[Smt-talk] Keyboards for theory classes?

Fri May 9 08:45:12 PDT 2014

Dear Professor Schubert and the List,

I would like to side with Professor Schubert. If someone cannot play piano and yet teaches music theory--it is a special condition, pertinent to this or that teacher. It would be an unthinkable act of voluntarism if "we the society for music theory" decide to issue a bill that bans piano from the class in music theory. Could we agree to disagree and leave this issue without the final solution? 

And the solution depends on situation in the classroom. What if your classroom is filled with pianists, winners of international competitions? Will you propose the idea that teaching harmony with keyboard is "skewed," or that "chords are bad"?

In the classroom like that a teacher constantly feels challenged by the students, in a good way. Of course, if a teacher, at the end of a graduate seminar on Schumann, gives his students a performance of complete op. 16 the questions concerning his or her knowledge of this music disappear. The moment a teacher presses the play button CD player or clicks on Youtube video he or she looses credibility of his or her students.

We have received a great musical-theoretical tradition from the 19th century. One of its postulates: keyboard is a surrogate of orchestra and as such must be used in teaching theory. I suggest that we treat it with appropriate respect.

Best wishes,

Ildar Khannanov
Professor of Music Theory
Peabody Conservatory, Johns Hopkins University
solfeggio7 at yahoo.com 
On Friday, May 9, 2014 7:18 AM, Michael Gogins <michael.gogins at gmail.com> wrote:

I would like to point out that not all music composition involves hearing music in the first place, whether in the inner ear, or at the keyboard, or at the computer. Some composition involves imagining a process or procedure that the composer thinks will produce musical results. This can involve chance, transcribing natural phenomena into music (like John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis), or using mathematics and/or computers to produce forms that have musical interest or structure. Or it can simply involve setting ordinary musical materials, which can be imagined with perfect clarity by themselves, into relations that are not so easy to imagine in advance of hearing, like some of the polytonal sequences in Ives, or in Conlon Nancarrow's music, or some "looping" varieties of minimalism.

-----------------------------------------------------Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://michaelgogins.tumblr.com/
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com 

On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 2:00 PM, Victor grauer <victorag at verizon.net> wrote:

I can't resist adding a few comments to this very stimulating conversation. 
>
>First of all, it’s interesting to note that Schoenberg
himself felt so inadequate at the keyboard that he insisted on having an
assistant play over examples and student work at the piano for him. Hard to
believe that the author of Pierrot Lunaire wasn’t a pianist, but maybe he had a
pianist assist him in the scoring of that work (and so many others as well). 
>It’s also interesting to note that Stravinsky always worked
at the keyboard – while Hindemith insisted that “real composers” should always work
away from it. Did Hindemith have a “better ear” than Stravinksy. Well, imo,
nobody had a better ear than Stravinsky when it came to hearing complex tonal
relationships – but yes, by the usual standards of “musicianship,” Hindemith
probably did have a “better” ear. So did Schoenberg, who often composed while
taking a walk in the park. Or Wagner who composed standing in front of a
lectern. 
>As far as Beethoven is concerned, yes he had an amazing
inner ear, which enabled him to compose music of the most extraordinary
subtlety even while deaf. Yet, as far as I’ve been able to determine from
various biographical reports, he always worked at the piano anyhow, pounding
away even after the strings broke under his assault – which didn’t matter, of
course, since he couldn’t hear them anyhow. 
>As for me, if I may be so bold as to place myself in such
high powered company, I must confess that I’m not one of those musicians who
can look at a new score and immediately hear the music with crystal clarity. My
“inner ear” is useful when I’m writing something relatively simple, but not
completely trustworthy under all circumstances – so for years I too, like Stravinsky,
would usually write while at the keyboard – or at least check things out at the
keyboard to make sure all was kosher. But I also used the keyboard for another
reason – and that was the sheer excitement of actually hearing my music, rather
than simply contemplating it.
>
> Which brings me to the computer, and the scoring
software, such as Finale or Sibelius, now available to composers, which
currently provides an array of fairly realistic sampled sounds. For me, this
resource has come as a revelation. And a liberation. I think of it, very
literally, as a prosthetic device, a kind of “hearing aid” that enables me to
compose with complete assurance, hearing perfectly all the tonal relations, and
even the final result, as I’m composing. Just like Beethoven himself!!!! In
fact I find it quite thrilling that a program like Finale enables me to have that
same sense of actually living “in the music” that Beethoven must have had while
hearing it so clearly via his remarkable inner ear. What this means,
ultimately, is that I no longer have any excuse. If I can’t compose as freely
as Beethoven, and with as much mastery, I can no longer blame it on my “ear.” -- Must be some other reason. :-( --
>
>
>Victor Grauer
>victorag at verizon.net
>Pittsburgh, PA, USA
>
> 
>On Thursday, May 8, 2014 8:39 AM, David Feurzeig <mozojo at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>On May 7, 2014, at 6:31 PM, Peter Schubert, Prof. wrote:
>>> I sympathize with Hali's worry about the student's distance from the production of sound, which is why I am a fanatic about "play'n'sing." Listening to recordings and composing at the computer are mostly useless for my students.
>>
>>Way back before computer notation was the norm, and digital music labs barely existed, David Lewin
 was advising a counterpoint class on the importance of *singing* the repertoire to learn the idom. He said, "'Listening'? I don't know what 'listening' is."
>>
>>Composition and theory are already the most disembodied forms of musical engagement, and I feel a need to reinforce the physical. To paraphrase Lewin, I don't know what 'virtual' is.
>>
>>I recognize that the world has changed. I tell my students that if they're writing electronic music, the computer may be the logical home base. I also say there's no right answer:John Adams, for ex., composes drafts on his sequencer, then writes a full score by hand, then gives it to his copyist (because he doesn't do computer notation!). Even Thomas Ades is using a computer now to audition complex layerings. But that in my class they have to spend a substantial amount of time
 composing (respectively) with only their voice, with only their instrument, and with only the piano (and I tell them the purist types used to regard the *keyboard as a crutch).
>>
>>
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