[Smt-talk] Leo Kraft

[Richard Cohn]

I never knew Leo Kraft, but have always thought that his two-volume Gradus
textbook of 1976, combined with anthology, was a learned and masterfully
executed attempt to implement the so-called Comprehensive Musicianship
agenda of the 1970's. That agenda never took hold, for a variety of reasons
(that would be interesting to analyze from both music-pedagogical and
sociological standpoints). But I think that Kraft's books made the best
case for that pedagogical program that could be made, and I've always
admired them for that reason. They retain a place on my shelf and I expect
to continue to consult them as long as I teach music theory.

One of my favorite passages is a one-page discourse on "Music and the
Rules," cannily positioned at exactly the end of the first volume.  "The
statement 'the exception proves the rule' is nonsense. The exception
disproves the rule.....Composers do not follow rules. Nor do composers rely
on sheer inspiration. Their minds are filled with ways of putting notes
together, the norms of composition of their day. They use those norms in
the same way that we utilize the norms of today in speaking and writing
words..." This at a time when the cognitive revolution had yet to reach
music theory. Every undergraduate class that I teach eventually poses a
question that motivates me to refer yet a new set of students to this
passage.

--Rick Cohn
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