Bending the Rules of Music Theory

Lessons from Great Composers

Timothy Cutler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351069144
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

For students learning the principles of music theory, it can often seem as though the tradition of tonal harmony is governed by immutable rules that define which chords, tones, and intervals can be used where. Yet even within the classical canon, there are innumerable examples of composers diverging from these foundational "rules." Drawing on examples from composers including J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, and more, Bending the Rules of Music Theory seeks to take readers beyond the basics of music theory and help them to understand the inherent flexibility in the system of tonal music. Chapters explore the use of different rule-breaking elements in practice and why they work, introducing students to a more nuanced understanding of music theory.

1

“RULES”

Very musical, but forbidden!

—Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979)

Ours is a world of restrictions. In nearly all facets of our lives, actions are dictated or influenced by rules. There are the natural laws of the universe. Gravity keeps us earthbound without mechanical aid. Daylight lasts only so long, for we cannot prevent the sun from setting every evening. We are also restricted by our own physical limitations. We must breathe, we must eat and drink, and we must sleep. Then there are man-made laws. Many are regarded positively: they engender order, prevent chaos, and protect us from bodily harm. Other laws, some argue, impact us negatively by infringing upon our rights, promoting inequality, or depriving us of the opportunity to express ourselves.

Some laws are unspoken, the consequence of subjective worldviews rather than governmental decrees. Those disconcerted by the limitations of contemporary customs sometimes seek new paths and occasionally alter how we view ourselves. Marilyn Monroe (Clayton 2006, 381) recognized that “if I had observed all the rules, I’d never have gotten anywhere,” and in doing so played a small but vital role in the twentieth century’s changing perception of women. Societal norms thus differ from natural laws in one important way: we can revise the former. Although the basic axioms of the natural world remain for the most part unchanged, as society evolves, social values evolve as well.

Even some of our most pedantic rules are not immune to changing ways. How many of us have been chastised for splitting an infinitive? Grammar police insist that “you need to quickly finish your work” is a flawed way of stating “you need to finish your work quickly.” Despite their loud and ongoing protests, pedants were unable to eradicate split infinitives from modern English. And the longer split infinitives persisted, the more some wondered why they were outlawed in the first place. Eventually, more and more connoisseurs of the English language concurred that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the split infinitive. According to the 1994 edition of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, “the objection to the split infinitive has never had a rational basis.”

Those working on the cusp of innovation would contend that split infinitives allow us “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Many of them argue that rules do little more than stifle creativity. “There ain’t no rules around here! We are trying to accomplish something,” was Thomas Edison’s creed (Baldwin 2001, 296). For like-minded pioneers, rigidity of thought is the enemy of innovation. Rules, they say, calcify the mind, sapping it of freedom and flexibility. It is a common story that impactful inventions were formulated amid a chorus of fogeyish cynicism. History is replete with proclamations by skeptics, mired in the status quo, that were debunked by the cutting-edge discoveries of forward thinkers. Dionysius Lardner, a noted nineteenth-century professor of natural philosophy and astronomy, provides an amusing example: “Men might as well project a voyage to the moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean,” he exclaimed with derisive authority (Ratcliffe 2011, 224). Lardner, of course, was shortsighted on both accounts, although one can hardly blame someone for dismissing the possibility of space travel in the year 1838.

Many in the arts shun the notion of rigid precepts as well. According to the sixteenth-century Italian painter Federico Zuccari (Swainson 2000, 1024), “Rules serve no purpose; they can only do harm. . . .the artist’s mind. . .should not be hindered and weighed down by a mechanical servility to such rules.” Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1996, 213), the American writer and education reformer, hesitated when asked to describe her creative process: “the danger [is] that some student may take the explanation as a recipe or rule for the construction of other stories, and I totally disbelieve in such rules or recipes.”

Claude Monet’s stance on the utility of rules within the creative process was somewhat different (McAuliffe 2014, 239): “I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and that most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.” He may question whether the laws of painting exist, but implicit in Monet’s statement is an important nuance—the idea of forgetting the rules, which is not equivalent to never learning them in the first place. Monet implies that there may be nothing detrimental about the acquisition of technical precepts as long as they do not encumber the creative process. He suggests that one’s awareness of rules should reside on a subconscious level while working, where they are more likely to benefit rather than inhibit the creative process. This sentiment is echoed by Pablo Picasso (Ashton 1972, 58) (“To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore, or rather forget all the rules.”) and Truman Capote (Inge 1987, 22) (“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”).

It is easy to be swayed by the authoritative comments of these renowned individuals. Yet there is another angle, one that views rules in a more positive and constructive light, one that argues rules can play a more active role in the creative process, and one that contends rules and restrictions are a benefit to art. For some, nothing better fuels the fire of human creativity than being told you cannot do something. The conscious presence of limitations challenges us to overcome them; it enhances rather than hinders our creative drive. Orson Wells (Squire 2006, 54) declared, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” The English poet John Dryden (Du Fresnoy 1783, 165) insisted, “without rules there can be no art, any more than there can be a house without a door to conduct you into it.” And, as Robert Frost put it (Genn 2003, 121), “I play better tennis because the court is there.” Limitations are inherent to the arts. Paintings are entrapped within the frame. A dancer has only two arms and two legs. Architectural designs are beholden to the laws of gravity. Stories, plays, and movies begin and end.

The same holds true of music. Some constraints are self-imposed. Brahms’s “Ich schell mein Horn ins Jammertal,” op. 43, no. 3 (see Ex. 14.10) employs nothing but root-position triads and is all the more beautiful and impressive once we become aware of its harmonic constraints. Chopin’s Étude, op. 10, no. 5 contains a kaleidoscope of harmonic color despite the right hand’s confinement to the black keys. Other restrictions are inherent to the sonic arts. Western scales draw on a limited number of tones. Instruments go only so high and low, and their dynamic ranges are finite. They can be played only so fast, and every instrument has a limited timbral palette. Most music is patterned after the sounds of the human voice, a physical mechanism restricted by numerous factors. Its central limitation is the need to breathe. From this necessity arose the musical cadence. Were we capable of endless breath, it is uncertain whether cadences would exist. None of this, however, should be surprising. After all, art mirrors life: because life is abound with restrictions, so too is art.

Thus we arrive at a fundamental question: does a mastery of music theory benefit us as musicians? Does it improve our musicianship and produce superior performances? According to some, the answer is a definite “no.” They regard theory as cold and orderly, traits that are the polar opposite of musical expression. According to John Coltrane (Marsalis 2005, 32), “Damn the rules. It’s the feeling that counts.” At various times, Debussy (Austin 1970, 131), to a greater extent than Monet, denied the existence of theoretical precepts: “There is no theory. You have merely to listen. Pleasure is the law.” George Bernard Shaw (Amis and Rose 1995, 84) insisted, “The fact is, there are no rules, and there never were any rules, and there never will be any rules of musical composition except rules of thumb; and thumbs vary in length, like ears.” Shostakovich (Fanning 1995, 1) viewed the pursuits of music theorists and other academically oriented scholars as incongruent with the aims of musicians. When asked, “What is a musicologist?” he purportedly replied, “I’ll tell you. Our cook, Pasha, prepared the scrambled eggs for us and we are eating them. Now imagine a person who did not cook the eggs and does not eat them, but talks about them—that is a musicologist.” Sir Thomas Beecham (Swainson 2000, 73) stated tartly, “A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it.”

Even the classically trained Felix Mendelssohn was wary of a musical upbringing laden with theoretical constraints, as expressed in a letter to his teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter:

I often have to laugh, when the musicians here ask me, whether I learned according to Marpurg or Kirnberger, or perhaps might prefer Fux,. . .to which I answered, how I have learned, I wouldn’t even know. . . .Cramer still maintained that I definitely must have learned from a book, for without one, wasn’t it impossible? Then I laughed, as I said, and thought of you, and thank you, that you raised me not according to rigid, constricting theorems, but in true freedom, i.e., in the knowledge of proper boundaries.

Todd (2003, 43)

Many have noted that a slavish adherence to the rules is not a sure path to artistic greatness. The Greek rhetorician Longinus (Sisman 1997, 7) asked, “Which is better in poetry and in prose, grandeur with a few flaws or correct composition of mediocre quality, yet entirely sound and impeccable?” Georg August Griesinger (7) explained that Haydn “convinced himself that an anxious compliance with the rules often produces works that are the most lacking in taste and feeling.” Rameau (1971, 7) maintained, “There is a world of difference between a music without fault and a perfect music.”

Just as theory is viewed skeptically by some musicians, others express distaste for the act of analysis. Some fear the disease known as “analysis paralysis.” Edgard Varèse had a different objection (Bernard 1981, 1): “By its very definition analysis is sterile. To explain by means of it is to decompose, to mutilate the spirit of a work.” Debussy saw analysis as unnatural, even immoral:

Grownups tend to forget that as children they were forbidden to open the insides of their dolls—a crime of high treason against the cause of mystery. . . .And yet they still insist on poking their aesthetic noses into things that don’t concern them! Without their dolls to break open, they still try to explain things, dismantle them and quite heartlessly kill all their mystery. I suppose it is more convenient to know how things work: at least it gives us something to chat about.

Debussy (1977, 13)

Artur Schnabel (Wolff 1979, 19) cautioned against analyzing musical works in a bookish fashion: “To begin the study of a new work by analyzing its form, in school-term paper fashion, is more harmful than helpful.” And Michael Rabin (1972, 155) opined, “I do not think that the analytical approach to music is basically a musical one, since it tends to be exceedingly dry. . . .Musicologists often tend to consider themselves superior to ‘mere’ performers. . . .and have an unbearable snob quotient.”

Other musicians feel that rules are most detrimental when they impede the creative process. Rameau (Fisk 1997, 27) commented, “The moment when one is composing music is not the time to recall the rules that might hold our genius in bondage.” Bruckner (Mann 1994, vii) advised his students, “Look, gentlemen, that is the rule; needless to say, I don’t write that way.” Nadia Boulanger (Watkins and Scott 2012, 12) insisted, “To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.” And according to Schoenberg (1983, 9), “To hell with all these theories, if they always serve only to block the evolution of art and if their positive achievement consists in nothing more than helping those who will compose badly anyway to learn it quickly.”

Sometimes we must take quotations such as these with a grain of salt. One story has Beethoven denouncing the prohibition of parallel fifths, probably music theory’s best-known regulation. As told by Harold Schonberg, the long-time music critic of the New York Times, Beethoven

always looked with suspicion on “rules” of harmony, and one of his friends once pointed out a series of parallel fifths in his music. In classical harmony, this is the unforgivable sin. Beethoven bridled. Who forbids parallel fifths, he wanted to know. A list of authorities was cited: Fux, Albrechtsberger, and so on. Beethoven dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “I admit them,” he said.

Schonberg (1970, 93)

Did Beethoven really declare that the denouncement of parallel fifths is a fallacy? Schonberg’s tale suggests that a profound disconnect exists between theory and practice. It turns out, however, that Schonberg paints a misleading picture. Here is an account of the incident as relayed directly by the “friend,” the German composer and Beethoven pupil Ferdinand Ries:

Once during a walk together I mentioned two perfect fifths which resound noticeably and beautifully in one of his first string quartets in C minor. Beethoven did not remember them and claimed that it was wrong to call them fifths. Since he was in the habit of always carrying music paper with him, I asked for a sheet of it and wrote down the passage for him with all four voices. When he saw that I was right, he said: “Well, and who has forbidden them?” Since I did not know how to take that question, he repeated it several times, until, very taken aback, I finally answered: “Well, it is one of the very first basic principles.” The question was again repeated, whereupon I said: “Marpurg, Kirnberger, Fux, etc., etc., all the theoreticians!” “Well, I allow them!” was his answer.

Wegeler and Ries (1987, 76)

According to Ries, Beethoven does not claim that all parallel fifths are allowable, merely the specific type cited by Ries.

As with other art forms, prejudices against rules exist within the musical world, but they do not represent a consensus concerning the usefulness of theory. Beethoven’s position on parallel fifths was undoubtedly more refined than Harold Schonberg would have us believe. Arnold Schoenberg’s views were also more nuanced than his “to hell with all these theories” comment would suggest. In his enlightening essay “My Evolution,” Schoenberg (1975b, 91–92) reiterates the sentiments of Monet and Rameau: “When I compose, I try to forget all theories and I continue composing only after having freed my mind of them.” Schoenberg continues, “I am convinced that a mind trained in musical logic will not fail even if it is not conscious of everything it does.” And therein lies the importance of training, of the order and logic acquired through a comprehensive study of music theory. Additionally, this mode of musical instruction benefits all ki...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1 “Rules”
• 2 Consonance and Dissonance
• 3 Chord Construction
• 4 Voice Leading I: Parallel Fifths
• 5 Voice Leading II: Parallel Octaves and Other Procedures
• 6 Harmonic Syntax I: Contrapuntal Chord Function
• 7 Harmonic Syntax II: More Unorthodox Progressions
• 8 Deviant Harmonies I: Forbidden and Functionally Flexible Chords
• 9 Deviant Harmonies II: 64 Triads
• 10 Aberrant Nonharmonic Tones I: Analytical Conundrums
• 11 Aberrant Nonharmonic Tones II: Textbook Deviations
• 12 Tonal Transgressions I: Beginnings and Endings
• 13 Tonal Transgressions II: Plurality and Implication
• 14 Oddities and Ends
• Credits
• Bibliography
• Index of Composers and Works
• Subject Index