What exactly is "music theory"?

I'll try to post about the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (as the institute was named) soon, when I get home and am able to pull a few books off my shelf. I noticed that Wikipedia's entries on the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and the Darmstadt School of composers (as member Luigi Nono coined it) are pretty skimpy and have not yet incorporated the most recent musicological research on Darmstadt music.

Don't rush on my account Shape,( what an ace cyber name Shapeless is, it's as good as spendius and what a serendipity that they both begin with an "S" as does, of course "snake" and many other words not least "serendipity" irSelf.)

I'm ooorf to bed shortly.

But don't forget it either.

Music theory?

My theory on playing music is looking at tabs on the internet, and trying to learn the song. I'm a musical idiot when it comes to scales, chords, ect. And I'm pretty sure it shows...

As I mentioned, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik was founded in 1946 with the financial support of the American government. At first the institute was designed to expose German composers to American music--Ives, Copland, Piston, etc. Before long, however, the institute became a sort of capital of musical avant-gardism, establishing itself as a place where Western composers were free to explore the kinds of experimental music that had previously been banned in the fascist states during the war, and that continued to be banned in the Eastern bloc. Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, Cage, Ligeti, and others were among the first generation of composers who immersed themselves in "advanced" techniques like total serialism and electronic music.

It is fitting that the Darmstadt school should come up in this thread because it is (or was) the token example of the academic isolation that composers of a certain stripe have painted themselves into. In the best tradition of Cold War rhetoric, Darmstadt composers touted the institute as a place where composers could be free of "corrupting" influences like politics. The repressive way that art was policed in the Communist states, where excessive "formalism" was sometimes enough to get an artist executed, was pretty compelling evidence that art must never be made to submit to forces outside the artist's own creative drive. And so out went music that expressed overt political messages; out went music for commercial purposes; out went music written to please an audience.

The great irony of all this is that the move to purge art of its political "taint," and the belief that audience-appeasement is comparable to political coercion, could not be more fundamentally an example of Cold War politics. And so it continues today, as we've already noted in this thread, in the belief that musical styles are moral choices, and that art ceases to be art if it aims to satisfy any criteria outside the composer's own aesthetic curiosity.

p.s. My name has more S's than your name. Ha.

Thank Shapeless.

That was most interesting and, if I may say so, very well expressed.

But spendi wouldn't be spendi if he didn't wonder out loud whether it is possible to remove all political taint from art and that is allowing that taint is an appropriate word rather than colour or, say, texturising. Your use of "taint" places you in a camp I'm not sure is the best one for musical appreciation. There's an onion to be peeled in that regard.

Giambattista Vico, a much more influential writer than one might think, thought that the language itself was texturised by politics. Look at the way we are now quite used to scientific terminology in the daily news and our parents and grandparents were not.

And what explanation is there other than a political texturising of the various musical idioms in other cultures which most of us recognise when we here them.

So my earlier point about a teacher who, maybe seeing a wider perspective, senses an atonal future coming on politically and directs his students in that direction and excludes others in the same way that a high jumper, if serious, excludes other sporting disciplines so as to be able to focus 100%, maybe is a better teacher. It's a bet though, but what isn't?

I don't know the answer. Cities are pretty atonal. Tastebuds are heading the same way. Sex as well some say. There's not many colours in a TV or movie picture. Nature's colours are, scientifically, infinite.

I gig
I've taken years of lessons
I went music college
Whoopee


- Music theory came after the fact of the given style so in that sense it can be argued that music theory's importance is open to question.

- The 12 tone octave division is the Western norm, for better or worse.

- The 7 modes are built as derivatives of their respective chords which are essentially stacked thirds, again the Western norm for better or worse.

- Micro-tonality is often used with pop music improvisation regardless of Western music theory.

- The minor pentatonic is dominant (pun) when it comes to pop music improvisation, alas.

- Tempered tuning has ruined many an ear (sort'a).

- Fergit about them plagal cadences (kids).

You have the jump on me there Chum, for a change (hehe he!)

Certainly, and I hope it was clear that I was using the word "taint" with my tongue in my cheek... that's why I put it in scare-quotes. From the point of view of a Boulez or a Stockhausen, the word "taint" is supposed to evoke all the negative associations that the word normally carries, but you can probably tell from my characterization of Darmstadt how I, personally, feel about all that doom-and-gloom evangelizing. In a way, Boulez and Stockhausen have had their way: they have turned their backs on audiences, and audiences have moved on. Everyone wins, I guess.



I would still disagree here, or at least qualify your statement. The high jumper is a bad analogy because the high jumper doesn't believe that high jumping is the only sport that exists, or the only one that allows an athlete to exercise the most atheletic freedom. Rather, high jumping is one of many that he or she chooses to focus on. And if an academic composer wants to specialize in atonal music, great. On paper, there's no problem. But in prctice, academic composers have stricken tonal music from the menu altogether. A teacher who tells a student that "an atonal future is coming" is saying the future can accomodate only one musical language, thus painting styles as moral choices. Unfortunately, music history books still tell the story this way: to read these texts, you'd think that tonal music stopped being composed in the 20th century. But everyone knows it was there the whole time, both within and beyond "classical music," and that it's not going anywhere. It's just that, for various reasons of which the post-WWII climate I outlined earlier is a big part, tonal music has not been seen fit to preserve in the historical record.

Your analogy would work if a music teacher were making it explicit that he or she were preparing a student specifically for a life of academic composing, where the students' music will be virtually guaranteed to have no audience outside academia and that that is the way it should be. If that's the case, great. This music teacher would be like the high jumper, and more power to him if that's what he wants his students to do. But I can tell you that at my own institution, a student came here not too long ago with the intent of specializing in film music, and he was laughed out of the program. The problem wasn't even that his music was tonal--it was just as rigorously atonal as the next guy's--but it was that his music was being used in a "commerical" aspect, and that just didn't fly with the composing faculty. Clearly the student was selling out to the Man, and so it seemed to benefit everyone when he transferred to another school after just one year here. Again, I guess everyone won: the student got an audience for his music, and the faculty here got... well, whatever's left.

You really do express things very well.

I wasn't really coming down on anybody's side. It's just that when people do things I try to understand their reasons whether I disagree with them or not.

My high jump analogy might apply in a high jump coaching scheme. A coach might think that if one of his students went off doing something else he was good at, as he likely will be, he might affect a carefully thought through program.

But, as Andy Warhol said the Money was the only art left, the student who left probable made the right decision.

I think there is also a class thing about atonal. So if that class was growing there will be more demand for that type of music. It may be that in 50 years tonal might be looked upon as The Grateful Dead fans might look upon Knees Up Mother Brown.

I'm late for the pub. I'll think about it. Thanks.

I have no idea what "atonal sex" means... but it sounds like something I wanna try.

Here's a recent post from the New Music Box web 'zine that reminded me of this thread:

http://www.newmusicbox.org/chatter/chatter.nmbx?id=5438