[Smt-talk] Leo Kraft

[Salley, Keith]

Yes, I've found the Craft books and anthology useful, too-but I only
discovered them within the last ten years. I  learned music theory through
a historical/literature approach, and always wondered what the experience
of an even more fully-integrated curriculum would have been like.

In pursuing my extra-musical interest in the study of languages and their
quirkiness, I came across an explanation of the term "the exception proves
the rule." It actually comes from a time when "proving" something was
equivalent in meaning to "testing" it. Thus, the original meaning of the
expression is quite different (just about opposite, I'd say) from what
people ascribe to it these days. Just one more example of language
influencing thought & culture...


On Thu, May 1, 2014 at 1:40 PM, Richard Cohn <richard.cohn at yale.edu> wrote:

> 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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-- 
Keith Salley
Associate Professor of Music
Coordinator of Music Theory
The Shenandoah Conservatory
Shenandoah University
Winchester, VA
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