Teaching the Music that Doesn't Behave

How funny this is to read. I'm a physics professor. In class, so much seems factual and Makes Me Look Smart - except that the most basic question isn't answerable. What IS gravity? I can describe properties, interactions, all sorts of things, but what causes it? Who knows. Same with mass. What is it really? Who knows. And, by the way, what's the meaning of a question like "what is it really?"?

Discussing ideas from the perspective of doubt, playfulness, and community exploration is wonderful. I teach non-science-majors a course in quantum physics, and it's a gas. Ad hoc rules, coherence of thinking out of inconsistent results, and so on. What a blast. It's nice to know that music theory can be taught the same way, and I love hearing the ideas you present as you write about it. Thank you.

Kyle I really identify with this post, as I feel like I've spent the last 20 years attempting to analyze music that "doesn't play by the rules." I'm teaching my favorite course this fall: Theory and Analysis of Post-1945 music, which I am constantly tinkering with (if only I could have a term for each decade. . . .)

For every Babbitt "Post-Partitions" or brief excerpt from Lutoslawski that virtually analyzes itself there are 10 pieces that defy easy parsing.

The student comments I received the last time I taught this course cracked me up: "Too much history, not enough theory." I tried to cram too much in, yes, but I also think that their notion of what constituted "theory and analysis" was somewhat narrower than mine(!)

I don't want to bog down what is intended as a more general blog, but if you have any tips for how to approach more recent music (beyond what Ive already cribbed from The Music of Nancarrow), I'm all ears. There's not enough time in one term to teach an individual analytical method for each work, much as each may deserve it, so I often fall back on charts and graphs.

And, alas, leave a lot out,while trying to do justice to many different traditions.

Thanks for responding!

This is what makes you a great teacher, Kyle.

Enjoy your opportunity to think outside the screen.

Kyle--

I haven't been in a classrom in many years (in any capacity) and my remarks should be taken in that light.

I think students should be told whay a given piece is being analyzed and why analysis is important in the first place. That is, if you believe it is, which I do. And I would never analyze a piece that I didn't like on some level, no matter what paradigm it seemed to embody.

Once that paradigm is discovered and laid out through the piece, I would find the elements in the piece that push against the paradigm. I think I would go so far as to say that if there are no such elements in the piece it's not any good after all.

In short, I would find the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange. I'd extend that to performance, too, but that's another (not unrelated) issue.

As a recent graudate of musicology, I was always trying desperately to get my professors to help me (even allow me) to analyze the local "noise music" and "computer music" here in Southern California. Much of the music is algorithmic, improvisational, or both; but as you say in an article in your Music Downtown, analysis of Elliot Carter can hardly be understood by the listener who has not studied the score - what's on paper isn't always heard. I came to a similar conclusion in a paper I wrote called "Memory and Composing With Twelve Tones," based on Schoenberg's proclamation that what audiences need in order to understand his music is a better memory.

As an analysis junky, I am at a loss for words when trying to describe some of the greatest sonic experiences I've had, from the recently past charm of Jim Tenney's "For Ann (Rising)" to the multichanneled digital blips of the music my friends are making in LA. What more, I fear there is no work for a musicologist like me, unless I get lucky enough to work for the Village Voice!