students, in different years! But this is antithetical to what is needed. What is needed is, first of all, logical, systematic training in (and not eclectic exposure to) the actual practice of creating music; and secondly, a sufficiently unified conception and metalanguage so that people with immediate interests in different musics or aspects of music can speak to each other and have some understanding of why they are in the same department.
I like both analytical and compositional approaches as well, though I definitely lean on the analytic side. I like Birdseed's statement, that we should not run away from the Humanities approach towards music theory and towards a trade school approach. In fact, my colleague and I are revamping our theory curriculum this summer with the intent of making it more "liberal artsy". Students will learn how to create their own theories of music, how to critique current theories, etc. besides the more practical elements of applying analytical insights to performance practice and compositional strategies.
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