^^§^i^i0^^(:if ;'.

CREATIVE

PROJECTS

IN

MUSICIANSHIP

WARREN BENSON ITHACA CTtlXEGE

A report of Pilot Projects

sponsored by the

Contemporary Music Project

at Ithaca College and

Interlochen Arts Academy

Foreword by

WILLIAM J. MITCHELL COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC PROJECT

Music Educators National Conference

Washington, D. C.

1967

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword vii

LEARNING THROUGH CREATIVITY 1

The Ithaca College Projects 3

The Interlochen Arts Academy Project 17

TEACHING 35

Some Learning and Opinion Gained

from This Three-Year Experience 37

APPENDIX. .47.

Lecture: Arriving at Form 49

Other CMP Publications 55

iiP

FOREWORD

Warren Benson has written a fine, stimulating report, one which partakes of and adds to the excite

ment and sense of adventure that have marked all of the undertakings of the Contemporary Music

Project-* We envy his inventiveness, daring, and resourcefulness, and envy just as much the stu

dents who were fortunate enough to participate in his pilot projects at Ithaca and Interlochen.

Certainly, they must have emerged from their workshops with a keen sense of the essential chal

lenge faced by the composer: to visit comprehensible form and structure on the unknown or

scarcely known.

The fact that he used relatively unfamiliar materials gives a much needed empha

sis to the problem of shaping the unshaped. Far too often we argue from an assumed mastery

of the sound materials of the past — with the I's and V's, the modulations, the intervals, the forms

— and on this shaky basis drive on to conclusions, limited and limiting — moot, when they are

not downright erroneous and destructive. Benson, in proceeding in his inventive manner, has not

only performed a service to a large area of contemporary practice, he has also given us cause to

review and reassess the assumptions on which we reconstruct and teach about our past.

Underlying Benson's work is a leitmotif: "the search for and discovery of relation

ships." This, coupled with enthusiasm, gentleness, and guided permissiveness, provides the prevail

ing atmosphere of his and all other CMP projects. They are highly desirable qualities which have

implications and applications well beyond the frame of reference that guided Benson.

Creativity and innovation have a literal meaning in the Ithaca and Interlochen

projects; creativity refers to the act of composing, innovation to the discovery and use of relative

ly unfamiliar materials. But these terms, which have become a shibboleth of reform in education,

have broader meanings. They refer also to our reassessments and enlargements of the past, to our

making of it a contemporary past, our past rather than our fathers' and grandfathers'. Such at

tempts must of necessity involve us in creative, innovative actions and attitudes, for in order to

make the past our past we must reassemble its various elements, build them anew, making use of

the present. The past is not an absolute entity.; it offers us data of limitless kinds and various mean

ings.2 When we shape these data to our concepts, doing violence neither to data nor to concepts,

'Other CMP activities are described in the publications listed on page 55.

"■Cf. The Role of Music History, by William J. Mitchell in CMP,, p. 59ff.

viii FOREWORD

we are in fact creating and innovating just as surely as the composer. For the curious and the

spirited there is no end to the Age of Discovery.

Our contemporary scholars have done a magnificent job in revivifying the past,

of making it a lively part of today. The results are on hand in the various books and articles of such

as the late Manfred Bukofzer, Donald Grout, Paul Lang, Gustave Reese, and Denis Stevens. They

and their counterparts in ethnomusicology have reshaped the past and extended the boundaries of

the present with a vivid imagination fired by data reinterpreted or unearthed, and tempered by

tight intellectual disciplines. Each in his own areas has presented us with countless examples of

creativity and innovation.

Although the products of these creators and innovators are available and widely

in use in our country, the same cannot be said for the work of their counterparts in the theory of

an older music. The innovations in this area, some going back to the first decade of our century,

have hardly ruffled the surface of what has become the stagnant pool of music theory. Arnold

Schoenberg, Heinrich Schenker, Ernst Kurth, Paul Hindemith, Felix Salzer — all have expressed

their dissatisfaction in one positive way or other with the tight closed systems of the 19th century,

all have created other ways to reach an understanding of our heritage. Yet we continue with

the ancient assumption that the teaching of counterpoint should be aimed solely at style imita

tion, Palestrina and J. S. Bach being the prevailing models. And the goal of harmonic analysis

seems still to be a series of wearying demonstrations that Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven knew as

much about chord syntax, inversion, and modulation, as do our brighter students.

These limited aims have become stereotyped to the point where there is little dif

ference, except for methods of presentation, among the dozens of "new" textbooks that pop off

the presses yearly. But the theory of music should provide us with fresh insights, with a keener

hearing and understanding of all the relationships of music, with the tools of reflection about our

art. If any area of the disciplines of music is in need of the application of our creative and inno

vative capacities, surely it must be the theory of music.

In the teaching of theory, there is probably nothing more perfunctory than the

presentation of intervals. We teach our students to measure them by one procedure or another; we

classify them as perfect, imperfect, as consonant or dissonant (with apologies to various noncon

formist usages); we then stuff them into chords with the admonition to avoid parallel fifths, oc

taves, and unisons; and that is the end of them. Yet it is precisely here that the first real oppor

tunity becomes available to students to derive and to test meanings, to experience how some intervals

are possessive of, others possessed by, their environment, how the roles of possessor and possessed

may be reversed. If such vitally important musical distinctions are not taught in the early study of

theory, the chances are that they never will be, for such considerations can be easily crowded out

by other apparently pressing matters of classification. Yet, what is the point of our study, if time

is allowed only for description without clarifying adventure? In the end it is meaning and value

that will demand our attention, rather than measurement.

ix FOREWORD

To give point and specific direction to our lament, let us try a modest creative,

innovative application of these raw, elementary materials of the study of theory. The method to be

used, not at all unknown, happens to be favored by your author, but its value is simply that of

a means to an end. "The search for and discovery of relationships" might be guided by any of

several other approaches. All we need assume on the part of our students is familiarity with no

tation and intervals, some rudimentary knowledge of the rules of strict counterpoint, and a vague

sense that there are such entities as chords.

The perfect fifth is a good interval to start with, for it is, or should be acknowl

edged as the most possessive and domineering of all; its upper tone is a direct, radical offshoot of

its lower tone; together, both tones form the first boundary of the triad. As assertive as it is,

however, it can be overpowered by its environment. In Example 1, the perfect fifths of the 5 and

| constructions might carry the day or surrender to the sixth, dependent entirely on more inclu

sive and persuasive contextual factors.

Example 1

Possessive Possessed

-cfi:

5 4-3

5

2—3

r r 5 6 4 5

The illustration selected for a further testing of the power of the perfect fifth and

the assertive characteristics of environment is the beginning of Fuga Sexta from Ludus Tonalis3

by Paul Hindemith. It has been chosen because it sounds like his music rather than Palestrina's,

yet provides us with a good opportunity to test the distinctions resident in the study of strict

counterpoint, as we understand it. The ultimate value of such a study lies less in its attempt to

recapture the bare bones of Palestrinian style than in the opportunities it provides for a constant

testing of the first relationships of moving parts under the tightest laboratory conditions. If our

tests are successful, they should act as a potent tool for the exploration and evaluation of the

countless extra-laboratory conditions that prevail in the simplest of compositions.

Example 2

Quiet ( J>ca. 101))

'Reprinted by kind permission of Associated Music Publishers, agents for the publisher, B. Schott's Soehne.

X FOREWORD

Hindemith's fugue subject is an excellent illustration of the cooperativeness of as

sertive perfect fifths and a conforming environment. The perfect fifths prevail in two ways, verti

cally, or close to it, in bar 1 and horizontally from the opening B|> to the terminating E|> (Example

3a). Hindemith was on solid ground in asserting that this sixth fugue is in E\>.

Example 3

thus thus

Nota

camblata

+ 3 d.4

5th

(d) '"Srci 3rd 3rd

The details of the subject are arresting and in several respects unique. Our task

is to relate these unique factors to the universal values of counterpoint and, to a degree, harmony.

The hesitant interchange of B(> and A[j in bars 1 and 2 raises questions about function until the

G of bar 3 provides the answer. A|? turns out to be a reluctant passing tone, one step beyond

the simple passing tone of species counterpoint, and a characterizing feature of the subject (Ex

ample 3b). Bar 3 is a textbook example of the nota cambiata, but under mildly chromatic con

ditions. The notated C[> should not mislead us, for our study of strict counterpoint should teach

us that a diminished fourth, G-Cfci cannot prevail in so simple a situation against the more deter

minative major third, G-Bl] (Example 3c). As we move through the three concluding notes, it

becomes apparent that a shaping force in the subject is the unrolling of three melodic thirds, B[>-

A|j-G, G-A-B, and G-F|>-E|j, written within the total frame of a descending fifth, Bfc to E\y (Ex

ample 3d). If we had initial doubts about the E flatness of Hindemith's E flat, these constructive

factors should still them.

Such observations about the subject will aid us as we examine the answer, counter

point, and return in bars 4 to 9. Primarily, our concern is with the apparently free-wheeling dis

sonances: the fourth of bar 4, the ninth of bar 5, the seventh and the augmented fourth of bar 6,

the sevenths of bar 7, the diminished fourth and the diminished octave of bar 8, most of which

enter on the accent. If our study of counterpoint has fulfilled the aim of training us to hear deter

minative relations, all of these dissonances will fall into place, for the stronger consonances are

sufficiently in evidence to give us a persuasive frame of reference.

To begin, the answer lies in the upper fourth (or lower fifth); hence, it outlines

the properties of A|j, just as surely as the subject outlined those of Efc. The opening tone of the

answer, E[>, moves, again hesitantly, through D|j to C. The simplest setting would be provided by

XI FOREWORD

holding the initial E[> of the counterpoint until the answer's C appears in bar 6, whereupon the A(>

might enter, as indeed it does (Example 4a). The D|> of the answer would then appear as a pass

ing seventh above the held E|>. As set, Hindemith deals more kindly with the D|> by giving it a

consonant escort, F, bolstered by the immediately preceding A[j. These and the underlying forms

of the succeeding bars are illustrated in Example 4b.

Example 4

i

! «■ (b)

■if i£

10—pi.—6 10-7-6 3 p.t. 6-

tJ-p-JBTftJ I,-JfegsEj:

T ' f 6 10

r r 10 6

r 3 d.S

For the rest, the sketches of Example 4 indicate the assertiveness of the simple in

tervals over the complex, and suggest characteristic kinds of displacement techniques. But the

evaluation of them, such as the priority of the sixth over the diminished octave in bar 8, is de

pendent on the kind of training we have had in counterpoint, harmony, thorough bass, for if these

are taught creatively in the sense of our discussion, they should open many doors and show the way

to much that is innovative in the application of theory to the literature of music.

Two final points remain to be covered. The technique of bars 6-8, whereby A|> in

the counterpoint moves through G and C to reach F|j (E), the minor sixth above, is a variant of

the direct route down a major third, as shown in Example 5a. Its forerunner in the study of

counterpoint appears in Example Sb.

Example 5

thui i i'} in io

The other point is concerned with the inclusive plan of the nine bars under study.

Our evaluation of detail makes it possible for us to take in, in summary fashion, the structure of

the entire passage. This is illustrated in the graphs of Example 6.

Xii FOREWORD

Example 6

Bars: 1 8 9

ni jo

Et:l IV (ll1") V 1 (VH)

The purpose of this demonstration has been the attempt to visit creative and inno

vative qualities on the stodgy, slumbering materials of the study of counterpoint and elementary

harmony. It is easy to imagine other awakenings through other approaches; it is also easy to

imagine disagreements with the procedures here used and the results achieved. It would be a

denial of our purpose if it were assumed that the demonstration was intended to be conclusive,

sealed at both ends. Discussion and further exploration rather than acquiescence are the goals.

Eventually, in any event, a point will be reached where the materials and operating procedures

of the traditional study of counterpoint and harmony are no longer applicable. We must then find

other approaches, or perhaps modify radically our present ground rules. Here is a broad area for the

exercise of creativity and innovation, conceivably in the direction of Warren Benson's projects.

Our plea is for a kind of instruction that will release the imagination of the stu

dent, that will help him to find fulfillment in music, that will awaken or stimulate his own creative

and innovative capacities, that will make of him a responsible and responsive citizen of the world

of music. There are certain real and potential deterrents to the achievement of these ends. Among

the real deterrents are our strong tendency to boil down the stuff of music, especially music of the

past to stereotypes, to formulae that serve no purpose other than the stifling reduction of our heri

tage to presumed patterns. If our demonstration has proven anything worth remembering, it should

be that the norms of musical structure lie buried well below the surface of the work of art. When

norms are presented solely as surface characteristics they tend to destroy a precious feature of

our heritage — the differences among compositions of a composer, or of many composers.

Another deterrent, and one of growing menace, is the oversized class. The theory

of music cannot easily flourish with more than twelve to fifteen students at a time. It is the large

theory class that leads to the deadly standardization of instruction and instructional methods. It

also tends to encourage the seeking of limited goals, the strong tendency toward practicality as an

end in itself, to equate instruction in the theory of an art with that in the practice of a handicraft.

The differences between a constant judging of the involute and the practice of a highly specialized

skill should be apparent, and imbedded in our teaching. Classes in the theory of music should be

XIII FOREWORD

smaller, either through the hiring of more theorists, a more rigorous screening of students, or a

combination of both, if we seek to encourage creativity and innovation rather than to teach by rote.

Related to oversized classes and the problems of instruction created by them is the

marked emphasis placed upon the means rather than the substance of communication. We are

more prone to celebrate and to worship the machine and the mathematical procedures that make

it tick than we are to assess the quality and meaningfulness of the tick itself. We are squarely in

the middle of a mathematically oriented electronic age, of the "package deal," of closed circuit tele

vision, of the glorification of statistics, of programmed instruction. There is no escaping these,

and there is not much sense in bucking them. But it is essential that we understand the marked

limits of their serviceability. None is inherently better than the old fashioned textbook, which, we

already know, can be good, bad, or indifferent, according to its substance. The computer has the

assumed virtue of rigid unfailing consistency, but it is easier to be consistently bad than consis

tently good. Closed circuit television places an electronic barrier between instructor and instruc

ted, but an instructor who is worthy of his profession should be worthy of being known by direct

unchanneled and unscreened exchanges. Our electronic, mathematically devised monsters are with

us. We had better take care of them, or they will soon take care of us. Taking care of them is

quite a task, but if they take care of us it is highly doubtful that creativity and innovation will

endure except as we seek more and better means for the technical maintenance of our masters.

William J. Mitchell

LEARNING THROUGH CREATIVITY

THE ITHACA COLLEGE PROJECTS

INTRODUCTION The pilot projects at Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, each entitled "Music Education Seminar in Contemporary Music," were insti tuted to supply technical information on current practices of music to students in music education to provide them with the confidence necessary to present

modern music to their students in the future.

The projects were conducted by a composer, emphasizing

free composition for each student and using the materials and techniques

of the contemporary composer as they were observed through study and

analysis of traditional and, especially, contemporary music. The objectives of the Ithaca College Project were:

1. To train prospective teachers in the techniques and

literature of contemporary music

2. To assist them to gain durable interest and competence

in contemporary music

3. To develop ways to present this music to children at

the elementary and secondary school levels

4 ITHACA COLLEGE PROJECTS

BACKGROUND Significant experience in modern music is not easily

gained by prospective teachers, since most college and university music

departments require the study of theory only of the so-called "common

practice" period music, while such courses as "Analysis of Contemporary

Styles," "Modern Harmony," and "The Literature of Contemporary Music"

are offered generally as electives. Therefore, many students, particularly in

music education, graduate and receive teaching certificates without having

had any contact with modern music other than an occasional performance.

Consequently, the new teachers' lack of technical information on the subject

of modern music deprives them of the confidence necessary to present it

to their students.

The obvious remedy would seem to be for teacher-training

institutions to require technical courses in modem music. The Contemporary

Music Project, making an effort in this direction, has created a desire,

interest, excitement, and, above all, an urgency that will work toward that end.

A consideration of the present-day school of music points at

every turn to a need for a more creative approach to music in all areas and

all subject matters within the art. The experience gained from the establish

ment of a seminar for the study of modern music at Ithaca College may

provide some useful observations on how one might bring this approach

to the study of music in general, and modern music in particular.

1. Since most theory courses deal with analysis in pursuit of

stylistic synthesis, student projects may involve mainly an attempt at stylistic

imitation within the limits defined by the stylistic idiom under consideration

— which is as it should be — but which in many schools are roughly defined

as 18th- and 19th- century common practice, or in some instances only the

style of Bach.

In dealing with contemporary art, however, we are dealing

with many independent avenues of stylistic development. In view of the

great freedom demonstrated by the creative artists of our time, the student

can best understand the issue of great stylistic diversity by coming in contact

with the widest range of choices. Consequently, great importance attaches

to the attitude of the instructor in such a course and to the spirit in which

the course is undertaken. Students should be allowed every freedom of

expression in terms of the elements of music and at the same time feel com

pletely free in the expression of opinions and feelings about the experience

at hand without losing sight of the need for precision of expression.

5 ITHACA COLLEGE PROJECTS

2. Creativity involves exposure and risk. Thus, the seminar

opened with a discussion of the creative experience as related to exposure, commitment, and risk, so that all students might be aware of the need for

mutual respect, understanding, and empathy — if not sympathy.

3. The content of the course was conceived in terms of the

following areas: color, form, rhythm, melody, and harmony, within whose

broad outlines other elements could be included. Since these areas are

generally approached in today's teaching scheme at almost every level,

from elementary through university teaching, they were felt to offer the

best known avenues of approach to those specifically modern items under

consideration. The order of presentation of these items was determined by

considering a number of questions.

(1) Is any one of these more important than any other, in itself?

(2) What are the students best prepared to use?

(3) What are one's weakest students most likely to find easiest?

(4) What will allow the future student of this future

teacher to go the farthest in the creative exercise

with the least sophisticated background in music?

(5) What allows entry into the original and creative

experience with the least amount of original creative

ability?

From these the following order was determined:

1. Color, because no real knowledge of pitch or staff

notation is required for the identification or creation

of colors, singly or in combination

2. Form, because of the obvious relation to plastic and

geometric forms as we see them in other arts and in

nature

6 ITHACA COLLEGE PROJECTS

3. Rhythm, because it allows for the exposition of sound

without instruments through hand clapping, finger snap

ping, stamping, pounding, speaking and/or the making

of other vocal sounds in a rhythmic setting; this can

be done by rote and offers the simplest form of notation

— that is, notation which has no regard for specific pitch

4. Melody: approaching pitch through the experience of

the single, unaccompanied, melodic line

5. Harmony: multiple melody and vertical sonorities for

their own sake

Within each of the categories listed above certain common,

present-day practices were observed and evaluated, from which decisions

were made for the conduct of the seminar.

ORGANIZATION

2.

3.

4.

An eight-week seminar for twenty selected students,

senior undergraduates who had returned from an eight-

week practice teaching experience outside Ithaca; No

vember-January, 1963-64, sponsored by the Contem

porary Music Project (CMP).

A sixteen-week seminar for twenty selected senior and

junior music education students; Spring 1964, sponsored

by CMP.

A six-week summer-session seminar for undergraduate

students, local studio piano teachers, public school

music teachers, and an elementary school reading spe

cialist; Summer 1964, offered by Ithaca College.

A regular curriculum course: Seminar in 20th-century

Composition Techniques, offered by Ithaca College and

established in the school year 1964-1965 and Summer

1965.

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7 ITHACA COLLEGE PROJECTS

In all seminars the content and procedure were essentially

as indicated below.

CONTENT AND PROCEDURE The seminars were built around free

composition and exercises, performance, rehearsal, and aesthetic evaluation

(the latter continuous and concurrent with other aspects of creativity).

The focus was on composition by all students.

It is assumed that the actual points of consideration, listed

below, are fundamental to the composer's technique. However, the order

of presentation has special emphasis in the projects at hand for a possible

extension of creative work into the public school classroom where theo

retical background is presumably more limited than at the college level.

The order attempts to proceed from the most general to the

most specific: permitting a considerable penetration without pitch back

ground, a quantity of music to be composed before either counterpoint or

harmony are encountered, and time to note and remedy deficiencies in pitch

experience. It is presupposed that not all students will either use or retain all

the material. At the same time, the opportunity exists to establish minimum

assignments with open-ended possibilities for those students who are more

capable than others. Some crossover of material is inevitable.

Color Aural discrimination for beginners and review

of normal instrumental and vocal color, singly and in

groups; transcriptions of short modern piano works for

for more advanced students.

(1) Normal range

(2) Extended range

(3) Special effects

(4) Homogeneous and heterogeneous groups

(5) Color as expression

(6) Registration

!

8 ITHACA COLLEGE PROJECTS

(7) Texture (acoustical characteristics)

(8) Noise

(9) Electronic sound and sound sources

2. Form Analysis of the works orchestrated and other

appropriate material from concert repertoire; encourage

ment in the use of original forms

(1) Unifying factors: mood, color, mass, speed

(2) Tension/release, question/answer,

statement/ comment

(3) Strophic and through-composed

(4) Style and context

(5) Structural procedures: traditional forms, new forms,

non-music (literary) forms

(6) Introduction, transition, bridge, modulation, coda

(7) Text and musical form

(8) Aleatory music

3. Rhythm* Writing for non-pitch percussion instruments,

verse choirs, hand clappers, foot stampers, key rattlers,

and/or any other usable percussive sound

(1) Meter: common, compound, complex, changing

(2) Tempo

(3) Rhythm:

1. internal

2. external (span, pace)

(4) Rhythmic modulation

*The points covered were considered as complementary or contrasting to melodic and harmonic rhythm.