I ran across a new blog this morning titled Mathemusicality. The author James Cook raises some very interesting points about the purpose and teaching approaches of music theory. This led me to craft a very long response which I naturally thought would be equally appropriate as a Friday post to this blog.

In his most recent post, the James asked the following question:

Let me ask the Texas Tech faculty (or anyone else out there) this question: how exactly would your approach to any passage of music (say, one of the Beethoven examples discussed previously) differ if you were teaching composition students, as opposed to history, theory, or performance students? And why?

I initially started to reply directly to the question, but after reading the entire blog and giving it some careful thought, my response has grown into a behemoth.

I do agree with his point of view about theory curricula and our seeming over-dependence on Roman numerals and chorale textures as a vehicle for teaching harmony. As many of my students have expressed over the years, it doesn’t truly represent the true experience of music. Schenkerian theory provides a better approximation, but still falls short of the mark, at least in my opinion.

That being said, the question does indeed come down to the best way to systematically present musical material in a way that allows for both a clear understanding of the material as well as the practical application of newly found knowledge. (“The right knowledge at the right time” is how a former pedagogue once explained it to me.) That is ever the challenge for any teacher.

I have recently (finally) been given my own choice of textbook, and my decision to adopt a relatively new offering (The Musician’s Guide) has been fueled, in large part, by this very problem. Though still not (in my eyes) perfect, this text begins with the usual discussions of fundamentals, proceeds to two-voice counterpoint, notation, and basic instrumentation before moving to a more traditional four-voice presentation of harmony. Along the way it provides a large variety of well-presented musical examples from a variety of genres and styles.

It is my hope that this will provide students, especially in their impressionable first semester, with a more intuitive beginning to their formal theoretical training and will lay the groundwork for subsequent discussions of the works/passages that delve more deeply and meaningfully into the “art” of the music. As we all know, the best lectures/discussions are those that reveal hidden subtleties in a passage and then lead the students to make those magical connections to other works that they have performed and studied.

It also makes theory more pertinent to the student, a common enough problem at any program but especially problematic at my school, where the majority of students are aspiring music therapists. While I strive to be certain that they have a solid background in traditional theory, I am slowly learning that they also require a great deal more “practical” theory (is that an oxymoron or what??) than students at more traditional programs. (Words fail to describe the different approach, perhaps in a few more years I’ll have a more quantifiable explanation of this phenomenon.)

In the end, I would say that I am providing an introduction to the vocabulary of music as much as well as teaching them to be free thinkers and creative musicians. The two should not be mutually exclusive. A good semester for me is always one where the students come away knowing the “rules” but also understanding that these “rules” are in truth merely guidelines applied or ignored by composers depending on circumstance and need. It is especially rewarding when students can see (at least occasionally) how the “rules” are regularly broken or modified (particularly by the “great” composers) and evolve through use rather than through consistent and rigid application. After all, how do you define “great” or even “good” if you can’t explain what constitutes “average?”

As to the final question, in my experience (upon which I model my own compositional teaching) my best composition teachers were those that facilitated my learning by fostering, among other things:

• My ability imagine the music, fully orchestrated, “in my head.”
• My understanding of how a composer achieved a certain effect/sound/passage
• Developing my sense of form and proportion
• Gently molding my general aesthetic (as opposed to style) by pointing out less successful passages (according to their own aesthetic) and suggesting possible improvements while not demanding them.

Therefore, when I teach composition, theory rarely enters the conversation and when it does, it tends to focus on issues of meter, rhythm, orchestration, and motive far more than discussions of pitch collections and harmony. Though I almost always start a student with some basic acoustical properties, especially with regards to dissonance and consonance, pitch is well down the list of priorities for a variety of reasons and thus discussions of passages from the classical canon tend to be far different than those that might occur in a theory classroom or between myself and a colleague who is a theorist.

Another interesting discussion by James Cook in his new blog Mathemusicality concerns the instruction of orchestration, and more particularly the type of prescriptive language found in orchestration textbooks:

The apparent failure to understand that musical knowledge consists of experiential knowledge leads to the absurdity of “prescriptive” pedagogy, such as we find in many orchestration books: “Avoid placing the oboes above the flutes.” Interpreted as “advice” for practical musicians such as composers, this is at best a complete waste of ink. As a composer, you should know what it would sound like if oboes were placed above flutes, and if you do, then you either want that effect or you don’t–you presumably don’t need to be informed of your own desires by a book. If useless prescriptions of this sort are what people mean by “compositional theory”, then the latter is, well, useless.

I suspect that the prescriptive nature of orchestration texts comes from their use in courses primarily directed at non-compositional musicians who have never really imagined these sounds in their head. They seem to have evolved more as reference books for the harried musician than as effective tools for teaching what is essentially (as James correctly points out) an experiential process. In fact, the only time I ever open my own copy (beyond teaching) is when I can’t remember the lowest note of whatever instrument it might be that I haven’t written for in a while.

A much better use of the prescriptive text would be to show the example of what not to do and then provide a recording of why it sounds bad compared to a better fix to the problem. I have learned far more about orchestration by listening to my mistakes and failures than I ever will from listening to success.

Guitarist and songwriter Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he dropped it to form the rock group Queen.

May said he planned to submit his thesis, Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.

“I didn’t want an honorary PhD I wanted the real thing that I worked for.”

This is a great story, and I think it paints a pretty clear picture why people get doctorates. I think it is safe to say that it’s rarely about the money.

The only thing left to know is what his committee thinks of Fat Bottomed Girls?

I initially wrote this post back in early June, but for some reason have been reluctant to post it. This morning, after reviewing the drafts of several aborted posts, this one has been granted a reprieve:

The average price of a gallon of gas is now above $3. That’s affecting some car buyers’ choices, as it has done whenever gas prices have spiked in the past two years. But it’s still not high enough to spur the needed transformation of the U.S. auto fleet to much higher average fuel economy.

If you don’t feel like reading the article (from MSN.com), the premise is that the United States needs a gasoline tax to push prices above the $4 per gallon threshold in order to generate a greater demand for fuel-efficient vehicles and thus push automobile makers to produce more efficient cars for the U.S. market.

Though I am far from an economist, I’ve been thinking about this issue for quite some time and think that the author makes a great deal of sense. It would initially be an extra financial burden for anyone who commutes, and political suicide for whoever proposes the legislation, but in my opinion, the potential to reduce our national dependence on foreign oil as well as the benefit to the environment seem to make a great deal of sense.

Of course, the obvious libertarian argument is that we have the right to drive whatever car we want, regardless of fuel economy and that it should be the market that decides the price of gasoline. I can respect this opinion but it is my belief that nothing will change until us consumers stop purchasing cars bigger than what we actually need. It may happen on its own, but I’m not holding my breath.

I wanted to write a short note about something I covered in my first EMF review post. In that post I mentioned that Marta played a short piece by (and with) pianist Gideon Rubin on the opening chamber concert of the summer. Apparently Gideon found this blog while searching for (legitimate) reviews of the concert and mentioned to Marta that I didn’t say anything about his piece. I feel a bit bad about this!

In an effort to rectify this, I wanted to say that the piece was quite nice, well-performed, and I enjoyed it very much. However, I am quite reluctant to post an opinion (positive or negative) about a piece written by someone who, like me, is not a “household name” composer and especially not by someone with whom I am well acquainted. I will leave those sorts of reviews to Mr. Ross and his peers as I think we composers should simply support each other’s careers and music and keep our opinions to ourselves.

So in this case the old axiom of “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all” definitely does NOT apply!

(For the record, I think composers who are no longer with us, and haven’t been for several decades or centuries, such as J.M. Sperger, are fair game. I still can’t get over that piece but would love to hear any suggestions for works of his that might change negative opinion.)

The program of the fourth EPO concert here at EMF has been, by far, the most difficult program for the musicians involved. The first half featured Sarah Chang performing the Bruch Violin Concerto, the second was the massive Mahler Symphony No. 9.

I really enjoyed the Bruch. It was clearly a throttled down rehearsal performance by Chang (and again, accounts of the actual concert tell a far different story,) but the work and its memorable themes was entertaining and convincing. Chang first performed the piece at six years old as part of her audition for the Julliard School, and she fits the “prodigy” pattern (Feltsman, Chang, Hilary Hahn, Julia Fischer, etc.) that seems to have emerged as the unacknowledged theme of the festival.

I have very mixed emotions about the Mahler. On one hand, knowing the backstory, the piece is an exquisite example of Mahler’s deeply emotional and spiritual musical aesthetic. On the other, the very length of the piece tries my patience at times. Do not misunderstand me: The work is great but I don’t think that it is unreasonable to believe that this 80 minute piece could easily have been edited down to under 60 minutes and still retained its impact. Then again, I’m not exactly an impartial critic as I tend to write short pieces and my listening list favors works that are economical in their means and design. The deck was stacked against Gustav, at least in terms of this blog, long before I walked into that auditorium.

Last night, we had the pleasure of going to see Anonymous 4 performing selections from their most recent album Gloryland. The were accompanied by guitarist Scott Nygaard and violinist and mandolinist Darol Anger (of Turtle Island String Quartet fame.) The program consisted of a variety of folk songs, primarily sacred, from the United States as well as the British Isles. It was an especially entertaining concert and I thought that the shape note hymns (see Rob’s Glob for a relevant entry) that they sung stole the show. (Ever since I taught at Western Carolina, I’ve developed a growing love for shape note hymns and Appalachian music in general.) They’ve stopped touring regularly and seem to have moved away from the Medieval music that made their fame, but their forays into folk music exhibit the same care and attention to detail that made their recording of early music so exceptional. Unfortunately, the concert seemed a bit on the short side, which is a far cry from the Bruch/Mahler EPO concert just a few days earlier.

There have been two more Philharmonic Concerts since I last posted about the Eastern Music Festival. The third concert of the season (of six, counting the extra) featured Dame Evelyn Glennie performing Joseph Schwantner’s Concerto for Percussion, Piazzolla’s Tangazo, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

The program was well-performed, particularly Glennie on the Schwantner, which is a loud, exciting, and well constructed piece of music. There were a few technical problems with the amplification of the work during the dress rehearsal (which, according to accounts, did not occur during the performance, and that is what matters,) and I felt that it was perhaps a bit too loud but I was one of a handful of people in an empty auditorium, so it’s probably not fair to comment about the acoustics. I do wonder, however, if Schwantner initially intended for the percussion to be amplified when he wrote the work. If anyone knows the answer, I’d be curious to know.

As I get older, I find myself growing less and less interested in the Romantic tone poem and Scheherezade is no exception. As a college student, I really enjoyed this piece but now find it a bit trite and underwhelming. The well-performed violin solos and beautiful orchestration just doesn’t carry a piece that seems to me to be overly homogenous and repetitive. While his Principles of Orchestration is a treasure, I am increasingly ambivalent about Rimsky-Korsakov in general.

I’ll post my thoughts about the fourth concert tomorrow.

Once again, from the YouTube archives, a video from 1934 or 1935 of Dmitri Shostakovich playing his first piano concerto.

A controversial figure for some, but a giant nonetheless.

I took one of those political compass tests again, and once again I turn out somewhere near the Dalai Lama (I wish!)

But then again, every good teacher knows that the results are only as good as the test, and this test says that I am:

Economic Left/Right:-5.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.26

A post by Roger Bourland with a clip of Yoko Ono jamming with the Beatles had me on an hour long YouTube jag watching all of those vintage videos of the Fab Four.

With respect to Daniel Felsenfield’s wonderful post regarding Paul McCartney’s feelings about music literacy (a post with which I agree 100%), I am still in awe of these guys and the simple power of their songs. Very few bad ones in the lot, a truly Brahmsian oeuvre.

One of my favorites: