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Old 08-22-2013, 03:54 AM   #7 (permalink)
jekluc
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Morton View Post
Joseph Schillinger's two thick books entitled 'The Schillinger System Of Musical Composition' are important reading, if they're still in print, providing the reader can disregard the naïve, 'brave new world' positivism that was characteristic of the period. There's much to be gained from Schillinger's very different approach as he explores the essence of musical resources that affect musical expression, irrespective of style or genre. In my opinion, Schillinger was more sinned against than sinned -he had an impressive list of students, including George Gershwin. He lost support because of his attempts, in his other works, to quantify so-called creativity by rendering it to be mathematically determinable.
Lots of composers and theorists have lost support for that same reason. It's unfortunate because you can't write a good book on composition without offering some sort of a system. And any system will be based on math to some extent. Opposing that is akin to opposing an art instruction book because it teaches rules of perspective. Rameau lost support for much the same reason.
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