From: fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields)
Subject: Re: academia, power, priveledge...
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept., Ann Arbor
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 17:35:46 GMT

In article <0105009A.mata17@david.roth-music.com> david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth) writes:
>Are you saying that the purpose of this newsgroup is to teach composition?
>If that's the case then you really don't understand what it takes
>to compose or you think that composing is music by numbers -- music
>theory.

You obviously haven't been reading very carefully here.  This newsgroup
was started with a statement of purpose which centered around the exchange
of information regarding COMPOSITION, not just theory.  Since you continue
to be absolutely convinced that it is impossible to exchange information
regarding composition (except--according to your writing--by exchanging
scores and tapes), perhaps THIS NEWSGROUP IS AN INAPPROPRIATE PLACE
FOR YOU TO READ AND POST, since you are so opposed to its basic purpose.

>>  Composition can be taught because so
>> many nifty ideas have already been worked out by composers of the
>> past, and so many of these ideas are fluid enough to be adaptable to
>> individual types of expression.  
>
>This is the purpose of studying scores and listening to works of others.

Whoops, that's like saying that you learn math by playing with numbers
and reading published theorems---doesn't show you how to prove your own new
original ones. Bzzt.  You can figure it out, sure, but at the expense of
rebuilding lots of info which could be passed on to you by word of mouth
much more quickly.

> No one can teach you how to compose.  They can only teach you so-called
>music theory.  What can be learned by studying the works of others
>can only be of use to the person doing the actual listening, since it is
>up to them to decide on what elements are important to them.  Having
>someone else do this for you and try to "teach" it to you misses the
>point.  At best all they can do is go through the motions without the
>emotion which leaves only music theory not composition making it nothing
>more than math.

Uh huh, an anti-intellectual diatribe which puts imaginary boundaries on
the realm of composition and supposes that emotion and rhetoric are
categories somehow mysteriously immune to discussion.

In answer to a letter from his brother which his brother signed
"...Land Owner", Beethoven signed his "Brain Owner."  By the time you're
a grown up, you should be pretty well aware of your emotions, and ready to
artfully manipulate a sequence of emotional expressions intellectually
so they both seem natural and maintain interest.

Look, if what you want to write about is how all us composers who TALK
about composition are nuts, and on the side a little bit about the
music business, there are plenty of newsgroups where this might fit in.
I'd suggest rec.music.makers.

>> Raw creativity is very tricky to
>> elicit, although sometimes you encounter a student who is fairly
>> bristling with creativity but just lacks the confidence or nerve to
>> try it out, and instead keeps trying to stick to straight-arrow
>> rule-based systems or whatever---and in that case a teacher CAN

>The reason they have this problem of sticking to some method is because
>yet another person thought they too could teach composition which
>was really music theory.

This is the most presumptuous statement I've heard in a long time.
Really, do you have a Ph.D. in psychology to back up your explanation
for all the mysterious behaviours of music students?

>> encourage the student to take advantage of their innate creativity,
>> which still doesn't say that creativity can be taught.
>
>This is being a cheerleader for someone not teaching them how to compose.

BS.  Creativity is necessary but not sufficient for composition.
Nova, the science program on PBS, has devoted a program to creativity,
and covered several school curriculae in which such things as the
efficient and effective USE of creativity towards a goal were TAUGHT.

>The same could be said for someone who doesn't have the nerve to do
>public speaking although they really have something to be said.


Yes, exactly, they can be trained to have confidence, project their
voices, make eye contact, and CONSTRUCT an EFFECTIVE, MEMORABLE, and
ATTENTION-RIVETTING RHETORIC.  A very good analogy showing that
composition can be taught.

>>  Compositional
>> craft and technique can be taught.  The situation is similar in
>> painting, creative writing, or even mathematics.

>Math, huh?  Music serves a purpose of an emotional impact and to even
>put it into the same context as composing shows that you are only
>talking about the trappings of music composition "taught" through
>the eyes of music theory.  Music theory is music theory not composing.

Yeah, so I've been saying all along. But your understanding of What
is Mathematics is lacking.  From a small core of postulates, theorems
grow outward in an exponential spiral.  Statements that are grammatically
correct but false enmesh them in an infinite soup.  At the infinitely
wiggley border lies an infinity of statements which are either true
or false but which cannot be proved either way (Goedel).  For a human
to prove an interesting theorem requires not only a sense of aesthetics
regarding what kinds of statements would be interesting to know about,
and requires not only the ability to follow the rule-based system that
produces the infinite exponential spiral of theorems, but also an
incredible intuition about how to start out, what kind of pieces to put
together to get a solution, and whether or not to even embark (if the
statement is an unproveable boundary statement, it's useless to ask whether
it's true or not).  This is why some incredibly useful theorems of plane
geometry were worked on for over 500 years before somebody stumbled across
a proof that a high-school geometry student can read and understand in 15
minutes.

>Calling it a "craft" and "technique" are more ways that music theory
>teachers use to mask when they claim to be teaching composition.

I'm sorry if you took composition lessons with a non-composer, but
that's really your responsibility now, and you have no business dumping
on the rest of us who are doing everything we can to forward the free
exchange of compositional information.

>> Secondly, when I listed what I think a professor of composition should be
>> doing regularly, I intended to be inclusive of all truly compositional
>> activities, but not to include administrative work, computer support for
>> other composers, abstract research with no work of entertainment as its
>> end goal, or political maneuvering.
>
>In other words, waste resources while the University foots the bill
>creating music theory works called composition to be played by a captive
>audience of students who have payed dearly to attention a place of

Music theory works are texts in English, French, Japanese, etc.  If
it's an organization of sound for presentation to others, it's MUSIC,
plain and simple.  Sorry, your parochialism is showing.

>higher learning.  Music created with no entertainment value should
>be left to the math or EE depts where it belongs. 

No, music with no entertainment value should be left on the page where
it belongs.   This statement seems to presuppose that the only reason
for teaching and studying composition is to learn to compose music
WITHOUT entertainment value.  I say that if composition couldn't be
taught, it couldn't be studied or learned either, which would mean that
composers just materialize out of thin air.

>This is *not* the
>activity of someone who claims to be a composer attempting to teach
>composition should be up to.  At the very least should be gathering
>professional credits for their work instead of music theory based
>works.  If someone wants to learn music theory to teach music theory
>than they have come to the right place, but people who are studying
>composition want to really compose *MUSIC* not math.  Leading students
>down the path to creating works that have no entertainment or emotional
>value is doing the student a great disservice.

I'm not sure, but I think you just insulted my compositions. When
and where have you ever heard them?  I certainly haven't heard any
of yours.

>Music theory can be taught just like math can be taught.
>  Music composition
>can't be taught in this manner.

Uh huh, see above.

>  The best advise anyone can give is
>to listen, read scores and figure out what is important to them and
>find their own approach.

So X comes to me, wants to write a cantata all in fugal style, and
I concoct a short list of listenings starting with the Bach B Minor
Mass, suggesting that "Here's how some other folks have handled it."
I then ask what text they have in mind, how committed they are to those
particular parameters---since after all, they may later decide that the
music doesn't "want" to be a cantata in fugal style, etc... Since I haven't
imposed my artistic judgement on their work yet, I obviously haven't taught
a forbidden "theory lesson masquarading as a composition lesson..." and they
might as well have gone blindly to the library and run the words "fugal"
and "cantata" through their catalog and failed to find the B Minor Mass...

>  Someone elses approach is fine but it can't
>be applied to everyone else.  To attempt to do so short changes the
>student and spawns another lesson in music theory which is not
>what a composer needs.  Why isn't this told more often?  Because it
>is easier to get grant funding claiming composition as an activity
>instead of theory.

This last statement is, of course, dead wrong, and shows that Mr. Roth
is completely out of touch.



Newsgroups: rec.music.compose