Composer Teaching
Abstract
Für die Minnesota Music Teacher’s Association hielt Ernst Krenek in zeitlicher Nähe zu seinem Antritt der Professur an der Hamlin University eine Rede über den Anspruch von Musiktheoretischen Unterricht aus der Perspektive eines Komponisten. Kreneks Ansprüche umfassen handwerkliche Kompetenzen (Harmonielehre und Kontrapunkt), Kenntnisse der jeweiligen historischen Kontexte von unterschiedlichen Stilen, aber auch Lesefähigkeit in unterschiedlichen Sprachen (insbesondere Latein, aber auch Deutsch oder Französisch) um sich mit Quellen-Texten beschäftigen zu können. Und alles soll letztlich einer praktischen Umsetzung der musiktheoretischen Kompetenzen, namentlich dem Komponieren dienen, auch wenn die Studierenden letztlich nur eine Lehrbefugnis anstreben. „The very best should be just good enough for that profession, or else we will be forever frustrated in our attempts to maintain a real musical culture throughout the nation.“
A COMPOSER TEACHING(Address given at the annual meeting of the Minnesota Music Teachers' Associa- tion,
Whenever a composer is teaching at a liberal arts college, there is some apprehension likely to develop lest he may overemphasize the significance of creative endeavors and give the music department that famous conservatory slant which seems to many college people particularly distasteful. It is true, of course, that a composer in a teaching position will be especially keen in observing and stimulating creative abilities in his students, for it is there that he expects most immediate response and most satisfactory results. More than anybody else active in the field of music the composer is passionately interested in the perpetuation of the art, for only if the art of music is to survive as a powerful factor in the intellectual and emotional life of man- kind, can be reasonably safe in expecting from posterity that recognition which no composer of consequential music has earned from his contemporaries during several centuries. He will instinctively try to educate spiritual heirs to his ideas, pupils who will form the nucleus of larger groups which eventually will prepare the mind of the public at large for a better under- standing of his message. While it does not mean that all his pupils have actually to write music, it is obvious that the teaching composer will turn his particular attention to those who do. It is his natural conviction that the life of the art is inseparably tied up with an unceasing flow of new cre- ation. Through the peculiar mentality that developed in the 19th century, many people came to believe - although they may not have made it conscious to themselves - that we are so wonderfully blessed with masterpieces of earlier periods that we can practically dispense with new additions to the well-tested repertoire; and the greater portion of present day's musical life is obviously being managed according to this belief. This is a very dangerous fallacy, for, whether the average concert manager and concertgoer believe it or not, the art lives only as long as there are creative impulses at work. If no new music were written, the old one would soon petrify and become a mere curiosity, like Egyptian mummies, or some other product of a vanished civilization. There must be constantly people who believe firmly in the possibility of creating new forms of the art, for their faith alone keeps the glorious past alive, in spite of the philistine assumption that the new experiments tend to destroy the acknowledged beauty of olden times. In fact, it is just the other way around.
There is another contradiction which I have to mention at this
point. Nobody is more aware than the composer of the fact that there is en-
tirely too much composing going on, not so much for the trivial reason of com-
petition, but above all because he experiences painfully the inferior quality
of ninety nine percent of what is being written. And yet, he is the one who is
boundlessly optimistic about the creative abilities of his fellowmen and feels
like encouraging everybody to try his hand at writing music. Strangely enough,
it is usually the unmusical people who don the pessimistic attitude of the per-
fectionist and would like to nip in the bud any impulse that does not promise
a second
numerable anonymous workers. The great masters of the past always appeared
in a community soaked with musical thought and full of musical feeling. It
needs the thankless enthusiasm of thousands and thousands of amateurs and
would be composers whose works are doomed to oblivion as they originate in
order to pave the way for one
Let us now turn to the methods available to the teaching composer for carrying out his task. His main vehicle for conveying his ideas is known as teaching theory. Frequently the theoretical part of the musical curriculum is looked upon as something which has to be there for the sake of completeness, and theory courses as a sort of necessary evil of which the music student has to take a carefully chosen minimum. I think this is part- ly due to the unfortunate term "theory" which we still carry along from ages past. It sounds as if this branch of musical instruction would deal with certain esoteric aspects of the subject, which really should belong to the specialist. The composer is naturally of a different opinion. To him what goes on in the theory courses seems to be the most practical ap- proach to music that can be imagined, for what could be more practical than the actual making of music?
There are three ways of dealing with music: the creative, the analytical and the reproductive way, and every musician should participate in all of them, with differences in emphasis and intensity, according to his individual talents. The creative way should naturally be considered the most vital approach. It deals with the writing of music and secures the future of the art in the most immediate manner, as I pointed out before. If ever the day should come when no new music is written, music would cease to be studied as well as to be performed. The analytical way involves the study of the history of music and the understanding of the musical process. If it seems to be less vital for the existence of the art, it is an absolute necessity for the artist, be he a composer or a performer of music, for without it he will remain a dull, unenlightened craftsman, relying on a few tricks picked up here and there, unable to give his work dignity and signifi- cance, which can result solely from his seeing himself in a proper historical perspective. The reproductive way is the field of the performer, or inter- preter, which is so natural a correlative to the action of the composer that it needs no further elucidation. The term "applied music" usually bestowed upon these activities always strikes me as particularly silly, for it seems to imply that music, existing somewhere all by itself, is being "applied" by the performer to some extraneous purpose. I wish we could find a more consistent and more telling terminology for the academic classification of musical studies than we have now. I am sure it would remove many miscon- ceptions now blurring the simple facts.
In regard to his own particular department of teaching, the theory course, as it is called now the composer is especially impressed by the
- 3 -fact that he is practically the only one among his colleagues in the liberall arts college who has to be prepared for dealing to a great extent with illit- erate students, as far as the field of music is concerned. For practically any other kind of studies the student is equipped with some sort of rudiment- ary knowledge, even if he should not have elected that particular subject in high school. If he has not studied Physics in high school, he probably has read some popular technical books and has examined car engines or taken apart a radio. If he has not studied mathematics, he knows the multiplication table. If he has not studied a foreign language, he has, at least to some degree, become acquainted with his own language. For almost any subject of his collegiate studies he has acquired a few, albeit very elementary tools. Only among music students we are likely to find a substantial number of those who have not even the faintest idea what has to happen before music can fill the local drugstore with questionable din - in many cases the only musical experience in the pre-college life of our students.
The breaking-in process to which such students must be subjected goes on usually in something called "First Year Harmony" and makes of this course a sort of musical kindergarten far below any howsoever leniently defined col- lege standards. I have great respect for anyone who teaches this course suc- cessfully, for it is not easy to instruct people approaching maturity in a subject matter intellectually within easy reach of nine or ten year old child- ren, without making them feel silly. Naturally these ridiculously elementary affairs are more difficult to master for growing adolescents who are directed in other courses to approach the subject matter with a relatively advanced intellectual apparatus, than they are for children, and therefore Harmony is known among many students as a stiff course. I am afraid that college music will be of a really collegiate grade only when we succeed to make the elements of music an obligatory subject of the grade school.
Now since Harmony is such a "stiff" course, many people, including
some teachers, believe it is about the maximum of what a normal music student
should take in theory. For many reasons counterpoint is believed to be far
too difficult a subject for average students, and I know of a number of schools,
even such with acknowledged high standards, which make counterpoint a subject
of graduate studies. One of the reasons is the general attitude towards theory
which I already have tried to refute: namely the vague idea that music is one
thing, whatever it may be, and theory another, which can be left to the speci-
alist. I hope I have succeeded in showing that music without the creative
approach embodied in the so called theory course is a dull trade, for the
creative approach - the first-hand experience in trying to do what a composer
does - can alone afford us a real understanding of the creative process,
and no matter in what particular way we ultimately want to be active in music,
we will not get anywhere without that understanding. Not emphasizing, but
curtailing theory creates the unwanted conservatory atmosphere. Another reason
for the gingerly attitude toward counterpoint is the idea that counterpoint
is a mathematical curiosity left over from the Middle Ages and unnecessary,
possibly even harmful to the modern composer. That idea seems to have become
more articulate in the impressionistic period and has many followers today
among the admirers of French and Russian music. I do not know how true it is
for the impressionistic type of composition, but I do know that a great part
of studies in harmony still being considered an indispensable necessity by
most educators becomes impossible of being carried out properly if it is not
supported by contrapuntal practice. That is the four-part chorale harmon-
ization, pride and joy of any harmony teacher, and his main problem child at
the same time. No wonder, since the chorale style of
of harmonic functions and tonality, the
Harmony is indeed difficult, if it comes before counterpoint. Act-
ually counterpoint is pedagogically much easier to handle, for it can be put
more completely, in fact almost in its entirety, into unmistakable rules. The
treatment of harmonic materials requires artistic judgment at a comparatively
early stage, when the student is hardly prepared to use such judgment, where-
as the training in counterpoint develops the power of artistic discrimination
almost without the student's noticing it. There are already a few enlight-
ened educators, such as for instance
and biases he had. If there is a point to be made, I would say that I am not
in favor of limiting the study of modal counterpoint to the period of
The third reason to be advanced for assigning a broader space to counterpoint early in the theory curriculum is that many young people now- adays have a more immediate sense for counterpoint than they have for harm- ony. This is nothing to be wondered at by the teaching composer, for he knows that the truly modern idiom of our own times is again permeated by a fundamentally polyphonic conception of music, just as the idiom of the Middle Ages had been. We live in a period in which the predominantly harm- onic way of musical thinking of the last three and a half centuries has come chiefly to an end, and the most talented of our students tend quite naturally towards counterpoint and polyphony. It is no longer true that the late romantic idiom is most familiar with the students, and that their the- oretical training had therefore to select that idiom as a point of depart- ure. It is familiar to everybody in a purely quantitative sense, because most of the music which we hear in concerts and over the radio belongs to that style. However, creative music - which, as everybody knows, has a very negligible place in those institutions - has taken a different trend, and this trend is naturally living in most of the talented young musicicians even without their knowing it. If you teach counterpoint, you would be sur- prised to notice how easily this trend can be activated.
A well-rounded theory course needs to be supplemented by proper
historical information. The teaching of history should of course include more
than a boresome accumulation of figures and names and the vain demonstration
of constant progress, working irresistably from the barbaric depths of the
Dark Ages up to the proud heights of
Historical studies of this kind require inspection of first hand
source material. It is well-nigh impossible to get a halfway adequate pic-
ture of medieval and Renaissance music if you know it only in the very few
specimens which are floating around in modern, so called practical arrange-
ments, isolated from their context, transposed, adapted to romantic conven-
tions by arbitrary handling of alterations, and rhythmically completely
distorted. Imagine that art students would know the paintings of
and
The same is true with the history of theory of music. We are by far too much relying on books written about other books written about more books, instead of trying to take a look at the original books themselves. I for in- stance have written a small book on the theory of the Twelve-Tone Technique, and I should hate to have it known five hundred years hence only from sixth to seventh hand interpretations. I do hope that anybody who then might be interested in 20th century theory will take the trouble to consult my own text. Should we not grant the same privilego to the 13th and 14th century theorist? I have made my own excerpts and annotations from some of the old texts, and comparing my own conclusions with some of those set forth for instance in the Oxford History of Music, I find that they differ in vari- ous important points. From this fact I don't derive any criticism against the authors of this excellent and most valuable monument of scholarship. But as a composer of today I am quite naturally looking for things differ- ent from those that interested the musicologist forty years ago and I am applying different viewpoints and criteria. I think we have not only the right but also the duty of interpreting the sources according to our own lights and culling from them whatever wisdom we seem to need, provided only that we are really dealing with first hand evidence. Predigested food may be easy to swallow, but it is neither nourishing nor tasty.
The problem is how to get hold of the sources. As far as music is concerned, the great monumental editions of old music are few and far be- tween. Unfortunately not many libraries cared to buy them, as long as the buying was good, and now they cannot be had for love nor money and no one knows whether they will be available again at all, and when. However, the device of microfilms comes in as a really heavensent help. You can get microfilm of almost any of the important editions of medieval and Renais- sance music from some of the big libraries that own them, at a negligible price. All you need to have is a projection machine that will throw the pictures on a screen, and any number of people, according to the size of the screen, can study the music as well as if they had the book in their hands.
As to the literature, we have to hope that some publisher will soon
undertake an inexpensive reprint of the two standard collections of medieval
treatises,
At this point I feel that many of you are becoming a little im- patient not only because I have spoken long enough, but also because they
- 7 -think that all I have said may be well and good but that these are rather fantastic and unrealistic pipe dreams, typical of a newcomer from some high brow Eastern college, in view of the fact that most of our music stud- ents are working for nothing more than a teacher's certificate, and for this purpose they don't need all that advanced stuff. I wish to assure you that I have spoken all the time with exactly this fact in my mind, and it is my conviction that anybody who works for nothing more than a teacher's certif- icate is not worthy of getting one. He should indeed put all his pride into saying "I am working for nothing less than the legitimation of being a teacher." The very best should be just good enough for that profession, or else we will be forever frustrated in our attempts to maintain a real musical culture throughout the nation. He is a very poor teacher who thinks he needs to know no more than what he is supposed to hand out to his pupils. Only if he knows ten times as much, will he be able to select with sovereignty and responsibil- ity the proper material for his teaching. But even the amount of factual knowledge is not the really decisive element. The main thing is the spirit by which his teaching is animated, and the right spirit cannot be acquired unless the whole field is diligently penetrated from beginning to end, un- less the candidate has learned to oversee it from an exalted vantage point which allows him a complete and unbiased view and enables him to draw his own conclusions from an immediate experience of first hand evidence. If the idea should prevail that a person who is supposed to give elementary instruc- tion does not need more than elementary equipment, this very minimum of in- formation is inexorably bound to dwindle, as time goes by, and to vanish into nothing sooner than we think. It is precisely the teacher who should have at least the same amount of education as any other musician, or rather more of it, or else it will be true that only second rate musicians become teachers. We have every reason indeed to contradict the scornful saying that those who can, do, and those who can't teach. It is our business to see to it that those who teach can also do, and that only such who can do are admitted to teach. I pointed out in the beginning why hardly any musi- cian is as passionately interested in the problems of teaching music as the composer, and therefore he considers it a special privilege to raise his voice whenever the cause of music education is at stake.