Music theory (or as I prefer, music literacy) seems among the primary focuses of music school and, to a lesser extent, many secondary music programs. Setting aside the hegemony of focusing almost universally on Western tonal theory, maybe we can ask, “What’s it for?” Why are we pushing music literacy so hard?
Here are six good and not-so-good reasons.
- It helps us understand the music we interpret more easily. Among other things, that can help us speed up our timeline from sight read to performance.
- It helps open new doors to creating music. When we understand the different ways music might function, we can use them as tools to make new music.
- It helps create a common well of understanding. When we have the same vocabulary to describe music, we can much more easily communicate about the music with one another.
Those are pretty good ones. Then there are some not-so-good reasons.
- It helps us select a particular kind of musicians. It is often used as a tool to weed out some music students – to the detriment of the profession, it seems to me, because it selects for musicians with a particular skill set.
- It is easier to objectively grade. Either you used the correct Roman numeral or you didn’t. Objective grading sure makes your job easier.
- It helps to enforce societal ideas about superiority. There is no question that emphasizing 18th century European music in our schools is at least partially designed to reinforce the idea that 18th century European music (and European music in general) is superior.
I come to the musical world through literacy – it’s how I interact most naturally with music. And I devote a lot of time to teaching music literacy to my students. But I don’t teach music literacy without understanding the reasons why I do – both good and not-so-good.