Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!emory!mephisto!udel!princeton!phoenix!eliot
From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Music Education (was: Re: MR Vol. 5, #21)
Keywords: possibilities, compositional freedom
Message-ID: <14580@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 16 Mar 90 05:23:59 GMT
References: <132393@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <8077@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> <14531@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <9073@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 71

In article <9073@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> pa2253@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (pa2253) writes:
;In article <14531@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> roger@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:

;Princeton University--a university I'd like to attend in the Fall.  At 
;such a university I can see the encouragement of possibility--whereas
;UCSD imposes a pedagogical theoretical curriculum which is founded upon
;rigid style analysis projects.  These projects waste the student's time
;by demanding that a specific task be performed without making the demand
;for synthesizing the task into a larger philosophical or theoretical
;framework.  By imposing upon the composers time,  they succeed in dictating
;musical preferences.


There's another possibility, which is to stay out of school altogether or
study something else. I'm perfectly serious. 

The reason that there are such things as PhD programs in composition is that
back when, Milton Babbitt demonstrated to admissions that composition was
a rigorous activity, that theoretical studies were inevitably a part
of the compositional curriculum, and that composers were an autonomous lot
whose standards were as high as those set in other fields. Admissions 
sez ok, you got a program.

About 30 years later none of the above is true. Composition is rigorous
activity if you want it to be, but no one sits on your back making sure
that you have a lengthy explanation for every sound in your piece. Theory
is less intrinsically part of the curriculum since the canonical theories
-- say, those of Schenker -- have been somewhat relativized, and it's 
understood that you can get along perfectly well without them. Composers
are no longer an autonomous lot,  because few people really do believe
that just because your music sounds like shit therefore it must not be
or that just because your music doesn't sound like shit that therefore it 
is. Composers today want to make some sort of appeal to a public, to
break into a bigger commission-claiming bracket, maybe even capture some
of the mainstream sector, as did Glass, Reich, Adams, etc. In short 
standards of compositional excellence are no longer set, as they once
were, from within the university (or in Europe, the major administrative
organs, Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, etc). Result is that today music
departments have lost much of their claim -- indeed much of their need
-- to be tied to universities. Or they have as intrinsically as great a claim
to offer PhD's at research universities as would, say, fashion designers.


Some universities exaggerate the importance of theory studies because
of the need to articulate a cogent curriculum. You can't say, "we let our
students do whatever the fuck they want to because they're artists" and 
have admissions agree. Admissions sez, "What is your curriculum." So
you must make one up. And given that historical-theoretical literacy is
low in this country, you make your undergrads do Fux. Not that they
must: but they must if there is to be a program. Sometimes you can learn
something from this anyway, sometimes it's completely irrelevant, sometimes
you just can't even do the stuff. But you're studying not because this
is the only known way to become a composer. You're studying because
this is a reasonably good way to make a program in composition. You can
prove that somebody learned how to do something.


If you go to school in Germany, you don't study theory. You have a few
subjects, but essentially you concentrate on composition. The catch is 
that in order to get into a german conservatory, you have to plop down
a few scores that you wrote, like maybe something for big orchestra, maybe
a chamber piece. Then you do exams in which you prove that you can do
counterpoint. If you can't, they say "get a private teacher."


Stateside, this is what you do. You program your mac to record you playing
your casio, and you submit a song called "I really want to get into
your University," roughly in the style of Barry Manilow but even lousier.
You never heard anything written before 1961. You can't read music. So of
course it seems like a good idea to make university programs in composition
teach students about things like sonata form.