Submitted by jsdubois015 on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 13:36
The past few days I've been doing a little bit of early spring cleaning on my computer. In the process, I found a paper I had written back in college. It was for one of my theory courses and the purpose of the paper was to answer the questions "What is music theory?" and "Why do we need it?" After reading through the paper, I realized my thoughts have to some degree changed.
My thoughts on the second question have only changed by a greater sense of understanding of what at the time was still a mere fancy, so I'll talk about that one first. Imagine this: you're hiking in the mountains and come across a picturesque waterfall. Immediately, you take in the beauty of the scene as a whole. Now, whether you are conscious of it or not, you are also aware of many minute details. You know that gravity is pulling the water downhill. You know that the force of gravity is created by the Earth's mass. You know that centuries of erosion have created the waterfall. This is just to name of few of the concepts linked to the perception of this waterfall. Like I said, you may not be aware of it, but those concepts are there. The effect of gravity, for example, is a concept that has been learned and understood to the point of not requiring a conscious effort. It has become automatic knowledge.
Translate this experience of a waterfall over to music: you listen to a beautiful piece of music. The same ought to be true. In the perception of the piece as a whole, should be present the concepts that make it up: the interplay of contrapuntal lines to create harmony, the organization of ideas to create an outward formal structure and so on. Now, I can think of no musician that has this level of perception, meaning, the ability to distinguish and understand harmonies, for example, with the same automatic response as knowing that gravity is pulling water down a cliff. This does not mean that it is impossible. Obviously, I'm speaking of an ideal here, of what ought to be.
Now consider this: there was a time when humans did not understand their world. They were not able to yet grasp the concepts that allowed them to break down the physical world into smaller parts to make it understandable. The alternative was to attribute natural phenomena to unknown deities. Like Zeus throwing lightning bolts from the sky. To them the world was an irreducible primary. As it stands now, music is still perceived in the same way. At the very best, we are at the point in which we can isolate a small portion of a piece, say, it's harmony, and observe and analyze it. But we are far from understanding with the automatic response of truly acquired knowledge and even farther from being able to connect it with the other concepts that make up the whole of a piece of music.
The First Question: "Why do we need music theory?"
Submitted by jsdubois015 on Tue, 03/16/2010 - 13:36
The past few days I've been doing a little bit of early spring cleaning on my computer. In the process, I found a paper I had written back in college. It was for one of my theory courses and the purpose of the paper was to answer the questions "What is music theory?" and "Why do we need it?" After reading through the paper, I realized my thoughts have to some degree changed.
My thoughts on the second question have only changed by a greater sense of understanding of what at the time was still a mere fancy, so I'll talk about that one first. Imagine this: you're hiking in the mountains and come across a picturesque waterfall. Immediately, you take in the beauty of the scene as a whole. Now, whether you are conscious of it or not, you are also aware of many minute details. You know that gravity is pulling the water downhill. You know that the force of gravity is created by the Earth's mass. You know that centuries of erosion have created the waterfall. This is just to name of few of the concepts linked to the perception of this waterfall. Like I said, you may not be aware of it, but those concepts are there. The effect of gravity, for example, is a concept that has been learned and understood to the point of not requiring a conscious effort. It has become automatic knowledge.
Translate this experience of a waterfall over to music: you listen to a beautiful piece of music. The same ought to be true. In the perception of the piece as a whole, should be present the concepts that make it up: the interplay of contrapuntal lines to create harmony, the organization of ideas to create an outward formal structure and so on. Now, I can think of no musician that has this level of perception, meaning, the ability to distinguish and understand harmonies, for example, with the same automatic response as knowing that gravity is pulling water down a cliff. This does not mean that it is impossible. Obviously, I'm speaking of an ideal here, of what ought to be.
Now consider this: there was a time when humans did not understand their world. They were not able to yet grasp the concepts that allowed them to break down the physical world into smaller parts to make it understandable. The alternative was to attribute natural phenomena to unknown deities. Like Zeus throwing lightning bolts from the sky. To them the world was an irreducible primary. As it stands now, music is still perceived in the same way. At the very best, we are at the point in which we can isolate a small portion of a piece, say, it's harmony, and observe and analyze it. But we are far from understanding with the automatic response of truly acquired knowledge and even farther from being able to connect it with the other concepts that make up the whole of a piece of music.