In Theory, In Practice

The word "theory" gets passed around often in online string teacher discussions. Suzuki-informed string teachers talk about it as something other than playing (like note reading) to include in their lessons. Piano teachers, at least from my experience, use it to analyze the music that students are playing. In my high school Music Theory class (where you could earn as many credits as you could taking a math class or a chemistry class) we were taught functional harmony, which would, in the 1970s, be considered "common practice." My teacher taught it functionally and rather dryly. I remember at the end of the semester, when he informed us that we now knew the whole harmonic vocabulary in music, I asked him (in all seriousness), "What about the harmonies that Brahms used?"

The next year I took counterpoint. We worked methodically through the Fux Gradus et Parnassum, and I learned a great deal. I didn't realize until decades later that the exercises we did were not written by Mr. Levenson, but I knew that they were corrected by him.

My next academic experience with music was at Juilliard, where we had a "Literature and Materials of Music" class, commonly known as "L and M," and informally referred to as "S and M." There were times where harmonic analysis was necessary. My theory experience in high school didn't help me much, so, regardless of how well I was taught, I was not able to identify harmonic progressions by theoretical names. It was not because I hadn't worked at it. It is because for me context is everything. I can identify most pieces of the "standard" repertoire within a measure or two (at any point in a piece), but I can't do an "on the spot" analysis of the harmonic progression. Some people can. I know many people who think of the harmonic analysis of something that they hear first, before listening for the things that I hear first, like voicing, instrumental or vocal color, and where the phrase has been and is going.

Perhaps it has something to do with absolute pitch. I know that my high school theory teacher had it, and I believe that the people I know who can do analysis on the spot have it as well. I wonder if context, for those people, is an afterthought.

Now that the roles I play in the world of music are pretty well set, I really enjoy the fact that my enjoyment of playing involves the delight of enjoying a harmonic progression without the burden of having to name it. As a teacher I also know that no matter how eloquently I explain tonality to my students, each student is on a personal path of musicianship, and each student will learn what is necessary to learn when they are ready.

And I have found that learning to understanding tonality through scale passages (and pieces) is the best tool. The other day a student was having trouble with a scale passage in a piece, and I opened up his "Weights and Measures" book to the scale piece in the key of the troublesome passage. He played some of the "Weights and Measures" (W and M, if you will) piece, and then went back to the passage he was struggling with. It was no longer a struggle because his ear could grab onto the tonality; and the hand, if all is clear in the ear department, can react in a relaxed way.

I remember back in the early days of the musical blogosphere there were a lot of people posting their unpublished writings concerning music theory. These people have moved their writing away from the general blogosphere and into academic spaces. I thought that I could find references to them in some of the posts I have made over the years about music theory, but I couldn't find anything specific. Here is my array of posts that mention "theory."

What I learned from my internet-based experience is that "Music Theory" as an academic field is now a far cry from analyzing form, voicing, and harmony, which are tools helpful to composers and performing musicians. It is now more a branch of musicology, and a person who writes about music theory is considered a music theorist.