Re: [Finale] Music Theory/Duke Ellington

[Daniel Wolf]

There is a tremendous fear of music theory out there, with many 
musicians having the sense that music-theoretic discourse "kills the 
magic" of music making.  However, I find that that such feelings can 
often be alleviated by identifying the tasks that theorists set as 
modest ones with "results" that are, ultimately, provisional, such that 
ever-deeper and wider-ranging analyses of music have only deepened our 
sense of music's mysteries.  First of all, music theories are simply 
ways of talking about music, and doing so within communities of 
musicians who share a tradition and some common vocabulary for talking 
about music. This discourse has a modest program, largely because it -- 
as if by definition -- does a good job of describing the mechanics of 
music making, but a lousy job with the emotions and meanings of music 
making, but by and large, it stays out of the territories where it is 
less effective, albeit with the caveat that there are likely to be 
connections between the results of our more mechanical researches and 
such big themes, but these connections are presently very vague.  
Further, a theory of music inevitably suggests real material connections 
within single works of music, between individual works, and between 
repertoires of works, and it does so using tools (language, maths) that 
are basically external to practical music-making, so that a music theory 
may often be a way of discovering previously unknown aspects of musical 
works that can be directly exploited by interpreters.  Finally, the 
end-product of a musical theory is seldom just the analysis of familiar 
musics; it may well point to material and formal possibilities for new 
musics

Daniel Wolf   
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