Yale Music Theory Training Process and Product

Yale University Department of Music
Training in Music Theory: Process and Product

Author(s): Thomas Clifton
Source: Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring, 1969), pp. 38-65
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the Yale University Department of
Music
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/843214
Accessed: 18-02-2020 23:11 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Duke University Press, Yale University Department of Music are collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Music Theory
This content downloaded from 132.248.9.8 on Tue, 18 Feb 2020 23:11:02 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Training
in
Music Theory:
The basic premise of this article is that music theory is, and
must be, an essentially philosophical activity. According to
this premise, it would seem appropriate for the contemporary
music theorist to inquire not only about the nature of music but
also about the nature of his knowledge, both about music and
about himself. This sort of inquiry appears to be justified in
view of recent (that is, twentieth-century) attitudes in the f
of music theory and of the way in which these attitudes inter-
sect with the central problems of philosophy and psychology.
In particular, this article investigates certain relationships
that can be drawn among (1) the nature of training in th
(2) the nature of theoretical knowledge, and (3) the disting
able and desirable attributes of those who claim such training.
39
Process and Product
THOMAS CLIFTON
Since opinions regarding the nature of theoretical training are

almost as numerous as musicians themselves, I do not presume
to detail another hypothetical ideal program of instruction here,
but will merely suggest some guidelines of a philosophical sort,
treating some topics in detail, others more generally, and none
exhaustively. Accordingly, this essay will explore some areas
which relate both to self-knowledge and to the acquisition of
what Babbitt describes as "verbal and methodological respon-
sibility". (Babbitt, CMS, p. 60) This will include a precis of
the relevance of theories of perception, behavior, and crea-
tivity to training in fundamentals, a comparison of scientific
and artistic thinking, and a summary of the kinds of theories
useful not only to theorists but to musicians in general. It
40
would indeed be misleading to believe that the above-mentioned

guidelines are proposed exclusively for the training of pros-
pective theorists.
The relation between music theory (philosophically speaking)

and so-called "basic" training has always tended to be prob-
lematic; it might be argued that the real business of theory can
begin only at the graduate level. But this position is not ac-
ceptable; for too long it has been perfectly possible (however
unethical) for a student to be trained in his undergraduate years
without having any meaningful notion of what music theory is
all about. Furthermore, who can say when the process of be-
coming a music theorist actually is begun? Official records
might indicate that it begins when one sets out to acquire a
master's or doctor's degree in this field. But when does a
person decide to do this? What behavioral set predisposes a
six year old child to eventually mature into a music theorist -
or anything else? The question should be re-phrased: What
causes a child to interrupt his theoretical activity for fifteen
years or so, and then attempt to resume it, frequently with
great mental anguish and with loss of time and money? "There
are children playing in the street who could solve some of my
top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory
perception that I lost long ago. * (J. Robert Oppenheimer, in
McLuhan, p. 93)
The problem of preparation, then, is at least twofold. On the

one hand is the development of a creative symbiosis between
the mechanical acquisition of necessary skills and information,
and the intellectual contemplation of the significance of musical
elements, their relations, and their operations. On the other
hand is the generally recognized need for bringing the typical
theory curriculum up to date. For one thing, the directions of
the music composed in the last twenty years, together with the
services provided by the already indispensable computer, com-
pel a second look at certain cherished practices. That is, the
proportion of emphasis given to the development of ideas and
skills may need re-examining. A great deal of the art of our
time results from the making of an idea into visible or audible
shapes, not by the person who entertained the idea, but by fac-
tory engineers or at a computation center. This is not to say
that skills are completely unessential; the question is, what
sort of skills are essential for our time? Is a person any less
a theorist (or musician) because he can work with an analog
computer but cannot (or has forgotten how to) write 16th- century
counterpoint? If any skill needs to be stressed, it is the skill
of generating and communicating ideas, and this, to paraphrase
41
Rogers, entails the creation of such external conditions as are

conducive to training students to receive conflicting stimuli
without forcing closure, to maintain flexibility in the formation
of concepts, beliefs, perceptions, and hypotheses, to tolerate
ambiguity, to make problematic that which is given, to trans-
form improbables into equivalents, and to shape their own hy-
potheses without pressures from or fear of external authority.
(Cf. Rogers, SBCT, p. 68) If all this sounds rather idealistic,
consider that the problem of student apathy and uninventiveness
itself might be a product of, among other things, continued ped-
agogical sclerosis. *1 In addition, the problem of re-discovering
or redefining "universal" values is, as always, an acute problem
for the beginner. He will have to live with the ones he finds; the
"professional" is all too ready to die by those he found in his
youth. Obviously, the use of the term "universal" here denotes
something different from either "absolute" or "natural law"
principles. Something much less grandiose is intended, whereby
"universal" relates to both logical universes (e. g., the universe
of all music using specifiably different tones) and psychological
universes (e. g., the universe of all music using discriminably
different tones). Accordingly, this article cannot enumerate all
possible universal values, but it does suggest where to look for
them: in the formation of general questions ahd principles.
But can these problems suggest more specific (if partial) solu-
tions? One thing they do suggest is that the distinction between
music and its physical appearance on paper be strictly observed.
To paraphrase Korzybski, it can be said that (1) written notes
are not the things we are speaking about, and (2) there is no
such thing as an object in absolute isolation. (Korzybski, pp.
60-61) As an example of statement (1), consider the difference
between the symbol for a long note and the fact that one aurally
perceives it as a long note only after the "point" where the sym-
bol is placed, that is, after the attack. Consider, too, that
the presence of notes (in the form of some typical melodic
harmonic dictations) does not necessarily imply the prese
of music, or any relation to it. The implications of these state
ments for any ear-training program are far-reaching. If an
techniques and aims of ear-training, nay, of theory-training
are defensible, they must survive the examination of human
behavior in a real musical situation. One may imagine a theory
class which approaches the spirit of a group psychotherapy
session: students' reaction to music is publicly uttered, dis-
cussed and defined in an atmosphere of complete honesty guar-
anteed by the non-recriminatory use of grades and recommen-
dations. By no means does this suggest that theory classes
should succumb to mere exchanges of opinion:
42
To define an impression signifies a good deal more than

just to utter it. . . . To define an impression is to analyze
it, and analysis can proceed only by going beyond the im-
pression, by referring it to the grounds on which it rests
and the consequences which it entails. (Dewey, p. 305)
This approach seems to offer one possible means of re-struc-

turing ear-training programs along lines general enough to sur-
vive the impact of even electronic music, and of elevating such
programs to a respectable level of intellectual activity. It also
argues for the parity of self-knowledge and self-analysis with
knowledge and analysis of data. All too frequently, however,
ear-training textbooks reveal an infatuation with intervaliden-
tification and sub-metrical rhythms in what amounts to a labora-
tory environment, to the neglect of the larger gestures, mo-
tions, and directions found in actual music, regardless of style.
The results of such training programs can be observed in stu-
dents' general inability (1) to perceive large-scale, non-con-
secutive connections, (2) to detect and relate similarities of
pattern and shape in varying temporal dimensions, and (3) to
transfer whatever listening habits they possess to their own
performance or that of others. All too often, classroom drill
is devoted to preparing students to pass ear-training tests
("Now I'll stress the soprano. . ."), not to helping them listen
responsively and responsibly, either to music or to themselves
as they listen to music. In our eagerness to teach only that
which we know how to test - the learning of "fundamental" skills
- the existence of other kinds of tests, and other modes of
teaching, should not be overlooked: we mean those tests which
seek to detect and possibly develop perception and creativity.
There is, after all, much to be learned from current research
on the psychology of perception, cognition, and creativity,
although it is commonly recognized that the acquisition of basic
skills and the achievement of musical understanding comprise
different learning patterns, (Forte, CMP, p. 38) it may be ar-
gued that these patterns need not be incompatible. On the con-
trary, one of the main arguments of this paper is for the de-
velopment of creativity in the formulation of any program which
presumes to train musicians - and particularly theorists. Just
as the phrase "a bad lyric soprano is a contradiction in terms,
there can be no such thing as an uncreative theorist. The role
of the theorist, to elucidate the norms of human musical be-
havior and the latest "facts" about the universe of musical raw
material, must be creative, whether he himself is generating
new theories or developing the tools that another theorist can
use. And the act of generating and communicating theories is
performed in the interests of affecting human behavior. A the-
43
ory or idea which is promulgated, read, generally approved,

but which remains untaught becomes an instance of the frequently
observed separation of research from teaching, signifying that
existing channels of communication are inadequate.
To be specific, the following perceptive abilities can be both

tested and exercised: (1) Imagine a solid, many-faceted object
as it looks from different directions. (2) Rapidly scan a visual,
auditory, or verbal field for perceptual detail. (3) Fuse an in-
complete perceptual field into a single object. (4) Conversely,
destroy a given Gestalt to discover the requisite detail buried
in the more complex design; similarly, keep a configuration in
mind in spite of distracting surrounding detail. (5) Classify a
random collection of objects, or differentiate between the mem-
bers of a highly redundant collection. (6) Discover by induction
the rule or principle in any given material or task, or deduce
from a rule or principle some ramifications or products of
operations.
It can be seen that these six representative tasks range them-

selves into two modes of thought, commonly described as di-
vergent (expansive, elaborative) thinking, and convergent (re-
ductive, abstractive, extractive) thinking. (Taylor, SBCT, pp.
169-184) The fact that none of these tasks requires or promotes
specifically musical training need not be alarming in view of
the recognition that creativity is not restricted to some particu-
lar content, (Rogers, SBCT, pp. 63-72) and, in fact, any crea-
tive teacher should have no trouble using these general matrices
to formulate specifically musical situations. Some of the more
well-known perceptive tests are the Welch Figure Preference
Test, the Unusual Uses Test, the Drawing Completion Test,
Ink Blot Tests, Symbol Equivalence Tests, the Anagram Test,
the Remote Association Test (RAT), and the Thematic Apper-
ception Tests (TAT). (Barron, SA, p. 3) Neither the testing
techniques nor the titles listed above are intended to be ex-
haustive. In general, the results of these tests indicate that
highly creative persons not only can discern complex relation-
ships, but also actively seek them out. All this is well known,
and is restated here only to suggest that the probability of turn-
ing out creditable musicians is directly proportional to the es-
tablishment of conditions suitable to creative thinking. It can
be asked if the typical classroom situation, or for that matter
the typical theory curriculum, is structured with these condi-
tions in mind. To look at it another way: while precise infor-
mation on the nature of insight and the creative process is not
easily obtainable, the conditions which tend to suppress these
processes are only too familiar: rigid departmental require-
44
ments which discourage experimentation and disregard individ-

ual differences by standardization; the routinization of assigned,
quantity-oriented tasks; failure to provide a meaningful context
to which specific duties can be related; and a definite failure to
relate music and the theory of music to creative attitudes and
to psychological information already acquired by the student as
a result of his life outside the music classroom. The explana-
tion for this state of affairs probably lies in excessive ego
rigidity, no doubt on the parts of both teacher and student, which
demands full conscious control. Teachers who are unable to
tolerate their own spontaneity or the loosening up of their rigid
planning probably cannot tolerate the spontaneous activity of
students. On the other hand, good creative teachers can edu-
cate the creative powers of students, co-workers or co-per-
formers so that they seem to work quite independently. If the
analysis in terms of ego rigidity is correct, (Cf. Ehrenzweig,
pp. 97-102) it suggests at least a direction in which a more com-
prehensive solution to a moss-grown curriculum might lie: in
the structuring of an optimally flexible curriculum of a sort
which certainly need not compromise standards or invite chaos.
I should like to summarize one existing methodology for the

teaching and learning of creativity. This method, called syn-
ectics (from the Greek, meaning to join together different and
apparently irrelevant elements) is concerned with the applica-
tion of metaphor in problem- solving and hypothesis-formation.
*2 Metaphor obviously means much more than "saying one
thing and meaning another". In Max Black's terms, a metaphor
is a conceptual archetype, that is, "a systematic repertoire of
ideas by means of which a given thinker describes, by analogi-
cal extension, some domain to which those ideas do not imme-
diately and literally apply. " (Black, p. 241) Again, he w
that "perhaps every science must start with metaphor an
with algebra; and perhaps without the metaphor there would
never have been any algebra." (Black, p. 242) William J.J.
Gordon writes that in the course of his research on synectics,
it became apparent that the most important elements in crea-
tive problem-solving processes involved making the familiar
strange, and, conversely, making the strange familiar. The
former, especially, is concerned with viewing a problem in
new, intentionally naive or deliberately Uout-of-focus" contexts,
a procedure which can alter our usual way of perceiving and
our usual expectations about how we or the world will behave.
Synectics research has identified four mechanisms for applyin
metaphor: Personal Analogy, essentially anthropomorphic,
involves an empathetic identification with otherwise inanimate
elements of a problem. Thus, Kekule solved the riddle of the
45
molecular structure of benzene only after having dreamed of a

snake swallowing its tail. In music, the composition must bear
up under a whole lexicon of words that have quite obvious be-
havioral connotations: we have direct experience of what it is
like to prolong something, to create and dissipate tension, to
rise to a climax, to be interrupted, to complete oneself, to feel
tight and concentrated, or loose and expansive, to divert, de-
lay, surprise, omit, approach from a tangent, etc.. But how
does it feel to be a suspension? What operations can be per-
formed on you so that your identity is still retained? The mech-
anism of Direct Analogy consciously compares parallel or nearly
parallel facts, knowledge, or technology. Mitchell, for exam-
ple, has provided some useful analogies among the seemingly
separate procedures involved in classical 12-tone music, Cub-
ism, and LeCorbusier's Modulor. *3 Direct analogy therefore
argues persuasively for breadth as well as depth of knowledge.
To those who would seek to detect dilettantism in bringing the
knowledge of diverse sciences to bear on a single problem, it
can be submitted that a man does not know his own field if he
knows only it. Symbolic Analogy is a Gestalt response where
the physical, neural, and mental patterns of activity are sud-
denly integrated into a highly compressed, almost poetic state-
ment of the problem, but using objective and impersonal images.
Thus Boulez: "There can be no musical creativity without the
unforeseen becoming necessity. " Or Sessions: "It seems to
me that the essential medium of music, the basis of its ex-
pressive powers and the element which gives it its unique quality
among the arts, is time, made living for us through its ex-
pressive essence, movement. * (Langer, p. 111) Finally,
Fantasy Analogy supports Freud's theory that creative work in
general is the fulfillment of a wish (although he did not say that
it is nothing but a wish). Schoenberg corroborates this beau-
tifully:
Music is a simultaneous and successive-ness of tones and

tone-combinations, which are so organized that its impres-
sion on the ear is agreeable, and its impression on the in-
tellect is comprehensible, and that these impressions have
the power to influence occult parts of our soul and of our
sentimental spheres and that this influence makes us live
in a dreamland of fulfilled desires, or in a dreamed hell
of .... (Stein, p. 186)
The role of direct analogy in our own times has been more use-
ful than we might at first realize. Terms like "set", "aggre-
gate", "vector", "complement", etc., are well-nigh indis-
pensible in analytical discourse; and we can only applaud con-
4(
tinued efforts to describe musical phenomena in non-musical,

hence more global, terms. A current metaphor that is rapidly
proving its usefulness is the term "language". It does not take
an extraordinary musician to rise to the bait provided by the
following quotations:
The term "language" can be defined in abstract and general

terms as a set (class) of objects constructed out of a set
of elements by stringing them together through an operation
call called concatenation. ... In actual systems of language
this operation may be thought of as specifying an order in
time, or an order from left to right, from top to bottom,
outward and clockwise, and so on, in various possible
writing systems. (Bach, pp. 11-12)
A generative grammar is a finite set of rules which enu-

merates (or generates) an infinite number of grammatical
(or well-formed) sentences of a language and no ungram-
matical ones and assigns to each sentence generated its
proper structural description. (Koutsoudas, p. 4)
A grammar. . . which attempts to characterize in an ex-

plicit way the intrinsic association of phonetic form and
semantic content in a particular language, might be called
a generative grammar to distinguish it from descriptions
that have some different goal (for example, pedagogic
grammars). In intention, at least, traditional scholarly
grammars are generative grammars, although they fall
far short of achieving the goal of determining how sentences
are formed or interpreted. A good traditional grammar
gives a full exposition of exceptions to rules, but it pro-
vides only hints and examples to illustrate regular struc-
tures. . . . It is tacitly presumed that the intelligent
reader will use his "linguistic intuition" - his latent, un-
conscious knowledge of universal grammar - to determine
the regular structures from the presented examples and
remarks. The grammar itself does not express the deep-
seated regularities of the language. For the purpose of
the study of linguistic structure. . . such grammars are,
therefore, of limited value. (Chomsky, in Lenneberg, pp.
407-408)
The Schenkerian theory of tonal music, in its structure of

nested transformations so strikingly similar to transfor-
mational grammars in linguistics, provides rules of trans-
formation in proceeding synthetically through the levels of
a composition from "kernel" to the foreground of the com-
47
position, or analytically, in reverse. Since many of the

transformational rules are level invariant, parallelism of
transformation often plays an explanatory role in the con-
text of the theory. ... . (Babbitt, CMS, pp. 59-60)
Chomsky regards the conception of a "finite state Markov pro-

cess" as inapplicable to the problem of sentence generation.
That is, in constructing a grammatical sentence we do not base
the choice of a word entirely on words previously written down.
Similarly, it would be meaningless to compose music (and hence
to analyze music) in this fashion. Conceivably, then, music
can be regarded, metaphorically at least, as a language, ac-
cording to the above definitions of language and grammar - but
not a finite state language. We have, after all, become tran-
quillized by the familiarity of more traditional metaphors:
sounds are characterized as relatively "high" or "low", possi-
bly because of the way we visually perceive musical notation,
although such adjectives literally have no meaning in acoustic
space. Chomsky and other linguistic theorists support, no
doubt inadvertently, Kraehenbuehl's own distinction between
the theorist and the theory pedagogue. (Kraehenbuehl, JMT,
p. 62) Other disturbing questions arise: does the dutiful learning
and correct application of the postulates of a pedagogical gram-
mar of music provide the student with a complete and accurate
description of what music really is like? Does the listing of
"exceptions" provide the student with clear knowledge of how
they came to be that way, or of the delicate and complex rela-
tionships between what is optional and what is obligatory? Or
Charles Ives' question: "My God! What has sound got to do
with music? ", which is still the best answer one can give to
the lazy assertions that "It sounds good to me!"
It can be concluded that synectics is applicable as a behavioral

system, inasmuch as it requires response of a highly personal
sort to an exterior stimulus, and provides for reinforcement
(i. e. confidence in the process) and more meaningful rewards.
Naturally, these methods require practice, especially by those
students who strive for immediate certainty, correct answers
and three credit hours. The intention of synectics is to counter-
act a prematurely severe attitude toward error (while implying
that this attitude is consonant with American value patterns)
and to help a student overcome what is felt as a sense of sep-
aration from scientific principles and facts. The development
of metaphorical and personal modes of thought in students sug-
gests that they might become less like secretaries, dutifully
copying down the a priori and accepting other traditional cleri-
cal roles. If the undergraduate years cannot provide time for
48
a student to learn how to learn, he may not find it difficult to

perform the later tasks that his profession demands (thesis-
writing, continued research), but he may well find it difficult
to care about his own work: difficult, in short, to act crea-
tively.
It would seem that any discussion of the role of creativity in

music quite naturally leads to a consideration and comparison
of characteristic artistic and scientific thought processes, for
the following reasons: (1) both science and art are ways of be-
having; (2) the current relationship between science and art is
both complex and close; and (3) scientific method and the methods
of music theory cannot be incompatible. Each of these reasons
will now be discussed in greater detail below.
To say that science is a way of behaving is to say that the cri-

teria for being "scientific" consist of something other than the
physical accoutrements of white coats, stopwatches, and meters.
The walls of the either/or have crumbled, so that, under cer-
tain circumstances, it might be rash to come to any conclusions
about whether someone is behaving scientifically or artistically.
Neither scientific nor artistic behavior is concerned ultimately
with "facts"; the nature of things which rational science tries
to formulate consists of laws or invariant relations of order of
possible phenomena. These possibilities can never all be re-
alized in any given increment of time or space. The actual not
only contains too little in itself but also too much in the form
of irrelevancies. It is thus a part of scientific and artistic en-
deavor to discover and contemplate the underlying order which
governs the wider realm of possibility, into which, in turn, the
actually existing can be absorbed.
Michael Wallach, in discussing cognitive processes commonto

both science and art, writes:
the human being as an artist or composer or writer seems

to function very much as does the human being who devises
systems of mathematics. . . . In mathematics, science,
and art, evidence has been found for two phases of human
endeavor - the setting up of conceptual possibilities and
the analysis of what these possibilities imply. . . . An
examination of the nature of mathematics and science re-
veals that the first of these phases involves the const
combining, and juxtaposing of concepts in ways which ap-
proach the arbitrary and which suggest a considerable em-
phasis upon tolerance for conjecture - conjecture as to what
may be aesthetically pleasing in mathematics, conjecture
49
as to what may be predictively useful in science. . . . An

attitude that betokens the playful entertaining of possibili-
ties - the setting of a wide latitude of acceptance limits
regarding how the individual will permit himself to think
about a subject - may be present in practitioners who are
at the cutting edge of each of the above domains of knowl-
edge. (Wallach, pp. 36-37)
The first of these endeavors - the generation of conceptual

possibilities - is responsible for the construction of postulates
(premises), and therefore is not - indeed, cannot be - concerned
with criteria of truth or falsity. In science, these criteria ap-
ply only to the hypotheses derived from postulates. In music,
postulates are sometimes referred to as codes, this term being
used in both its meanings: as a secret but learnable language,
and as an apriori set of rules. The hypothesis is the composi-
tion itself, and its "truth value" is determined by the second of
these activities, the analysis of implications: what strategies
are employed by the composer in manipulating and selecting
the rules of the code?
One might also think of these activities as speculatio

ical reflection, the latter comprising an exercise of judgment
as to what must be fitting and what must be rejected, and the
former comprising a suspension of this judgment until the last
possible moment. "Critical reflection" does not mean that the
artist must think in conscious syllogisms. But it does mean
that he must reflect on the consequences of doing this or that.
It might be remarked here that programmed text books and
teaching machines, at their best, tend to develop only the ac-
tivity of analysis of implications, that is, the abilityto separate
"right" from "wrong". This is, of course, a useful ability,
but it leaves another side of the human personality relatively
undeveloped: the side that reflects tolerant attitudes toward
the possibility of error.
The educational message that gets communicated to those

[students] who are capable of analyzing implications but
poor at producing conceptual possibilities. . . represents
in my estimation a serious deception. These [students]
are informed that as far as the society is concerned, they
are doing fine educationally. Yet they cannot adopt the
kind of tolerance toward error that may lie at the root of
much significant innovation in mathematics, science, and
the arts. (Wallach, p. 51)
Is the teacher himself really freed by these devices? Or does
50
he become patronized by the engineers who design the machines

and by the administrators who route the students through them?
Can a person be expected to behave creatively if his education
consists of his being "programmed" to follow sets of instruc-
tions designed to produce minimal behavioral differences be-
tween one person and another? This is not to be construed as
an idle complaint about the dangers of encroaching technology.
Technology, like figured bass, is the neutral product of a sup-
porting system, not its cause, and exists tobe used or misused.
The issue here, to repeat, is that, with or without teaching
machines, creative inquiry can be stifled more by the fear of
error than by the lack of information. Schoenberg recognized
this situation a few years after he came to America, as is evi-
dent in a letter written to Krenek in December, 1939:
. . American young people's intelligence is certainly re-

markable. I am endeavoringto direct this intelligence into
the right channels. They are extremely good at getting
hold of principles, but then want to apply them too much
'on principle'. And in art that's wrong. . . . Musical logic
does not answer to 'if , then __', but enjoys making
use of the possibilities excluded by if-then. (Stein, p. 210)
Moving on to a brief consideration of the second reason for

comparing scientific and artistic thought processes, namely,
the close relationship between contemporary science and art:
we find it useful for the musician-theorist to be cognizant of
this bond, because its cement consists of two ingredients which
considerably occupy his attention: language and method. For
the last thirty five years or so, philosophical efforts have been
largely directed toward language consciousness, that is, sen-
sitivity to the logic of language. This is perhaps still the pres-
ent and newest way of dealing with philosophy's traditional task
of distinguishing between self and not-self, between subjectivism
and non-subjectivism. It now seems that the best answer to
the question, "Which is right - to be subjective or non-subjec-
tive? " lies in the appeal to "complementary" languages. In
this sense, the relation between "plain talk" and more special-
ized languages, or between different specialized languages, is
no doubt a complementary one. Thus one can approach a mu-
sical composition with two different purposes in mind: to dis-
cover the empirical constructs contained in the composition,
and to study its effects on a listener (presumably one who knows
or is learning the code). From the former point of view, we
could make a complete catalogue of all the items that are "really
there", and arrive at publicly acknowledgable results. But
even if this approach is exhaustive, it is not exclusive. From
51
the second point of view, a description of human behavior would

not fill in the gaps in the previous account but would comprise
something that we find when we start all over again, using a
complementary language. It appears unlikely that such an ex-
haustive catalogue of the empirical data of the music would
permit us to predict its effect upon those who hear it, inasmuch
as these activities comprise two different universes of dis-
course. Yet it is this effect that makes a collection of sounds
into a meaningfulmusical experience. *4 It would seem, there-
fore, that the problem for meaningful analysis lies in working
with complementary languages such that a point of intersection
between data and response can be discovered. This relation
between data and response will be described in more detail
later. Let it be said here that, as teachers and researchers,
we (and I stress that pronoun) are usually only too happ
our case after having made exhaustive empirical studies. In
fact, one can observe a fairly recent trend in the periodical
literature whereby authors carefully specify that their articles
"do not represent an analysis of the work". At least they are
honest in their avoidance of problems of actual perception. *5
We might be guilty of excessive devotion to rigorous methodol-
ogies which produce objective results, in the belief that science
works this way. Thus C.P. Snow distinguishes between the
"literary culture" and the "scientific culture", and believed
that the former was of little practical use to the latter. But
Douglas Davis writes:
now every sign indicates the relationship is a good deal

more complicated. To begin with, the history of science
is riddled with chance discoveries that link science and
art in a common irrationality. (Davis, AA, pp. 29-37)
This is not to minimize the importance of rigor and method; I

am only making a suggestion, remembering Boulez' notion of
creativity, that we should welcome what enters unforeseen into
one's work and let it merge with what is controlled. Even the
scientist, with all his calculations, must at least provisionally
accept the indeterminate. But then, what is scientific method,
and how does music theory stand in relation to it? This ques-
tion leads to the third reason for comparing scientific and ar-
tistic thought processes: that scientific method and the methods
of music theory cannot be incompatible.
We can follow the lead suggested by Babbitt in considering the

nature, scope, and domain of application of scientific method
and language: "If it is not extensible to musical theory, then
musical theory is not a theory in any sense in which the term
52
ever has been employed. " (Babbitt, CMS, p. 52) We require

that a theory be formal, explicit, and as complete and simple
as possible. These four criteria provide a basis for recogniz-
ing the superiority of some theories to others - either because
one theory might serve as an effective conceptual framework
for a more comprehensive range of inquiries than does an-
other, or because one theory might provide an analytical or
representational method that makes possible more precise and
detailed inferences than some other theory. A theory is formal
if, for example, it presents an algorithm which is independent
of particular data, or if it deals with the category of functional
relations of some sort, without specifying whatever elements
may be subsumed under this category. Thus the statement,
"The II chord frequently precedes the dominant chord", is not
a formal statement. At most, this statement can be an appen-
dage to a theory of tonal music, but it cannot be an integral
part of the theory. To qualify as part of a formal theory, the
statement would have to be translated into formal terms, which
would include, for example, a statement of rules capable of
generating a string of non-terminal symbols (terminal symbols
are members of the vocabulary of a grammar which never ap-
pear to the left of a replacement operation as a symbol to be
replaced). Thus the formal rule: X -- Y, interpreted as an
instruction to replace X with Y, generates the following (unex-
hausted) number of terminal symbols:
Diatonic collection
interval aggregate
functional relation
dominant preparation
L harmony
chord
L II, 116, IV, IV6, VI, N6,
V/V...
Thus, descriptive notions, such as "II chord" or "V chord",

are known as non-logical terms, and are specific to discourse
about some special subject matter. Far from being members
of "basic elements" in tonal theory, their meaning is dependent
on, and implicitly defined by, such formal relational structures.
Explicitness is necessary in a theory if its descriptions are not

to assume the very operations it is trying to explain. Thus the
theory itself must provide the definitions of experiential items
and state the relationships holding between these items and
their logical relations in such sufficient detail as to minimize
dependence onthe intuitive and interpretive abilities of the user
of the theory. That explicitness in the theory of tonal music
53
does not yet exist is manifested by the various meanings of the

term "modulation" still competing for attention. Indeed, the
act of identifying a single tonal center in even the most diatonic
of contexts requires several steps. For example, the following
procedure can be (and has been) successfully applied by non-
music students in a class in elementary music theory. It as-
sumes a minimum ability to read notes and some understanding
of the concept of pitch- and interval-classes:
Given: A completely diatonic melody. (See Example 1.)
Postulates: There are n2 - n intervals in a collection of

2
n specifiably different pitch-classes. A hier-

archy of interval classes exists in many such
collections.
Procedure: (1) Extract all the specifiably differ

classes from the melody. (2) Starting
pitch, arrange the collection of pitch classes
in ascending consecutive order. (3) Hier-
archize the intervallic content of this collec-
tion. (This results in a tabulation of the num-
ber and kind of IC's: 6 of IC5, 5 of IC2, 4 of
IC3, 3 of IC4, 2 of IC1, 1 of IC6.) (4) Iden-
tify the letter names of the pitch classes that
uniquely define IC6. (5) Is it possible to form
a semitone (IC1) with one member of IC6 by
the operation of addition of any other pitch-
class of the collection? (6) Is it possible to
form a whole-tone (IC2) with the other mem-
ber of IC6 by the operation of any other pitch-
class of the collection? (7) If both these steps
are possible, the added pitch-class of step 5
can be described as scale degree 1, and the
added pitch-class of step 6 can be described
as scale degree 5. (8) Re-arrange the col-
lection (if necessary) to begin on scale degree
1. Let this scale degree be called the tonic,
and let scale degree 5 be called the dominant.
(9) Characterize this specific tonic by its let-
ter name. (10) If an IC3 can be formed by
the addition of 3 semitones to scale degree 1,
the mode is described as being minor. (11)
If an IC4 can be formed by the addition of 4
semitones to scale degree 1, the mode is de-
scribed as being major.
54
Such a procedure is not as cumbersome as it appears to be,

since, with practice, the necessary identifications and opera-
tions can be made more rapidly. It seems especially helpful
for students with relatively little musical experience or for
those who are unable, for various reasons, to actually hear
the music they are looking at. And while they probably could
aurally identify the tonic with ease, they could do so only in-
tuitively, basing their response on previous conditioning. An-
other (obvious) assumption built into the foregoing procedure
is that it is valid only for those relatively few contexts which
are completely free of chromatic tones, and which in fact make
a complete enumeration of a diatonic scale possible. It is, of
course, possible to add a few more "if" statements to account
for the various functions of chromaticism, or for tones which
are theoretically implied in a given melody. But as it stands,
the relatively few steps in the above procedure would be inade-
quate for an interpretation of Example 2, in which a chromatic
tone is present, and which does not actually present all seven
scale degrees. These remarks are, of course, directed to the
example itself, not to the context from which it has been ex-
tracted.
The criteria of completeness and simplicity are more easily

explained. A complete theory covers all the facts that it can,
for its time, and when two theories seem to cover the same
facts, the simpler one is selected because it uses fewer, more
general statements. It is worth quoting part of Nagel's views
of these two criteria:
Since theories are constructed with a view toward explain-

ing a wide variety of [musical experiences], it is clear
that such an end can in general be achieved only if a theory
is so formulated that no reference is made in it to any set
of specialized. . . concepts. For otherwise the theory
would be limited in its application to situations to which
just those concepts are relevant. Indeed, the more com-
prehensive the range of possible application of a theory,
the more meager is its explicitly formulated content with
respect to specialized details of some subject matter . . .
This does not mean, however, that. . theories tend in the
limit to become empty of all content as their range of ap-
plication becomes more inclusive. It does mean that a
theory seeks to formulate a highly general structure of
relations that is invariant in a wide variety of. . . different
situations but that can be specialized by augmenting the
fundamental postulates of the theory with more restrictive
assumptions, so as to yield systematically a series of
55
EXAMPLE
1
TEMA
Andante grazioso
Pii andante
Horns .P-.-- . . .
in C I -
6k 45
in C <
50
diversified subordinate structures. (Nagel, pp. 103-104)
Completeness and simplicity enable a theory to suggest sys-

tematic connections between general concepts describing qual-
itatively disparate musical languages. For example, it should
be possible to develop a theory of "harmony" or of "tonality"
such that these words can become general concepts without at
the same time losing the possibility of precise meaning. We
can never be sure if a particular theory is the simplest theory
possible, however, and must therefore consider that sooner or
later any theory will be superceded or absorbed by another
which accounts for additional facts or which synthesizes pre-
viously unconnected theories. Thus Goethe writes, "In the
sciences, it is greatly rewarding to seek out the inadequate
truths already possessed by the ancients and develop them fur-
ther. " (Wilkinson and Willoughby, p. 167) A musical theory,
like scientific theories, thus provides a description which is
as good as it can be within the limitations of time, funds, and
the abilities of the theorist.
Bearing these limitations in mind, it should be realized that it

is not considered necessary to give up a theory or even modify
it if its predictions are not always closely confirmed. Ex-
pressions such as "strongly suggest", "lead us to expect that",
or "make more plausible", are very characteristic of much
scientific language, and indicate a judgmental act on the part
of the theorist, even though he may be using a more formal
language elsewhere in the construction of the theory. If a the-
ory is to have any valuable explanatory, predictive, or unifying
function, it must contain these linguistic expressions. The
questions then arise, is there any such thing as a final and per-
fect stage for a theory, and if so, for what type of theory is
this stage desirable? Is a theory then still at the cutting edge
of a domain of knowledge? What role should be played by rigor
in musical theory? The sense in which rigor is an ideal in pure
mathematics is not the same as in, say, applied physics - or
music:
A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical con-

sequence of certain definitions and other properties. The
validity of a theorem, then, usually depends on the validity
of other theorems. This tracing of antecedents goes on
until the rock bottom is reached: assertions which are not
proved but simply assumed, and terms which are not de-
fined but simply listed. In a mathematical system it is
unnecessary (in fact, impossible) either to prove these
basic assumptions (the postulates) or to define the basic
57
terms. This is what Bertrand Russell meant when he said

that in mathematics we never know what we are talking
about, nor whether what we are saying is true. (Rapaport,
p. 5)
In fields other than mathematics and symbolic logic, therefore,

it makes more sense to say "rigorous enough" for the simple
reason that we are not dealing with pure axioms but with ex-
perience, and it is here, in the confrontation between the theo-
retical and the empirical, that the theorist resorts to judgment.
And, of course, it is in this confrontation where controversy is
more likely to arise, quite regardless of whatever amount of
rigor was used in the construction of the theory. To create a
less than perfect theory is to reveal an easy relationship with
anxiety. These brief comments on rigor seem to be in agree-
ment with Chomsky's attitude toward the problem of exceptions
in rules of grammar:
It must be borne in mind that the general rules of a gram-

mar are not invalidated by the existence of exceptions.
Thus one does not eliminate the rule for forming the past
tense of Verbs from the grammar on the grounds that many
Verbs are irregular. . .. [In this case], the generaliza-
tion is invalidated. . . only if a more highly valued gram-
mar can be constructed that does not contain it. It is for
this reason that the discovery of peculiarities and excep-
tions (which are rarely lacking, in a system of the com-
plexity of a natural language) is generally so unrewarding
and, in itself, has so little importance for the study of the
grammatical structure of the language in question, unless
of course, it leads to the discovery of deeper generaliza-
tions. (Chomsky, ATS, p. 218)
The foregoing section has attempted to provide an in-depth

comparison between music theory in particular and theory con-
struction in general. A comparison in-breadth also holds, that
is, a comparison of different kinds of theory. Different moti-
vations or purposes produce different kinds of theories, all of
them useful in their own way. Theory can be broadly divided
into .temporary or permanent types, if these adjectives be re-
garded as limit cases in the sense that some theories are more
temporary or more permanent than others. For example, some
scholarly activities might be regarded as having once been mo-
tivated by a theory until that activity produced an incontroverti-
ble verification, at which moment the theory itself would no
longer have any value even though its conclusions might. Illus-
trations of such a temporary theory can be found in the hypo-
58
thetical work which precedes the ultimate verification of author-

ship, or the codification of a notational system. Here one can-
not speak of a perfected stage of a theory: it simply disappears,
replaced by what we tend to call "facts".
Other kinds of theories seek to be more permanent, in the sense

that they serve as means for the acquisition of insight into a
more comprehensive range of problems. Here the condition of
verification must be re-defined from a more pragmatic point
of view. "It is not the business of a theory to be true; it is the
business of a theory to be useful." (Poland, JMT, p. 164) If a
theory has relatively more permanent value because of its use-
fulness, it is likely to be one of two kinds: phenomenological
or explanatory. A complete survey and critique of the theory
of phenomenalism would be inadvisable in this space, if not
impossible. Perhaps the most concise rendering of this the-
ory's fundamental, and most familiar, postulate has been made
by C. I. Lewis: "Unless something is certain in terms of ex-
perience, then nothing of empirical import is even probable. "
(Lewis, p. 326) A truly phenomenological theory defines all
expressions referring to hypothetical (observationally inacces-
sible) objects in terms of the data of immediate sensory ex-
perience. Such a theory does not consider questions of cau-
sality, and the concept of predictability is, of course, directed
to experience rather than to physical events. The validity of
inferences and beliefs construed from sense experience is us-
ually conceived to depend on premises about the regular asso-
ciation of past sense experiences. Further verification is ob-
tained, then, when predicted experiences actually occur, the
verification being framed in the form of a probability statement.
Because experiential knowledge gains in probability by asso-
ciation with concensual sense experience and by the validation
of predictions, the nature of this type of knowing is sometimes
designated as "interpersonal" to distinguish it from either "ob-
jective" or "subjective" knowing, although a psychologically
mature theorist will use all three modes of knowing in an in-
tegrated fashion. (Cf. Rogers, BP, 115 ff. ) This will receive
further elaboration later.
The two problems that have long been associated wit

enalism-the lack of an autonomous language of bare sense data
and the near impossibility of bracketing one's implicit assump-
tions - are perhaps not insurmountable. About the former,
Lewis writes:
the impossibility of the accurate expression of d

prehensions of sense would. . . merely constitute
59
ment upon the inessential character of language in its re-

lation to the cognitive process. . . . (Lewis, p. 290)
As to the latter, MacLeod states:
There is no identification without bias, but there can be a

deliberate attempt to identify bias and temporarily suspend
it or at least shift observation systematically from one
bias to another. (MacLeod, p. 52)
We are again reminded of Babbitt's suggestion about verbal and

methodological responsibility, and of the previously discussed
goals for theory classes: precise definition, that is, analysis
of the experience of music. Phenomenalism looks -at the prob-
lem of definition from an empathic point of view, whereby def-
inition is regarded as a process of perceptual learning, and
learning as the acquisition of discriminatory powers. It is
hardly necessary to point out that, in music, description based
on phenomenological hypothesis is infrequently encountered.
The reasons are not difficult to perceive. In the first place,
the resurgence of phenomenalistic psychology is a fairly recent
trend; secondly, changing concepts of "objective" :knowledge
cannot be ignored by even the most laboratory-minded musician.
It can be hoped that music theory has gone through its logical
positivism phase the way music has gone through its phase of
total serialization. In any case, the most responsible work
that can be cited as an example of at least a direction pointing
to phenomenalistic description is Kerman's, The Beethoven
Quartets. That Kerman is aware of his phenomenalistic ap-
proach there can be no doubt, as is evidenced by his statements
made at the end of his first chapter and at the conclusion of the
book. For example:
There has to be a standard of relevance, and a priori stand-

ards are open to the gravest difficulties, both theoretical
and practical. The right standard is aesthetic, and the
critic's role is constantly to return to feeling as a touch-
stone for analytical relevance. ... The critic hopes to
persuade, of course, and he writes in the assumption that
his sensibility is going to make contact with at least some
section of the reading musical public. ... . To deal with
art is to deal with fact and feeling, and to deal closely is
to discover more and more that each is problematic- fact
as well as feeling. (Kerman, p. 28)
As Kerman admits, such an approach is difficult, messy, and

to some, offensive. Indeed, it is much easier to regard most
00
of the important work in music theory as explanatory in nature.

As such, its significance for musical understanding cannot be
denied - hence the complementary relationship between phe-
nomenological and explanatory theories. I would guess that all
theories of perception agree that man, among other things, is
a pattern-making animal, although there might be disagreement
as to whether this is an inherent or an acquired ability. In any
case, the central task of explanatory theories seems to be con-
trolled inquiry into the nature, significance, and probable cause
of patterns and relationships - though this may be an over-
simplification. Nagel has specified four types of explanatory
theories, all of which are relevant in varying degrees to the
sort of inquiry that interests music theorists. (Nagel, pp. 20-
26) The first of these is the deductive explanation, in which
the thing to be explained (the explicandum) is a logically nec-
essary consequence of the explanatory premises. Certain
generative aspects of the theory of serial music come to mind
as an example of this type of explanation; Forte's theory of set
complexes is another. In general, a deductive explanation may
contain premises which are (1) necessary truths (e. g., the re-
sults of mathematical operations), (2) statistical generaliza-
tions, (3) theoretical statements, or (4) statements based on
empirical evidence. The explicandum itself may be (1) a nec-
essary truth, (2) an historical fact (musica ficta), or (3) a
statistical phenomenon: Why is it that many of the thematic
shapes in Beethoven's later music are created by the opposite
motion of intervals of 3rds and 4ths? In connection with the
deductive type of explanation, it might be pointed out that, for
some time now, the scientific community has discarded Aris-
totle's requirements that (1) the premises in a deductive ex-
planation must be true, (2) that they must be known to be true,
and (3) that they must be "better known" than the explicandum.
These requirements are now seen to be too strong, since they
would judge many useful premises as unsatisfactory. After all,
we do not know if many of the premises of science are indeed
true. More to the point, there should be no grounds for re-
garding them as false.
A second type of explanatory theory is probabilistic in nature.

Here, the premises do not formally imply their explicanda, al-
though they make them probable via an observable statistical
regularity. That is, a statement made about the behavior of a
singular musical event or relationship is given probable validity
when it is seen that that event or relationship is a member of
a class about which statistical assumptions have been made.
To date, the analysis of "atonal" music has tended toward this
type of explanation. Or, statements made about the nature of
01
perception become "probably" true if the premises of state-

ments can be validated by testing groups of people.
Functional or teleological explanations are made via a consid-

eration of one or more functions that a unit performs in main-
taining or realizing certain traits of a system to which the unit
belongs. Current theories of audition seem to range themselves
in this category, as do certain structural aspects of serial
theory (as opposed to the generative aspects mentioned above)
For example, in Webern's Symphonie, a functional relationship
exists among (1) the number of movements, (2) the structure
of each movement, (3) the 12-tone set and (4) the source set,
even though it could not be said that the symphony as a whole
is a logically necessary consequence of its particular set.
A final type of explanation is termed genetic: an explanationis

offered of the sequence of events through which some earlier
system has been transformed into a later one. It should be
pointed out that not every event in the career of the system
need be mentioned; those that are mentioned are selected on
the basis of assumptions about what sort of events are
relevant to the development of a different system. T
is not without its dangers: we are all aware of Babbitt's very
clear distinction between the tonal system and the 12-tone sys-
tem, and of the problems involved in looking for "antecedents".
Yet it seems equally clear that an unbroken thread connects,
for example, Schoenberg's music, whatever the compositional
system: his concern for symmetrical or invariant structures,
and his self-conscious manner of unfolding these structures
through different time-spans, can be traced to the Gurrelieder
and early opus numbers. But a somewhat safer modification
of this mode of explanation suggests itself: an organic explan
ation of the transformation of events within a system. This
might include the development of theories of (1) invariants as
they relate to changing surface designs, (2) interactions between
the obligatory and the optional, (3) stylization, idealization,
or manneristic treatment of earlier, more primitive genres,
or (4) the process of augmenting certain compositional tech-
niques (e. g., "Brechung*) to apply over a much larger span of
a composition than the original conception of the technique
might have intended.
The above discussion of the requirements for theory construc-

tion, and of the types of theories, is intended as no more than
a survey of what could represent, from a purely pedagogical
point of view, a possible means of re-aligning the philosophy
of the music theory curriculum with the philosophy of science.
62
At the very beginning of this paper it was suggested that the
theorist is interested not only in the nature of music but also
in the nature of his knowledge about music. In point of fact, it
is the nature of this knowledge, rather than the nature of music,
about which we can be most certain. It seems reasonable to
assume, therefore, that the creator of useful theories must be
aware of many of the problems that are the concern of the phi-
losophy of science: problems relating to the cognitive status
of theories, to the various schools of thought about the applica-
bility of terms like "true" or "false" to theoretical statements;
or those problems concerned with the nature of premises -
their logical, epistemic, and substantive conditions - or, again,
problems relating to definition and full awareness of the multi-
ple meanings of crucial terms, such as "causality", "chance",
and, of course, "explanation".
As a conclusion to these matters, some of the ideas presented

here are reviewed with more explicitness. First, it should be
made clear that an analysis of theory itself does not imply that
the theorist- or any creative person- always pursues a straight
and rigorous line of thought. Such precise thinking actually
need accompany only the final stages of theory construction.
The initial stages, however, are every bit as important, and,
in fact, it is this stage which seems to be the immediate con-
cern of the technique of synectics and metaphor construction.
Gordon refutes the notion that non-rational and associative
mental play cannot withstand the illumination of self-examina-
tion. (Gordon, p. 5) It has been argued here that such tech-
niques are valuable not only in stimulating creativity but also
for the acquisition of self-knowledge. Secondly, it should also
be made clear that theory construction, at whatever stage, is
always accompanied by feeling. A survey of well-known state-
ments by Kepler, Galileo, Einstein, Russell, Watson (of DNA
fame), et. al., repeatedly attests to the high emotional states
and non-verbal mental images that accompany the effort of
theory-making. The perception of one's own thought-feeling
processes enables one, ultimately, to maintain the position of
detached observer. Thirdly, the idea of detachment signifies
only the mastery of hedonistic tendencies, but decidedly not
the false dichotomy of observer and observed. In this respect,
Grinker writes:
observations in all sciences are made by an individual who

has a position relative to his object. He can have only one
frame of reference at a time, although several may be put
together through a mental operation. Natural events are
viewed not in terms of the reality of the matter but through
03
the eyes [and ears] of an observer who is part of a specific

communication system. (Grinker. p. 367)
This realization seems to make theorizing of some kind prac-

tically inescapable, if we wish to relate to the world success-
fully. A theory, ultimately, represents a decision to regard
objects from a particular point of view. Even though we can
never be sure that these objects actually do possess any of the
characteristics that the theory imputes to them, there is this
advantage to theories, that they enable us to think about these
objects, and to work with them. We do not thereby deny the
existence of objects; we merely recognize that our judgments
and conclusions about them are purely of our own making. Such
has been the message of this paper: that theorizing, in the
best- and only - sense, is concerned with thinking and making,
creatively and philosophically.
REFE R E N C E S
1 The research of Jencks and Riesman leads them to conclude that "when under-
graduates feel they cannot play a useful or responsible role in the adult work of
their campus, this is not necessarily because they lack preparation but often
because they lack the self-confidence and encouragement they would need to
undertake a serious piece of research. " (Jencks and Riesman, p. 44)
2 Gordon's use of the word "Synectics" is with permission of Synectics, Inc., of

Cambridge, Massachusetts.
3 This analogy is supported by LeCorbusier's own Le Modulor, and by the writ

of men like Kahnweiler and Apollinaire, who witnessed, and indeed contributed
to, the growth of Cubism. (Cf. Mitchell, 63ff)
4 Much of this paragraph paraphrases part of B. F. Skinner's article, "The Machine

that is Man', in Psychology Today, April, 1969.
5 Cf. William Thompson's article, "The Problem of Music Analysis and Univer-
sals", College Music Symposium, 6(1966): "The music analyst is inconvenienced
today because he must operate without any general framework of perception ex-
cept that which he can project from an intuitive matrix. As musicians, we have
neglected to ask and to seek answers for the very fundamental questions of what
happens when tones are put together, and psychologists generally ignore our
needs or feel reluctant at present to deal with them. Until inquiry of this kin
has established some referential bed for general experience, from which we
can extrapolate appropriate guidelines, the music analyst will be stuck with his
homemade judgments about the ways in which tones become music. " (pp. 105-
106)
64
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Babbitt, Milton. "Structure and Function of Musical Theory: I",

posium, 5, 1965.
Bach, Emmon. An Introduction to Tranformational Grammars. New York: Holt,

Rinehart and Winston, 1964.
Barron, Frank. "The Psychology of Imagination", Scientific American, CIC, 3

(Sept., 1958).
Black, Max. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962.
Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: The M. I. T. Press

1965.
Chomsky, Noam. "The Formal Nature of Language", in Eric Lenneberg, Biological

Foundations of Language. New York: Wiley, 1967.
Davis, Douglas M. "Art and Technology - The New Combine", Art in America,
Jan. -Feb., 1968.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Capricorn Books, 1958. (First pub-
lished in 1934.)
Ehrenzweig, Anton. The Hidden Order of Art. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1967.
Forte, Allen. "The Role of the Study of Music Theory in the Development of Musical
Understanding", Comprehensive Musicianship. Washington, D. C.: Contemporary
Music Project / MENC, 1965.
Gordon, William J.J. Synectics. New York: Harper and Row, 1961.
Grinker, Roy R. (ed.). Toward a Unified Theory of Human Behavior. New York:
Basic Books, Inc., 1967. First ed. published in 1956.
Jencks, Christopher and David Riesman. The Academic Revolution. New York:
Doubleday, 1968.
Kerman, Joseph. The Beethoven Quartets. New York: Knopf, 1967.
Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. 4th ed. Lakeville, Connecticut: Institute
of General Semantics, 1958.
Koutsoudas, Andreas. Writing Transformational Grammars: An Introduction. New

York: McGraw-Hill, 1966.
Kraehenbuehl, David, et. al. "The Professional Music Theorist: A Forum", Jour-
nal of Music Theory, IV/11(1960).
65
Langer, Susanne K. Feeling and Form. New York: Scribner's, 1953.
Lewis, C.I. "Terminating Judgments and Objective Beliefs", Perceiving, Sensing,

and Knowing, ed. by Robert Swartz. New York: Doubleday, 1965.
MacLeod, R. B. "Phenomenology: A Challenge to Experimental Psychology", Be-

haviorism and Phenomenology, ed. by T. W. Wann. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1964.
McLuhan, Herbert Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Message. New
York: Bantam Books, 1967.
Mitchell, Donald. The Language of Modern Music. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
Nagel, Ernest. The Structure of Science. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World,
Inc.. 1961.
Poland, William. "Theories of Music and Musical Behavior", Journal of Music

Theory, 7/2(1963).
Rapaport, Anatol. "Various Meanings of 'Theory'", a paper read at the 1958 annua
meeting of the American Political Science Association, September, 1958.
Rogers, Carl R. "Toward a Science of the Person", Behaviorism and Phenomenol

ogy, ed. by T.W. Wann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Rogers, Carl R. "Toward a Theory of Creativity", A Source Book for Creative

Thinking, ed. by Sidney J. Parnes and Harold F. Harding. New York: Scribner's,
1962.
Stein, Erwin (ed.). Arnold Schoenberg Letters. Translated by Eithne Wilkins and
Ernst Kaiser. London: Faber and Faber, 1964.
Taylor, Calvin. "A Tentative Description of the Creative Individual"

for Creative Thinking. New York: Scribner's, 1962.
Wallach, Michael. "Creativity and the Expression of Possibilities", Creativity and

Learning. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968. Originally published in the Summer 1965
issue of Daedelus.
Wilkinson, E. M. and L. A. Willoughby. Goethe: Poet and Thinker. London: Ed-

ward Arnold, Ltd., 1962.

Yale Music Theory Training Process and Product

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Yale Music Theory Training Process and Product

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Yale University Department of Music

Training in Music Theory: Process and Product

Process and Product

Since opinions regarding the nature of theoretical training are

would indeed be misleading to believe that the above-mentioned

The relation between music theory (philosophically speaking)

The problem of preparation, then, is at least twofold. On the

Rogers, entails the creation of such external conditions as are

To define an impression signifies a good deal more than

This approach seems to offer one possible means of re-struc-

ory or idea which is promulgated, read, generally approved,

To be specific, the following perceptive abilities can be both

It can be seen that these six representative tasks range them-

ments which discourage experimentation and disregard individ-

I should like to summarize one existing methodology for the

molecular structure of benzene only after having dreamed of a

Music is a simultaneous and successive-ness of tones and

tinued efforts to describe musical phenomena in non-musical,

The term "language" can be defined in abstract and general

A generative grammar is a finite set of rules which enu-

A grammar. . . which attempts to characterize in an ex-

The Schenkerian theory of tonal music, in its structure of

position, or analytically, in reverse. Since many of the

Chomsky regards the conception of a "finite state Markov pro-

It can be concluded that synectics is applicable as a behavioral

a student to learn how to learn, he may not find it difficult to

It would seem that any discussion of the role of creativity in

To say that science is a way of behaving is to say that the cri-

Michael Wallach, in discussing cognitive processes commonto

the human being as an artist or composer or writer seems

as to what may be predictively useful in science. . . . An

The first of these endeavors - the generation of conceptual

One might also think of these activities as speculatio

The educational message that gets communicated to those

Is the teacher himself really freed by these devices? Or does

he become patronized by the engineers who design the machines

. . American young people's intelligence is certainly re-

Moving on to a brief consideration of the second reason for

the second point of view, a description of human behavior would

now every sign indicates the relationship is a good deal

This is not to minimize the importance of rigor and method; I

We can follow the lead suggested by Babbitt in considering the

ever has been employed. " (Babbitt, CMS, p. 52) We require

Thus, descriptive notions, such as "II chord" or "V chord",

Explicitness is necessary in a theory if its descriptions are not

does not yet exist is manifested by the various meanings of the

Given: A completely diatonic melody. (See Example 1.)

Postulates: There are n2 - n intervals in a collection of

n specifiably different pitch-classes. A hier-

Procedure: (1) Extract all the specifiably differ

Such a procedure is not as cumbersome as it appears to be,

The criteria of completeness and simplicity are more easily

Since theories are constructed with a view toward explain-

diversified subordinate structures. (Nagel, pp. 103-104)

Completeness and simplicity enable a theory to suggest sys-

Bearing these limitations in mind, it should be realized that it

A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical con-

terms. This is what Bertrand Russell meant when he said

In fields other than mathematics and symbolic logic, therefore,

It must be borne in mind that the general rules of a gram-

The foregoing section has attempted to provide an in-depth

thetical work which precedes the ultimate verification of author-