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Posted by Cal "ambivalent" M. I will praise him with faint damns. The Preface accurately describes the scope and purpose of the book: It is intended for undergraduate music majors at a college. Most colleges, after all—as the Preface states—“recognize the importance of the study of twentieth-century music and most require at least one course…” Quite so. This is an excellent book for a niche market. In a way. The Preface goes on to list the contents: presentation of basic theoretical concepts, examples from the famous 20th-Century atonal classics, practice exercises that include ear-training. Pretty darn competent. And, near as I can make it, there’s nothing wrong with it, in a way. No egotism. None of the illogical arguments, nor strange speculation, nor rage that you find in Schoenberg. None of the maniacal polysyllabics you find in Babbitt. None of the outright errors and naivety you find in Brindle. None of the oversimplifying and crudeness you find in Wuorinen’s Simple Composition. No numerology. No mystical “woo” about the significance of ratios and their connections to chakras or auras. No dabbling in Non-Western music. No confusion of different theoretical terminology. None of the eccentricity you find in Harry Partch. None of the dubious assertions you find in the Lydian Chromatic Concept by George Russell. In a way, what’s wrong with it is that—at first and even second glance—there’s nothing wrong with it. It even represents itself as reflecting a “broad consensus”. Wish it were so. Wish the “consensus” were based on something much deeper than the need for convention involved in scholarship and teaching, and the competitive pressures that are market-driven. It’s as if this book were written for the MCAS. The idea that one ought to have at least one course in 20th-Century Composition techniques is flawed from the start. No: One ought to be a fanatic who also accepts the strangeness of the 20th Century enterprise, or one shouldn’t go there in the first place. What’s wrong with it is that it represents only the “consensus” of a class of theoreticians whose main purpose is to teach undergraduates the basics, and not much else. What’s wrong with it is that—unlike almost every other book in my collection of theory books—it has not ONE SINGLE original idea. What’s wrong with it is that it raises complex issues and disposes of them with trite, bland little orthodox answers. Undergraduates may be a little wet behind the ears, but they ain’t sheeple. What’s wrong with it is that, given the choice between a multi-perspective way of explaining something that unites the intuitive with the formal—or just listing the formal way—Straus always chooses the formal way. Another case of “math envy” in full view. See the explanation of common-tones under transposition for example. Or inversion. What’s wrong with it is that either Straus has no taste, or taste of his own—or he fastidiously refuses to exercise it. Do all the examples he cites by Schoenberg sound good to him? Would he allow himself to say that some Schoenberg is just plain butt-ugly? Or some of it is unbearably tense, like the man himself? Is 20th-century music theory the last bastion of logical positivism? Hey, I’m just asking questions here! What’s wrong with the examples he chooses is that they’re the same G-d*m* examples that have appeared in every other book or class. What happened to Ives? Copland? Carter? Maderna? Lieberson? Straus? Etc. Yeah, there’s some Copland in the ear-training exercises, only it’s not printed. Of course, we have the token woman composer. The good old Ruth Crawford Seeger example. This book even manages to be sort of politically correct. If _Sonic Design_ by Cogan is a magical mystery tour, this book is a dull visit to a museum. What’s wrong with it are the perfunctory discussions. There is of course no discussion why “aggregates”—that is—in plain language, all 12 notes—are perceptually important, if indeed they are. The whole book is like this: Skimpy on what--if any--end-role these concepts have for the listener. Oh, yes, the listener. What’s missing is passion and common sense. For another example, Straus buys into the absurd practice of giving pitch-class sets (for ex. 0167) an identifying number (set “4-9”, I believe). Why not just say “0167”? Useful terminology, and brief enough. There’s nothing “9” about it. Pitch-class sets are useful concepts—to a degree—but no more than that. Basically, the more elements in the pitch-class set, the less useful the concept. Look at something from too high a vantage point of abstraction, and it all begins to look the same. Better to have only a slightly elevated, slightly abstract point of view. Stay close to practice. To hearing. My point is that if there’s a “broad consensus” here , it’s the consensus of the grave. By way of illustration, here’s Schoenberg’s comment about Slonimsky’s _Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns_ (which is a lot wilder and woollier in spirit and practice than the book under discussion!) Schoenberg: “I looked through your whole book and was very interested to find that you have in all probability organized every possible succession of tones. This is an admirable feat of mental gymnastics. But as a composer, I must believe in inspiration rather than in mechanics.” Schoenberg was very much about both mechanics and inspiration. In short, I’m arguing both sides of the fence. You need rigor. You need guts and 3 o’clock in the morning courage. The composers who wrote the works embalmed in Straus’ book were maniacs. They wouldn’t have recognized their own desiccated images here. This book should be called: _How to make 20th-Century Music Seem Somewhat Dull and Tame_. It wasn’t. It isn’t.
on 10/6/2006, 7:31 am
24.63.115.63
What’s Not to Like About _Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory_ by Joseph N. Strauss? (A polemic)
None of the flaws you find in Hanson, Piston, or Persichetti.
Same with Dallapiccola.
For example, the subject of octave equivalence—often known to spark interminable debates in grad-school seminars—is dispatched in less than a page. No clue that there might be something interesting or questionable here. No clue that octave equivalence is problematic.
(Some 20th century theoreticians make a strange fetish of using the tersest possible terminology, as if words were a scarce resource like caviar, or endangered like Spotted Owls. Robert Solomon is an example of this: He doesn’t seem happy with the already user-unfriendly way of listing a twelve-tone row, (for ex. 017592B684A3) so he gives a way of being even terser. Yet his own abbreviated notation leads him to make mistakes. This is pure envy of mathematical “elegance” in operation, with no practical advantage.
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