Keynotes

MUSIC THEORY PEDAGOGY: BUILDING TRUST WITH TODAY'S STUDENT MUSICIANS

Music theory taught at the secondary and college levels must involve more than dispensing information, since the result may leave many students with scant material that can be applied to the music they perform. The score and ear must work together, and arcane and redundant exercises eschewed. Indeed, the days of drilling as an end unto itself is no longer viable.

In recent decades instructors have begun to infuse theory, analysis, and aural skills with musicality and the widespread use of literature along with vibrant and exciting analytical tools, the most important of which provide an environment in which students learn to interpret a score, rather than merely to describe events.

In many environments, music theory and analysis have added a third component, the merging of analysis and performance based on studying the score and developing a sensitive ear. And the instructor willing to present a more integrated approach will be rewarded with students eager for more discovery-oriented activities.

Our jobs become noble and worthy because we open the minds of students: we must inculcate curiosity and provide models of how one can be an articulate advocate for their art. Thus, we must make every effort to develop meaningful musical practice as the goal rather than music theory as a separate task.

This presentation will focus on tonal and non-tonal examples using a variety of analytical methods ranging from gestalt perception and cognition to dramatic narrative. The central role of counterpoint sensitizes the performer to a wide range of compositional processes that will confirm their interpretation and will often illuminate processes that will widen their scope of performative options.

Acclaimed pianist and pedagogue Steven Laitz is currently Professor and Chair of the Music Theory Department and Assistant Dean of Curricular Development at the Juilliard School. Prior to this, he served as Chair of Music Theory at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester, where he wrote “The Complete Musician: An Integrated Approach to Theory, Analysis, and Listening,” which is currently in its fifth edition and in use at schools across the United States, China, and Europe. He is also the author of “Graduate Review of Tonal Harmony,” and his work on pedagogy and Schubert’s lieder has been published in the journal “Theory and Practice.” Laitz also serves as Director of the Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy at the University of Oklahoma and is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and Executive Editor of Music Theory Pedagogy Online. Other notable teaching engagements include residencies in China, where he is a Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory, as well as a residency at the Rebecca Penneys Piano Festival and an eight-year tenure as piano faculty at the Chautauqua Institute. His speaking engagements have included meetings of the Society for Music Theory and various residencies at colleges and conservatories throughout the United States.

MUSIC THEORY tODAY: TOMORROW AND YESTERDAY

The enigmatic title of my talk is meant as a reminder that music theory—as both a scholarly as well as a pedagogical discipline—has always existed on a historical continuum. Today, we might think that we have entered a unique moment that we might call the “globalization” of music theory.

Not only are traditions of music theory from around the globe being circulated and studied in ever-growing numbers via our hyper-digitalized world of instant communication and translation, but the scholarly discipline of music theory itself (along with societies devoted to it) also seems to be more and more in evidence worldwide.

Yet this is actually nothing new. In my talk, I want to persuade that cross-cultural migration, exchange and appropriation have been a part of the historical story of music theory since antiquity. Interestingly, Croatian music theory provides an excellent case study of this intellectual cosmopolitanism, from the perspectives of yesterday, today, and perhaps even tomorrow.

Thomas Christensen holds the Avalon Foundation Chair of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago, where he has taught for the past 25 years. The author of over 60 articles and a half dozen books, his scholarly research centers on the history of music theory. Fundamental to his work has been a desire to situate deeply within cultural discourses the many intellectual frames, arguments, and linguistic models used by writers in the early modern period. Among the most significant of these works can be mentioned his prize-winning monograph, Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and his editorship of the Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2002). His most recent book is Stories of Tonality in the Age of Francois-Joseph Fétis published by the University of Chicago Press in 2019 Professor Christensen’s research has also received recognition from a variety of academic associations and funding agencies. He was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin) in 2011-12 and the American Academy in 2002. Most recently, Christensen received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2019) and the ACLS (2015) to support his current research project on the global history of music theory. Christensen received a PhD in music theory and history from Yale University in 1985, studying with Claude Palisca and David Lewin. Before Chicago, he held teachings positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Iowa. An active citizen in the broader intellectual community of music scholars, Christensen has served as president of the Society for Music Theory (1999–2001) and worked for several decades to further international collaborative ties with colleagues around the globe.