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Dear SMT-Listers,<div><br></div><div>Around 30 years ago Robert Cogan made an interesting comment on "Common-Practice" music in that by that yardstick, common-practice would be better applied to modal music as it has been around a lot longer. Why should "norms" of one period trump those of other periods/practices? On what specific grounds should one specific period/practice be made paramount? As the king of siam said in a musical along time ago: "etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...."</div><div><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div>Richard Hermann, Prof. of Music</div><div>University of New Mexico</div><div><br></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span> </div><br><div><div>On Jan 22, 2010, at 12:58 PM, Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">On Jan 22, 2010, at 11:46 AM, Steven Rosenhaus wrote:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> <blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I have found that while following rules can make for some exquisite music, it can also result in G*d-awfully boring stuff. When I teach the craft of composition I make sure the students understand that what they are learning are not hard and fast "rules" but practices, and that learning them is like knowing where the walls are in an unlit room; much easier to push/break down those walls (or just find the light switch and/or door, to further the metaphor) if you know where those walls are.</div> </blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">While Stephen Jablonsky wrote:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div> <blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Using the words "normal" or "usual" when referring to the output of great composers is quite amusing. It is only the second rate composers who stick to the predictable or the probable.</div> </blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Two points:</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">1) It is important to distinguish the project of defining a harmonic grammar from that of doing analysis.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The activities are as different as linguistics and literary criticism.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Great authors play with grammatical rules, but this doesn't show that grammatical rules don't exist, or aren't important.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The problem here is that music theory comprises many different activities -- analogues to linguistics, psychology, literary criticism, etc.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>What defines our field is the subject matter, not the style of thinking.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>So when someone like me starts talking about grammar, others are always going to talk about how irrelevant that is to what they do.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is a reminder that we all do very different things.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">2) Interestingly (or perhaps predictably) enough, I've always been surprised by how *infrequently* great composers violate some of the musical conventions that defined their style.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In this respect, I think, they were very different from contemporary artists, weaned on modernism and the violation of norms.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">For instance, there are very, very few clear root position V-IV progressions in the music -- despite the fact that this progression sounds good.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Likewise, there are hardly any sonata-form movements in major with the second theme in the relative minor, or in the supertonic.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(Yes, I know a few.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Or pieces in Lydian.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Or parallel fifths.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Or pieces in 5/4.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Really, the list could go on and on.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">In large part, I think this is because these composers did not think of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>the principles of their musical style as being arbitrary and conventional, but rather as being rooted in something much deeper.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>In this respect I would think that theory played a huge role in defining for them the limits of the acceptable.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">When I imagine myself projected back in time, and composing in the 18th- or 19th-century style, I always imagine exploring all these relatively obvious alternatives.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And I always tell my students: "these composers were very different from us.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The things we think of as natural, like mixolydian mode or VI-VII-i or V-IV-I progressions, were not at all natural to them."<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I think it is very hard to understand how they distinguished between norms that were not to be trifled with, and norms that could be violated.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">The great classical composers were, of course, very inventive.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>They broke rules.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But it's equally important that they preserved rules and didn't even think about breaking with them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is how some of the conventions survived for so long.</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">DT</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Dmitri Tymoczko</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Associate Professor of Music</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">310 Woolworth Center</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Princeton, NJ 08544-1007</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">(609) 258-4255 (ph), (609) 258-6793 (fax)</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri">http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">_______________________________________________</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Smt-talk mailing list</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="mailto:Smt-talk@societymusictheory.org">Smt-talk@societymusictheory.org</a></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><a href="http://lists.societymusictheory.org/listinfo.cgi/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org">http://lists.societymusictheory.org/listinfo.cgi/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org</a></div> </blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>