<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
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.<br>
<br>
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?"<br>
<br>
This question, as obvious as it may seem, raises several further
questions:<br>
– in what sense could a class about tonal music have to do with real
music of our time?<br>
– 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' <i>Gradus</i>).<br>
– what is "strict writing" (<i>enge Satz</i>), what is "free
writing" (<i>freie Satz</i>)?<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
Yours,<br>
<br>
Nicolas Meeùs<br>
Université Paris-Sorbonne<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://nicolas.meeus.free.fr">http://nicolas.meeus.free.fr</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://heinrichschenker.wordpress.com">http://heinrichschenker.wordpress.com</a><br>
</body>
</html>