[Smt-talk] Doubling the tone of resolution

[Nicolas Meeùs]

I do not want to reactivate a thread that may be considered exhausted, 
but some of the correspondents that I had contacted privately about it 
expressed their regret that the discussion was not pursued in the open.

Clemens Kemme, in particular, wrote "if what we prescribe in the theory 
class has little do do with real music, how will we convince our 
talented students?"

This question, as obvious as it may seem, raises several further questions:
-- in what sense could a class about tonal music have to do with real 
music of our time?
-- why should we teach "real music", while historical books about music 
writing often taught "strict writing", explicitly remote from "real 
music" (I am thinking, specifically, of Fux' /Gradus/).
-- what is "strict writing" (/enge Satz/), what is "free writing" 
(/freie Satz/)?

I may have learned tonal writing in the last times of "strict writing". 
In the Brussels Conservatory where I studied, we worked on the late-19th 
and early-20th-century texts given as final exams in the Paris 
Conservatoire. I studied them in full consciousness that they did not 
correspond to "real music", but that they represented some form of 
"strict writing", and that anyone able to cope with that strict writing 
would be able to easily perform free composition (although I realized at 
the same time that any contemporary free composition would not be 
contemporary tonal practice anymore).

In Paris-Sorbonne University today, one expects from the students that 
they write "in styles" -- i.e. in the style of this or that composer, 
i.e. free composition. Our students know nothing about what "strict 
writing" may mean (they don't really have classes in counterpoint, I am 
afraid).

When teaching my Schenker classes, I want my students to realize the 
link between strict and free writing that Schenker put at the basis of 
his approach. But I realize that they are not at all aware of what that 
might mean.

To sum up: what is the point, today, of teaching tonal music as if it 
where "real music"? Shouldn't we teach our students what the difference 
between strict and free ("real"?) writing meant in former times?

Yours,

Nicolas Meeùs
Université Paris-Sorbonne
http://nicolas.meeus.free.fr
http://heinrichschenker.wordpress.com
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