Re: monz on Webern, Kyle on Bartok

Hi Monz and Kraig,

>i have to assume that you're stretching the
>truth a bit to make a point.
>it's documented quite well in Moldenhauer's
>big biography of Webern that he began composing in 1899
>at the age of 15, several years before he entered the
>University of Vienna and began his studies in musicology
>with Guido Adler.
>-monz

Well, perhaps, but he did do his dissertation on Heinrich Isaac, and so started out his professional life as a musicologist. (I wish some choir would record Isaac's Choralis Constantinus, it's a fascinating collection and provides a lot of insight to Webern's compositional tendencies.) Bartok went to school for composition and piano, and became a folk music collector later for largely compositional reasons. I got my degrees in composition and then became a music historian partly to redress my own grievances about American music, partly because the academic musicology community had become a lot hipper than the compositional community, and it was the only way a rabble-rouser like me could get a job. To this day I can get interviewed for music history positions, *never* for composition jobs.

Not that degrees mean anything, as has been intermittently pointed out here lately. I'm glad I got a doctorate in music: it allowed me to pick up a tremendous amount of useless information whose significance I will now never be tempted to overrate. And of course, in all those years nothing was ever mentioned about tuning at all except for a couple of days on the harmonic series and meantone temperament during the first two weeks of my freshman year at Oberlin, which is still more than most undergrads ever get. I didn't *really* learn harmony until I studied privately with Ben Johnston *after* grad school. I'd like to think that because I went to grad school, hundreds of other musicians with better things to do won't have to.

(I have to slightly qualify this bit of cynicism: at Northwestern I took a mind-blowing course on the late Beethoven sonatas with composer Peter Gena. Of course, when they realized how brilliant he was, they denied him tenure.)

>Hello Kyle!

>Once again like myself but more toward
>ethnomusicology. i have thought that
>this is a natural balence to being a composer.
>To balence the "creation of the new" with the
>"preservation of the old".
>next i'll find out you are left handed

Nope, right-handed. Kraig, I wouldn't create any more basis for confusing you and me than already exists. You can only hurt your reputation. :^)

Cheers,

Kyle

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:

> Not that degrees mean anything, as has been intermittently pointed
> out here lately. I'm glad I got a doctorate in music: it allowed me
> to pick up a tremendous amount of useless information whose
> significance I will now never be tempted to overrate.

I picked up a lot of useful things on the way to my doctorate--I'm thinking group theory and multilinear algebra in particular.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith <genewardsmith@j...>"

/tuning/topicId_41683.html#41684

<genewardsmith@j...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Kyle Gann <kgann@e...> wrote:
>
> > Not that degrees mean anything, as has been intermittently
pointed
> > out here lately. I'm glad I got a doctorate in music: it allowed
me
> > to pick up a tremendous amount of useless information whose
> > significance I will now never be tempted to overrate.
>
> I picked up a lot of useful things on the way to my doctorate--I'm
thinking group theory and multilinear algebra in particular.

***My guess, Gene is that a mathematics doctorate is significantly
different from a music composition one! :) One real positive for
*me* personally was the fact that "hanging around" the school allowed
me to get several performances and participate in the composer
community which, in Ann Arbor Michigan, was a great deal of fun. Of
course, that was a particular location, and probably the number of
such composing communities is quite limited.

Continued Happy Holidays from Michigan!

Joseph Pehrson