You're absolutely right, I see your point.
But - when making music, does your mind revolve around music theory, or
around the music?
Does a musician sit down and create theoretical novelties before playing
them?
Music theory is a way to communicate musical matters so that others can
understand and use them - not a means of being creative.
Thus, the musician and the music theorist are two different
personalities, even if they are one human being.
However, I did not say "never", but "rarely", and it's rare that the
famous musicians are also famous theoreticians.
Dowland was a player first and foremost, a singer songwriter superstar,
who happened to be also a teacher and as such needed to or wanted to
communicate his thoughts about music.
Do you find Mattheson on the concert programmes, or rather Handel, Bach,
and Vivaldi? Is it Gaffurius or rather Josquin whose musicial works were
famous? Who sings Vicentino madrigals??
People like Rameau and Praetorius are few people famous for both theory
and compositions, who else would you say falls into the same
universalist category?
Am 26.07.2018 um 21:16 schrieb Ralf Mattes:
Am Donnerstag, 26. Juli 2018 20:44 CEST, Tristan von Neumann <tristanvonneum...@gmx.de> schrieb:
Musicians and Music Theorists are rarely one and the same person :)
Sorry, but that's the biggest bulls**t I've ever heard!
Tinctoris (choir master, composer and most likely a singer)?
Gafurius (composer, maestro di capella at the Milan cathedral) - not a
musician?
Dowland (rumors say he wrote some lute music) - only known for his theoretical
works (Micrologus)?
Muffat the Elder (author of one of the best figured bass treaties) - never
wrote (and played) music?
J. B. Samber (author of an impressive church organist method) - not an organist
at the Salzburg cathedral?
Mattheson ("Wunderkind" singing and playing organ on a preofessional level at
age 9, worked as an opera singer,
first as a soprano, later as a tenor) - not a musician?
Gasparini - C.P.E. Bach etc. .... oh well.
It is not necessary to name or classify anything while making music -
Music Theory is mostly after the fact.
The kind of music theory you probly talk about [1] simply didn't exist during
the time period we disuss here.
Most (if not all) of the before-mentioned authors would probably describe their
work as
a method/guide in student learning to produce (better) music. Naming things can
be extremly helpful
in teaching. Just have a look at the some of the works titles. Samber's
'Manuductio ad Organum' litteraly means
'guiding (the students) hands during organ playing' (and, C.P.E. writes, this
is exactly what old Bach did).
Theory is taught, but novelties appear regardless - see Monteverdi and
Artusi.
And yet, Monteverdi took great care to provide a "theoretical" framework for
his novelty.
The 'seconda prattica' discussion is _not_ one of 'theory' vs. 'la-la creative
freedom'. It's
about two musicians having (often amazingly subtle) differences in what they
consider aesthetically
pleasing (or, maybe even over the question of whether music always has to be
aesthetically pleasing).
Cheers, RalfD
[1] which in english would probably be called musicology. No, they are not the
same.
Am 26.07.2018 um 19:11 schrieb Leonard Williams:
How would musicians like Dowland or Johnson have named their
chords? Were they thinking in chord progressions, modalities,
incidental chords arising in polyphonic cadences? I guess this is a
question of music theory evolution.
Leonard
-----Original Message-----
From: Leonard Williams <arc...@verizon.net>
To: lute <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Wed, Jul 25, 2018 8:54 am
Subject: [LUTE] chord names
As chordal music (as opposed to polyphonic) became more prevalent,
and many modes became history, how were chords named? G maj, A min,
...? Tonic, dominant, etc? When did this start?
Just curious.
Regards,
Leonard Williams
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