Hey, David, let's not insult the musicologists! This is music theorist mumbo-jumbo, and we let them do it because it keeps them happy and off the streets!
Ha! But seriously, music theorists, even if they ARE only talking amongst themselves, need terminology to describe what the lay listeners are hearing, too, even if the lay listeners don't need the terminology.
A musicologist would be much more interested in the Beatles' influence on their culture and vice versa, and there's probably a dissertation waiting to be written on the unexpected longevity of their work and the question of quality that implies. Musicologists tend to be interested in music as it fits into its particular culture, theorists in music as isolated artifacts. And yes, both kinds of scholar tend to find things in music that the composers might not have thought about at all, but they're still there. You can easily create structures that have all kinds of inner and outer relationships even if you don't know the terminology to name them. Country songwriters do it all the time.
Absolutely. Carl Jung even went so far as to say if ANY beholder of ANY art beholds something in it (even if the artist did not know it was there) then it IS there, as the artist must have included it subconsciously. I don't know if all composers are like me, but I am only interested in music that will be listened to, even if it is only listened to by a select few. So understanding a little better how something resonates, or fits into a listener's experience, will only help me as a composer.
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