Should you spend more time studying a language, or studying linguistics?
We talk about learning music theory as if it’s learning a language. It isn’t.
Music literacy is language-like – it’s learning to read, and translate music through eyes and ears.
Music theory is much more akin linguistics: the study of how language works.
Most writers and speakers of a language don’t need to understand how it works – that’s why high school English classes devote relatively little time to the study of English linguistics, but rather focuses reading, interpreting, and writing in English.
That’s why, to me, the aural skills classes in college music programs are so much more essential than the music theory classes. These are the places where we’re developing functional skills that will serve us as musicians.
(To be clear, this is from someone who has written a book about Jazz Theory and who is fascinated by linguistics. Just because I’m fascinated by something doesn’t mean it’s a universal necessity.)