OK, I'm having a debate with somebody over on another site about something, and I figured since there's a great deal of musicians here, and a great deal of the more common posters are actually quite intelligent, I'd pose the question here:
Does "music theory" actually qualify as a "theory", at least in the context of the Scientific Method? If not, then how did the term "music theory" come about?
Music theory is not a scientific theory in the context of the Scientific Method. It uses the word "theory" in the same way that the term literary theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_theory) does. "Theory" in both of these contexts is used to mean "a scholarly approach to studying a subject," as pointed out in the link provided.
EDIT: Wikipedia FTW!
Okay, I would debate the previous post to some extent. While music, being an art, technically does not have a "right" and "wrong", music theory is a collection fo theories about what generally sounds good and evokes different moods. The best way I can put it is that it is a set of rules that state "If you do X, then Y will usually happen." The problem with this approach is that contemporary musicians (not pop, but real musicians and composers) have deviated a great deal from classical music and as a result, those theories are often disregarded inw hat I have heard. The result is stuff that often sounds like jazz. I'll not elaborate on my opinion of jazz.
To try to make that garbled rant make sense, I'll summarize: Music theory qualifies as a theory insofaras once upon a time soem brilliant people spent their lives experimenting with differnt tones, chord progressions, and the like and developed a general workign theory they applied. Since then, music theory as we know it was extrapolated from their works and the works of other great composers as a general set of theoretical rules that state "_____ sounds good and ______ does not."
Yeah, that probably didn't make much sense, but I'd say music theory didn't just come out of thin air. There was experimentation. Hundreds of years of it, actually. And the results are books like Harmony by Walter Piston (pretty much my bible for music theory).
Quote from: Raven BloodmoonOkay, I would debate the previous post to some extent. While music, being an art, technically does not have a "right" and "wrong", music theory is a collection fo theories about what generally sounds good and evokes different moods. The best way I can put it is that it is a set of rules that state "If you do X, then Y will usually happen." The problem with this approach is that contemporary musicians (not pop, but real musicians and composers) have deviated a great deal from classical music and as a result, those theories are often disregarded inw hat I have heard. The result is stuff that often sounds like jazz. I'll not elaborate on my opinion of jazz.
To try to make that garbled rant make sense, I'll summarize: Music theory qualifies as a theory insofaras once upon a time soem brilliant people spent their lives experimenting with differnt tones, chord progressions, and the like and developed a general workign theory they applied. Since then, music theory as we know it was extrapolated from their works and the works of other great composers as a general set of theoretical rules that state "_____ sounds good and ______ does not."
Yeah, that probably didn't make much sense, but I'd say music theory didn't just come out of thin air. There was experimentation. Hundreds of years of it, actually. And the results are books like Harmony by Walter Piston (pretty much my bible for music theory).
Right, I agree. I think the jazzy contemporary styles are an example of why you can't have "music fact"-- or "fact" in any artform, for that matter--, but it seems incredibly farfetched to say there wasn't any experimentation in the development of contemporary music theory.
Actually, jazz still uses a lot of what we would call standard theory. Most jazz progressions are based off the ol' ii-V-I structure, just with 7ths, 9ths, and 13ths added, and ofttimes flatted 5's as well.
Even the contemporaries (take Iliev, Smit, Bartók, etc) use what we refer to as "music theory," it's just not as readily apparent because of the layers of atonality they stack on top of it. However, it still serves as the basis of what sounds "good," and what sounds "strong." Many times, said contemporaries will veer away from those "good" and "strong" sounds for the sole purpose of not sounding that way, but they are still setting up their pieces in a way that makes sense structurally if you break it down.
In all my studying of music theory (which admittedly, was not as much as I probably should have studied, being a jazz student that I was), what I found most often was that composers would stray away from those basic musical building blocks for times here and there, usually to come back to them by the time all was said and done.
Of course, I'm not the resident expert here. If LC ever shows up again, he may have something completely different to say about it.
(Sorry for the rushed-sounding response; I'm at work and am not supposed to be just chatting it up! :) )
Quote from: Raven BloodmoonI'd say music theory didn't just come out of thin air. There was experimentation. Hundreds of years of it, actually. And the results are books like Harmony by Walter Piston (pretty much my bible for music theory).
Trial and error experimentation has very little to do with the Scientific Method. While hundreds of years have gone into testing what some people consider to sound good or to not sound good, there is nothing scientific about that process or its results. A scientific study of music would require an hypothesis, an experiment designed to test that hypothesis, and results that can be regularly duplicated. That last part is what prevents music theory from being a scientific theory, because music is entirely
subjective. No rule can be applied to the process of creating or appreciating music that is not entirely dependent upon personal opinons or cultural background.
Case in point, when I was studying music theory in college, a professor related a story of a Chinese ambassador who was taken by an American diplomat to see an orchestra performance. When the American later asked the ambassador what he most liked about the show, the Chinese ambassador revealed hat he liked listening to the orchestra tuning their instruments before starting more than he liked listening to any part of the actual performance. Since the ambasador came from an entirely different background than the American diplomat, his perception of music was radically different, seeing things that an American would consider to be grating noise as a form of beautiful music. This anecdote emphasizes the point that there is no universal law that can be applied to the study of music; there will always be differing opinions about music.
Compare this to chemistry or physics. If a hypothesis is developed and tested in either of these fields, an American scientist and a Chinese scientist would both be able to conduct the same experiment and reach the same conclusions, regardless of their cultural and personal differences. The results of this process using the Scientific Method are entirely
objective, something that cannot be achieved in the study of music.
Quote from: Epic MeepoA scientific study of music would require an hypothesis, an experiment designed to test that hypothesis, and results that can be regularly duplicated. That last part is what prevents music theory from being a scientific theory, because music is entirely subjective.
If I'm not mistaken, that's jumping straight from hypothesis to fact. Once the hypothesis is supported by evidence it becomes a theory that can predict the outcome, barring any unforseen circumstances (in your example, that would be cultural differences). because music (as well as any artform) is subjective, you can't develop objective
fact. Theory, on the other hand, has some wiggle room when it comes to objectivity.
Quote from: sdragon1984- the S is for penguinIf I'm not mistaken, that's jumping straight from hypothesis to fact.
I didn't say that an experiment has to prove the hypothesis. It just has to produce a result, affirmative or otherwise, that can be duplicated by anyone conducting it. A scientific theory would then be built from multiple hypotheses that these experiments could not disprove.
(Besides, science is just stuff you can't yet disprove, not actual
fact. :D)
Quote from: Epic Meepo(Besides, science is just stuff you can't yet disprove, not actual fact. :D)
nothing is a fact, just a very consistent string of coincidences. ;)
Ah, how did this thread fly under my radar?
It is possible to apply the scientific method to music, but that'll get you disciplines like acoustics and music cognition, not music theory. Music theory has benefitted greatly from the interest of mathematicians in the last few decades (particularly Milton Babbitt), but it still belongs with the humanities, rather than with the hard sciences. The scientific model of hypothesis->testing->data->analysis->conclusion->hypothesis doesn't really see much use at all in music theory, so music theory doesn't contain anything that would actually count as a "theory" in the scientific sense of the word.
A little more accurately (and more usefully), music theory can be thought of as a context for understanding what you hear (or rather, a group of contexts.) Josquin, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Bartok, Miles Davis, Frank Zappa... all thought about the music they wrote in different ways; play the same combination of notes for each of them, and they might each tell you it means something different. Music theory is about understanding those various different "sound universes" and the rules in place for each of them, so that you can better understand what composers are using that language to express.
If you've taken only a few courses in theory, you've probably dealt exclusively with theory from the Common Practice Period, which spans roughly from Bach to Brahms, and is largely concerned with the ideas first written down and codified by Rameau. Almost all theory programs teach Common Practice theory first, but that's not the only "sound universe" theory deals with, or the only way to think about it. Music theory deals with music spanning the entire timeline from ancient Greece (when music was first written down) to today, and there are many overlapping theories for understanding it. I've taken classes that deal with Renaissance theory (mainly Gregorian chant), Common Practice theory, Schenkerian analysis (big-picture theory dealing specifically with late-Classical/early-Romantic music), neo-Riemannian theory (for post-tonal, triadic music), set-class theory (for post-tonal, non-triadic music), serialist theory (for 12-tone music), and Rock Theory. They're all a little different, so it'd be silly to try and use theory to claim some kind of universal musical truth.
Quote from: IshmaylEven the contemporaries (take Iliev, Smit, Bartók, etc) use what we refer to as "music theory," it's just not as readily apparent because of the layers of atonality they stack on top of it.
set class[/i] theory, not Common Practice. Theory teachers use Bartok piano music to teach beginner set-class theory the same way they use Bach chorales to teach beginner Common Practice theory, and for the same reason: it exemplifies that style, cleanly and simply.