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So now — continuing about changes in the conservatory curriculum — some thoughts about how to teach music history and theory.
And remember that I’m offering free consulting sessions to anyone who’d like to talk about these issues. I can help! Contact me.
I might note to start that there might be classes on what’s happening now. What’s the state of classical music? What are the problems in the field, how are things changing? And why — in language we could use with nonbelievers — is classical music worth saving?
These are topics of discussion throughout our field, so why not get students involved? I’ve mentioned my visit to the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where classes were cancelled for a day so students could discuss the big issues we face. And while that’s a great thing to do, it’s also good to offer courses on the current state of things. As is done at DePauw, where as part of a revamping of conservatory education, a course called “State of the Art” (taught by my friend Eric Edberg) is required for all students.
A wider context
Moving now to music theory, and how it might be taught, I might start with this: That it’s important for all of us — and especially for schools — to put classical music in a wider cultural context. How does it function in our wider culture, where does it fit with other things that are going on, where doesn’t it fit?
Of course these are questions for a course like “State of the Art.” But they also loom when I think about music theory. Conservatories, up to now, have largely taught classical music theory, which made sense in a bygone age when our art ruled unchallenged as the deepest, most artistically important music in the western world. So we all learned chord symbols, labelled chords in Bach chorales, studied harmony and counterpoint and form, and went deep into analysis.
All of which, I have to say, I loved. But now we’re in a different age. Classical music coexists with other genres, all of which are taken seriously as art. And in those genres, people think about the stuff of music differently.
In jazz, you label chords by their names, not by their function, as we do in classical music. In classical music, what you call a C major chord depends on what key you’re in. In C, it’s I. (We always use roman numerals.) In F, it’s V. In G, it’s IV.
While in jazz it’s simply C. [Added later: I’m assured on Facebook that jazz musicians think of chords by their functions. But the labels used are still the chords’ names, something quite unfamiliar to people trained in classical music.] Though jazz chords are rarely simple, so maybe the tonic chord in C is Cmaj7 (with an added B), or something even more complex, with B plus added A and D.
And that just touches the surface of what jazz harmony can be. Which is one reason it makes sense to name the chords. Makes it easier to see what notes are giving bite and color to the harmony. Plus jazz mostly doesn’t deal in large-scale modulations, as classical music does, so the function in a key of any chord is less important. (You don’t have to deal with C changing its function — and hence its label — when you modulate to F or G, or some other key.)
Doing it by ear
But this just scratches the surface. Jazz musicians use more kinds of scales than classical music recognizes. And they improvise, which really is the key to what their music does.
Pop music has its own ways of thinking, in which pure sound — created with amplification and all kinds of software and studio intricacies — becomes a central element. So what if the guitar is playing an E major chord? That’s obvious. What matters is how the chord is filtered, mixed, panned to right or left of center, delayed, fed back on itself. And so on through an endless list of detailed refinements, whose use is both a science and an art, and which may take hours in the studio or on the computer to get right.
Plus there’s heterophany. Many things going on at once, but not obeying rules like (in classical music) those of counterpoint. Things get layered on each other pretty much by ear. As when, year ago, I was watching an album being mixed, and the producer added a recording of chant from an Eastern European church to a texture full of other things.
And he did this without being in the studio! He checked in by phone, and told his staff where to find the chant recording, on a tape stored in a closet, and exactly where in the song the chant should start and end. Later, I assume, he’d listen to the mix, and adjust the volume, panning, and quality of sound the chant should have.
To state what should be obvious: You don’t need to read or write music to create pop music. Much of what you deal with can’t be notated. How do you notate what happens when you use EQ to darken a specific sound? Everything in pop can be done without notation, and many of the most important things have to be done entirely by ear.
And then there’s rhythm…but I just don’t have space to go into all the rhythmic understanding (like the concept of groove) that you take for granted in pop and jazz, but which aren’t known in classical music.
Why we should learn this
And of courese I’m only talking about familiar genres, pop and jazz. What happens when we go outside the western world? (Or, for that matter, into western genres with their own musical languages, like the many kinds of Latin music.) Still more new rules apply!
But why should classical musicians learn these things?
First, so they’ll be musically literate. Musical horizons are much wider than they were when classical music reigned supreme. Many of my Juilliard students have never heard Charlie Parker, and most have no idea how pop records are produced.
Which means that — in today’s terms — they might not be fully educated musicians. Charlie Parker is one of the greatest musical artists (so silly to have to say this) that anyone will ever hear. My students recognize this when they hear him. But they have no idea what he’s doing, how he develops motifs, how his understanding of jazz harmony lets him play notes that — in classical music terms — don’t seem to fit the chords he’s improvising over.
Nor do they completely understand his interplay with others in his groups, or how musuic takes shape when it’s improvised, with something different happening each time.
So start with that. Musical literacy, as it should be understood today.
Then there’s something practical. Classical musicians, younger ones especially, play many kinds of music. They may find themselves playing with jazz musicians, playing in rock bands, playing world music. So they have to know what’s going on in all these genres. They have to know how to talk to the people they’re working with. They have to speak more than one musical language.
And then a very basic point. But far-reaching! At conservatories, the music theory everybody learned wasn’t called “classical music theory.” It was labelled – with decisive if unacknowledged force — as “music theory,” implying that it was the theory of all music. Or at least all music that mattered!
This became — whether or not anyone intended this — a way of enforcing the idea that classical music is superior. If music theory (emphasis added to make the implication clear) shows us certain formal processes, and analytical details, going on in classical music, and if we’re taught that these give classical music much of its depth and value, and we don’t find these things in other music…well, you see where this goes.
And I encounter thinking like that to this day. Pop music is inferior because the chords are simple. Well, in classical music terms, the chord progressions (generally without any modulation) look pretty basic, but when you play an E major chord on an electric guitar you have hundreds, thousands of ways to mess with the sound, so the overtones ringing and clashing in the air create a wildness far removed from the pure E major we take for granted in classical music.
If music theory is only classical music, then we don’t learn the things that give other kinds of music depth and value. And so we’re encouraged (implicitly, but strongly) to undervalue them.
But there’s a big question!
Namely: if we add the study of nonclassical genres to music theory courses, what do we remove? What do we now not learn about classical music, that may be crucial for understanding it?
Quickly, I’d make a couple of points. First, how well do students really learn the theory that they’re made to study? And, most crucially, how well do they hear the things they’re taught about, how well do they integrate their theory training with the sound and flow of music, and the deep discipline and joy of performing it?
Maybe not so well. Which suggests that even on its own terms, traditional theory teaching needs some changes.
But then one other thing, which came up when I talked to theory faculty during my consulting work at DePauw. Suppose you expand the concept of music theory, to include nonclassical music. And because the required courses still take two years, or whatever the requirement might be, you have to take some classical music theory out.
What then happens to undergraduates who want to do graduate work at schools that still expect the traditional theory curriculum? Students trained in more diverse music theory won’t, when they go to graduate school, know what they’re expected to. How do you handle that?
One idea was to add an extra, optional semester, where students could expand their classical theory training.
But of course this is a discussion in progress, as are so many conversations we’re having in our field. I’m available to help you as a consultant. And, as I’ve been saying, I’ll give a free consultation to anyone who’d like one. Contact me to set it up!
Next: teaching music history. We can’t just teach the history of composition, as we’ve traditionally done. We have to show how music lived and breathed in past centuries. And, in our new age of entrepreneurship, students should learn how musicians — the great composers included — made a living! They were far more entrepreneurial than we might think.
My previous posts on curriculum change:
“Changing the curriculum” (why we have to do it)
“The highest road” (about entrepreneurship, and why the tension some people feel between teaching entrepreneurship and teaching music doesn’t need to be there)
Lots of great ideas here, Greg, as usual.
I’m in agreement with just about everything here. The language is important, as you point out, in that traditional music theory courses were (and for the most part, still are) called “Music Theory,” yet their contents was/is remarkably limited in cultural, geographical, stylistic, and chronological scope. Traditional music institutions of all sorts are rife with those sorts of underlying unstated assumptions about what kind of music is worth listening to, performing, and studying, and what kinds of music simply aren’t worth doing any of those things with.
I’ve recently written about what a culturally (and theoretically!) inclusive theory course might look like, and what sorts of topics might be cut in order to accommodate such changes. I point it out here only to contribute to this ongoing, and much needed, conversation about curriculum reform:
http://flipcamp.org/engagingstudents3/essays/richards.html
Thanks, Sam. I’ll be eager to follow your link. In the point you and I are making about terminology, here are my two, sigh, favorites. So to speak. Favorites among the misnomers perpetrated for decades. First, among music critics, used to be that a newspapers “Music” critic wrote about classical music, while the pop music critic (who in many papers also covered jazz and world music) was the “Pop Music Critic.” That’s changed, now, I’m glad to say.
But the killer one is “Musicology.” Used for so long as the label for the study of one culture’s music (or, really, one of the kinds of music found in one culture), which of course was classical music. While the music of _all_ cultures, outside our own, was lumped together (and marginalized) as “Ethnomusicology.” That’s changing, now, too, as musicologists (along with music theorists) begin to work with other kinds of music. A good thing, long overdue. Though it still has further to go.
What you are describing is very similar to my music theory experience at York University in Toronto in the early 1990s. All students learned harmony & counterpoint and studied world music. I also studied Karnatak (South Indian) music, improvisation, and various types of compositional styles. Not all the students took advantage of all the offerings in the program, but those that did came out of it as much more well-rounded musicians than I come across in the classical world elsewhere.
Nice to hear from you, Lia, and how wonderful that York University gave you such opportunities!
We minimalist/post-minimalists don’t know what a grove is? Really?
Sorry about the typo.
Of course I know what a bunch of trees are.
But I loved the typo! I knew you didn’t write that on purpose. What I should have said, if I’d been a little more mindful, and paid attention to what I really was thinking, would have been: Thanks for giving me a moment, in the middle of my work, to think about trees. A lovely break for my mind. No need to tease you about the typo. We’ve all made them.
A grove? It’s a group of trees. Just kidding.
Maybe I should have made clear that I was talking about the classical music mainstream. The people who play the old masterworks. I once heard from someone in classical music who plays other genres, and does feel a groove, about what happened when an outstanding, and very famous, mainstream classical musician made a recording with musicians who play groove-based music. This musician couldn’t get the groove. If he departed from the tempo everyone else was playing, he couldn’t find it again, not with the unified precision everyone else had.
As for minimalist and post-minimalist musicians, of course they’re playing music that can have a groove. Those classic Steve Reich and Philip Glass pieces are like that, clearly. Not to rule out others! But it would be interesting to put them with jazz or bluegrass musicians, or Latin music people, and see how finely developed their sense of groove is. I’m not saying I can predict the results. I don’t know. But I’d be curious to see.
Not that everyone from other musical traditions has a great sense of groove. In the days when I was a pop music critic, I heard so many drummers who had no sense of rhythm at all. Heard one just recently in a kind of art/comedy/music performance at the Kennedy Center. Where hiphop was a big ingredient. And many of the musicians were from NYC’s post-minimalist music community, though no reason to tag them with the drummer’s sad rhythm.
Thank you for another great post, Greg. It reflects the same “real world” perspective that continues to be resisted and/or ignored by far too many institutions, be they conservatories or university music programs. The points you raise are all valid, illustrating multiple points of entry and rationale for expanding the traditional classical perspective. Many of your observations are simply an extension of the inexorable evolution of a truly living art, which has parallels in all other artistic genres. Unfortunately, the evolution of the classical music tradition occurs hesitantly, reluctantly, and in spite of rather than with the active endorsement, encouragement, and participation of the majority of its most visible and prominent leaders. Thank you for continuing to share your numerous practical, if mind-bending, thoughts with this world toward a more enlightened and holistic view of bringing today’s young musicians (and in turn dwindling if supportive audiences) along.
Thanks, Jeffrey. In the end, I think this is a problem with how many people live and think, in any area of life. Very hard to change, to see what you love evolving into something new, see your certainties dissolve, be asked to accept things new and uncomfortable for you. I’m sure I’ve resisted myself. In fact, I can remember one time that I did. Early ’60s: I was in college, in love with classical music, especially opera. I was a singer. I happened to go to a performance in which pianists happened to play inside the piano. Something that now I take for granted, as surely most of us do. But I was outraged! I thought, seriously, that it would damage the instrument. I like to remember that, just to keep myself from thinking I’m the guy who’s got things right.
You can probably major in English at many colleges and universities today without reading a single Shakespeare play. And soon you’ll be able to major in music without reviewing a single work of Bach or Beethoven. Progress. /sarcasm
I love Bach and Beethoven — but will an aspiring jazz trombonist have enough time in her college years to learn how to analyze Bach chorales? And if she does, what will the actual utility of those analysis skills be in her career? Arguably, understanding Bach will be no more relevant for her than understanding raga or gamelan. Transcribing great jazz solos (a skill that requires years of effort to master) will be far more useful. Likewise, an aspiring dance music producer needs to devote enormous class time to electronic music technology (if it’s taught at all — in many colleges it’s not taught). Will that student have time for Bach, given the very marginal value of what will be learned by studying Bach?
Any musical experience that you have (including Bach) will enrich your art. But it’s necessary both to be pragmatic about the value of various courses of study, and to acknowledge that the musical universe is a whole lot larger than Bach and Beethoven.
I’m sorry, but your comment is embarrassingly foolish. Yes. Studying chorales etc will improve her playing and understanding of music. If she is a student of music, then it is her obligation to learn, and our obligation to teach these facets of our musical history, And… what jazz performer would not also benefit from studying the compound lines found in all of Bach’s music, but especially the solo works. The voice-leading is traceable to chorales. Moreover, there is a lineage from traditional western harmonic practices to those of most jazz traditions, so I am utterly confused as to how you could equate the relevance of classical music in jazz studies to gamalan and Raga, et al: equal temperament, modulation, etc etc… These aren’t relevant to jazz music? I hope that, spewing such nonsense, you’re not a music professional because what you’re suggesting is actually irresponsible and patently wrong.
I don’t see the infusion of music from different styles or cultures as an either/or proposition. I think of it as an “and” situation.
I teach Level 1 & 2 music theory and musicianship for music majors at a California community college. As a faculty, we teach figured bass side by side with lead-sheet symbols, and music examples of ground bass include excerpts such as Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament” from Dido and Aeneas alongside Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word.”
I refer to the harmonic series many times throughout the year, for instance to explain how the shape and material of a sound source amplifies overtones to create timbral differences; to reinforce voice spacing in part writing, and why close voicing in low ranges sounds muddy; how to balance chords in performance; and referencing microtones that Western harmony refers to as “out of tune” but which are embraced by other cultures.
When we get to functional harmony, I play ii-V-I progressions from excerpts across the centuries; jazz harmony is always referenced. In fact, I usually begin referencing and playing ii-V-I progressions LONG before explaining them. It takes almost no additional time to include musical examples from other eras, and indeed from other cultures. But we still analyze Bach chorales using functional harmony, and our students score high in their audition tests at transfer universities.
As the choir director, I also teach all of the beginning musicianship classes, and try to instill in them the idea that this is THE most important class for a musician. We do rhythmic, melodic and harmonic dictation using Rudy Marcozzi’s method (Routledge Press). Not everyone buys in immediately, particularly students from the Commercial Music program who don’t play an instrument. But eventually they come around. Those who are serious, learn to sight sing and audiate using solfege, making the later transcribing of jazz trombone solos significantly easier.
Again, it’s not either/or; it’s “and.”
Heloo, Greg.
I haven’t been keeping up with your career, so if this is something you’ve already blogged about already, sorry, I missed it. CMS (College Music Society) put out a report in November 2014, “Transforming Music Study from its Foundations: A Manifesto for Progressive Change in the Undergraduate Preparation of Music Majors”
http://music.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1859:transforming-music-study-from-its-foundations-a-manifesto-for-progressive-change-in-the-undergraduate-preparation-of-music-majors&catid=139:cms-in-action
It would seem unlikely that you missed it since, as far as I can tell, your post reads like it was taken right out of the CMS manifesto (not word for word, of course). Plus, since you say you have been consulting at NC-Greensboro & DePauw on the subject, it would be difficult to believe they didn’t mention the manifesto which has created such a stir that it will be a major topic of discussion at the SMT (Society for Music Theory) conference in St. Louis the end of this month. There will be a panel discussion focussed on the manifesto which will include Dr. Steven Laitz, someone you likely know since he’s Chair of Theory & Analysis at Juilliard & also teaches at Eastman. I believe these are both schools you’ve had some contact with, so perhaps you’ve also had some input from him about your current interest.
So since you haven’t been invited to be on the panel with those who actually teach theory & analysis, my suggestion (no charge) is that you make your unique contribution to the music pedagogy community before the St. Louis meeting. You can easily do this on line by going to the SMT discussion list at
https://discuss.societymusictheory.org/discussions
If I’m allowed by the SMTDiscuss moderator, I will open a slot for you under the “Pedagogy” category titled “Greg Sandow’s advice to those who teach music theory” so that others may comment on your blog entry and its relevance – I think you’ll be pleased to find some who will agree with your points and welcome your support – or maybe not; it’s hard to predict just how a random sample from a thousand theory teachers will react to some of your insights into their field. I will link to your blog post to make sure everyone reads your comments (you’re welcome for the clicks – my pleasure).
– Steve
Thanks, Steve. Poundie emailed me, and among other things told me about your comment. Which was a good thing, not only because of what you said, but because I haven’t (for whatever reason) been getting email notification of comments, so I haven’t seen that there were any! Important for me to keep up, and respond.
I don’t know that I have time right now to take part in the way you described. It would be lovely to do that, and I’d enjoy it. But i’m working on other priorities right now — expanding my consulting business, reviving my composing career, teaching my Juilliard course (which means some time-consuming travel), and being a dad to a fabulous four year-old. I have a bad history of taking on new projects when I don’t really have time or energy, and I’ve got to make sure I don’t do that now.
Which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be interested in talking with you and your music theory colleagues.
I don’t know Steven Laitz. Very common for Juilliard faculty not to know each other, since so many of us are part-time. As for the CMS report, I’ve read it. And was somewhat astonished to hear from people in the organization (I’m not a member) that it wasn’t talked about much. Nobody at DePauw has ever met with it, not the Dean, not any of the faculty I spent so much time with, even those who were committed to major change. Wasn’t mentioned at Greensboro, and in fact I haven’t run into mentions of it at any school I’ve visited, or where I’ve talked to people. Last spring I gave a keynote talk at a CMS Northeast conference, where the theme was “Sustainability,” and thus there was a lot of talk of change. As far as I know, I was the only person there who mentioned the report.
Which doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people talking about it. And I certainly welcomed it. But I can offer my experience, anecdotal, and certainly not a thorough survey, to say that it’s possible to graze extensively in university/conservatory music teaching and never hear of it.
Greg, you are missing the point of music theory. It’s not a “skill” that one demonstrates in public or shows off at parties. It is a process, an extended exercise that builds students’ musical acumen and contributes to their understanding. If one “fails” in music theory, it may drop their grade point average, but their involvement in the mental exercises will remain with them. It matters not if they never resolve a German sixth correctly, if they play parallel fifths, if they write a tenor line that jumps an augmented second. A law student doesn’t go through moot court thinking it’s the real thing; they do it to go through the rigors of the law — to learn. Similarly, music students don’t study music theory because it’s a performance skill. It is what it says — theory. That these budding musicians did the exercises and became involved in the musical language of the common practice period (even though it’s not their own) for four or five semesters will immensely reward their fundamental music education and ultimately their musical life.
How lovely if it really worked that way!
In my own experience, it’s rare to meet a student who’s really internalized music theory in the ways you’ve described. Except when I’ve had a jazz student in one of my Juilliard classes. For them, the theory they’ve studied immediately informs everything they hear. You can tell when they’re talking about music they’ve heard, especially when I play something new. Not so the classical students.
Though of course they know what the music theory facts — classical music facts — are. So if you talk about a dominant chord, or a modulation, or counterpoint, they know what those things are. But musical facts and procedures of equivalent importance outside classical music are pretty much unknown to them. To give a very basic example, they don’t know what a blues progression is. So when I play them Robert Johnson, they have no reference point at all. They don’t know to look for familiar chords, and so in the wildly unfamiliar (and just plain wild) texture, with no clear regular rhythm patterns, they’re completely lost. And that’s music in the western tradition!
Likewise me. I know about world music, up to a point, and about microtones. And yet when I was in Tunisia, I thought I heard a Tunisian music group use a scale that contained a major third. This seemed so unusual to me that I mentioned it to a Tunisian musicologist. Who gave me the kind of look that adults sometimes give children who say something silly. Though, speaking as a parent, we should never do that! But anyway, the Tunisian musicologist gave me that kind of look. I wasn’t hearing a major third. I was hearing what in the west would be called a microtonal internval, that was close enough to a major third so that my ignorant ears and mind could adjust their perception and think it _was_ a major third. Only after spending some time with Tunisian scales, and getting my music notation software to play them for me with microtones intact, did I begin to hear what the musicologist meant.
One other thing, Mike. Have you ever read Edward T. Cone’s paper called “The Limits of Analysis”? He takes one of the Schoenberg Op. 33 piano pieces and inverts it. Now all the 12-tone analysis ever done of it still works. But the music sounds terrible. One thing people might (and do) mistakenly take from theory study, as theory has traditionally been taught, is the idea that theory and analysis tell us the most essential truths about western classical music. While as Cone shows, there are things analysis can’t get at that are even more important.
Joseph Kerman made a similar point, when (forgot where this was) he notices a quietly striking motif in the piano part of a Schumann song, and says that no amount of traditional analysis has shown what its meaning and importance are.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Greg. I have had little experience with jazz players, but I can confidently say that the “internalization” process works for classical musicians, having heard many reports from former students and others who have benefited. It’s not that they spout out the chords in a Liszt sonata as they fly by (though at a party once, I remember a jazz pianist who thought he could do a harmonic analysis of a Bill Evans recording in real time; unfortunately, his impromptu analysis was mostly wrong). That’s not the point.
By going through the theory learning process, e.g., identifying function rather than simply the name of the chord, they reach a deeper understanding of music in general, which in turn allows them to probe the score, and the sounds, and the intentions of the composer. Theory isn’t an end in itself, but a means to an end, which is to deeply move an audience. Of course, there must be changes in methods and curricula, but I don’t believe the Rameau-Piston-et al. tradition should be so easily discarded. The Kostka-Payne-Almen text is a good compromise, teaching traditional methods of harmony alongside jazz chord symbols.
Enjoyed your comments on the Nigerian experience. My experience is more with India, and I’ve noticed that with increased Western exposure, ragas have inched toward Western tonality. The most prominent of the 22 (possible) shrutis seem to be those that correspond with the equal tempered scale. Bollywood may have something to do with it. Nevertheless, I’m addicted to Anoushka, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and others.
Bravo Greg. 40 years after I passed through Theory for my degree, my daughter is going through essentially the same course. It never served my interest in Jazz and Popular Music and is even a bigger distraction to her in her digital mix world. Can you imagine if the course work for Physics hadn’t changed in 40 years?
In my own tonal compositions, I’ve found it rather easy to build thematically to or from a groove . Once in that groove, improvising musicians could “take over” for awhile, while the “readers” can repeat the groove vamp written out for them. When time to leave the groove, the leader signals the close and we go on. The drums just fade in and out with the groove. I haven’t yet recorded it exactly like this, but the concept works with some musicians who can do both well. Chord charts in the groove are almost unnec. as improvisers learn by ear.
The fundamental problem with current music theory is that (most of it) is stuck on a model that is about 400+ years old, which I like to call the “Note-Centric Model”.
By the Note-Centric Model I mean the model according to which “All significant aspects of music may be modeled in terms of the concept of a note plus concepts that can be derived from it (e.g. motive, phrase, melody, chord, rhythm, tone center, Schenker structures, …)”
The Note-Centric Model is so pervasive that it is easy to think that this *is* music, music is nothing but notes and patterns-of-notes.
Such a thought is simply incorrect! Greg, as you have observed above, there are big areas of present-day music where the Note-Centric Model doesn’t work.
Additionally, there are alternatives to the Note-Centric Model: I myself have made very good headway in constructing a model based not on notes but rather on *how music is experienced*. This turns out to be a feasible model: Rich, analytical and deeply insightful. See http://www.OMSModel.com
So our present-day situation is that music theory is monopolized by a model which is extremely old, is clearly inadequate for the present day, and which has at least one alternative which is very different and which is arguably “as good”. Music Theorists who are exclusively committed to the Note-Centric model are somewhat like physicists who are only interested in the Newtonian model. Music Theorists who are exclusively Note-Centric are doing bad theory, and they are almost guaranteed to be boring. If a theorist attempts to convey to students that “Pop music is inferior because the chords are simple”, a competent student will know intuitively that something is wrong.
I can understand why many theorists are enamored of the Note-Centric Model: It is intrinsically interesting, even fascinating, and it seems (i use the word “seems” intentionally) to work well for a large body of mainstream classical music. But I assert emphatically that there can and should be much more to music analysis than Note-Centric analysis. (btw, my experience is that Note-Centric analysis misses a lot even in the analysis of Beethoven and other mainstream classical music. )
It’s time for new models of music. Developing such models is hard work, but also very interesting and worthwhile. And I’d like some help.
(BTW: Another model – for mainly rock music – is available in a rudimentary form in Herbie Hancock’s video series “Rock School”, much of which is available on YouTube)
The classical conservatories are the worst in this regard. Most of them don’t have Ph.D theory programs, which relegates the entirety of what is taught in theory to being essentially a sort of musicianship skills regime. Without scholars actively involved in research and a world of evolving practice in theory and musicology, as well as doctoral students, much of the theory programs become frozen in time, politics, and the taste/culture (tonal classical music), as opposed to a rich envirnoment the is continuing to evolve and search for meaning.
And, the fact of the matter is that most of the students don’t even get to actual analysis and if they do, you’ve got a field of schools that are mostly stuck in old modalities, such as Schenker, which doesn’t even apply to anything that isn’t really 19th century tonal with a classical structure. You are certainly correct, Mr. Sandow, that this is ripe for rethinking. The problem is that it is guarded by politics and identity, rather than an open minded intellect.
And, the Kerman mention is a good place to start. Folks should read his section on music theory in his wonderful book Contemplating Music. Beyond Schenkerism by Eugene Nabor, is another interesting book that questions traditional practice in theory and analysis.
I have this to add. We need to start teaching Schenkerian/linear/prolongational concepts much earlier in the mainstream curriculum (and apply it to jazz and pop as well as classical music).
https://progressivedifference.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/schenker-earlier/
You can’t do it all at the undergraduate level. The course load is already too packed. There could be some choice, though, depending on the student’s career goals.
The study of music theory is not as essential as one might think for non-composers. Vincent Persichetti said – and he was a great theory teacher – that the only reason for performers to study music theory is if they have a burning desire to learn the inner workings of a piece of music. More important, I think, is teaching style to performers. I have found that students and often even experienced players in the field don’t have a good sense of the styles of music that existed in the past sufficient to bring that knowledge to inform the pieces they perform. Often performances tend to sound homogenized, without the deep understanding and knowledge of music history and repertoire – the literature – of classical music. Performers are not as immersed in the many styles of the music they are asked or required to play, and as a result, performances often fail to sound faithful to the demands of the composer’s idiom. In essence, I’m writing of the necessity for fluency in the language and various dialects of music and the necvesity for performers to be able to communicate that language and dialect as if they spoke that it as native “speakers”.
As for the question “Do musicians really need theory?”, I’d have to say it depends on what kind of career path the musician is going for. A degree program, in pretty much any discipline, is (ought to be) something more than just a set of skills. It should at least equip the student to read scholarly articles on the discipline, to know the jargon well enough to keep up. If what you’re contemplating is a career path in a blues band (for example), you don’t need to be able to readily discuss, say, augmented sixth chord harmonies (you’d probably call them something other than the traditional geographical names). To be sure, non-“classical” musics have their own special jargons, and we’d all be better off getting conversant with that too. In the academic/classical world, it can be almost like a shibboleth — a token identifying one as a member of the tribe. And, for better or worse, that also is one purpose of academic education.
As a one-time theory teacher, I think there are some problems with the way much college-level theory is taught. Another commenter has wisely pointed out that it’s extremely “note-centric”, to the exclusion of rhythm and meter and timbre. Yes. taking the elements apart is pretty much what “analysis” means; and it’s both useful and necessary.
There was a time in my student days when I assumed analysis would finally reveal to me how the music I loved “worked”. To acquire some skepticism about that, that seems like progress.
“In jazz, you label chords by their names, not by their function, as we do in classical music. In classical music, what you call a C major chord depends on what key you’re in. In C, it’s I. (We always use roman numerals.) In F, it’s V. In G, it’s IV.”
We certainly do (as you mentioned later) label chords by their function- jazz musicians talk in ii, V, I or i all the time. Jazz musicians recognize modulations and change in function normally- but also imagine that a chord like C major allows for one to play any number of modes over the chord- like Lydian, Mixolydian, Lydian b7 or even a blues scale. There’s a lot of options and requires free thinking. This idea however isn’t a particularly new one as we can hear Lydian used over major chords in Renaissance pieces.
In a jazz chart there are two tracks- the harmony written in chords and the notated melody. I would still analyze the chords in terms of function so I know what I need to play in what key and when. The big difference is that there’s an unspoken, unwritten freedom for jazz musicians to add to, change or embellish those chords- any classical musician could read throught the literal chord chart and easily think “this doesn’t sound like jazz”.
What also may seem confusing is the blues usage of a dominant 7th chord for tonic, subdominant and dominant chords instead of simply major and dominant 7th chords. This isn’t really anything new either in the sense that the overtone series of a single note is already basically a dominant chord with a 9th and a #4 up there anyway. If you have a I7 and IV7 you might play an altered dominant for V because you need something more dissonant to stand out. Someone who has studied the overtone series would simply see a C major chord as a structure that simply ignores the deeper overtones in favor of stronger simpler ones. Building such a chord would be a process of subtraction rather than addition if you see the overtone series as a starting point for the study of harmony.