What is really neccessary?

May 31, 2006 at 8:27 AM

This is a bit of a rant about one of the units I need to take. It's Harmony 3/Orchestration 3 (two seperate units taken at the same time because the course content is practically the same).

The idea behind making students take Harmony and Orchestration units is so that they have a better understanding of the subjects and so they can apply it to their performances. It also helps if you are going to head into Education, but being primarily a Performing Arts institute, I think the course should be aimed more at how to integrate Harmony and Orchestraion (and your understanding of it) into your performances.

In Third year, you are generally looking at 20th Century Harmony and Orchestration. This has been ok, so far. We looked at Impressionism and Dodecaphonic music - yea, I can understand how to put that into my performances. There are Impressionist string quartets, violin sonatas, there's Dodecaphonic string quartets and concerti and other instrumental forms that knowing the theory behind the harmony and the orchestration will be a definate help in performing these works.

Now today, we watched a documentary that was supposed to be related to the course. There was supposed to be something in there relating to Electronic Music. What did we get? A couple of minutes with this guy who was a pioneer of Music Concrete, which is considered part of classical 20th Century music. The rest of it was talking about the various types of "Dance" music - Trance, Techno, House, Jungle, etc.

Now, I do like to listen to this type of music, I do have a Ministry of Sound Annual CD, and have dabbled in creating tracks like this. But do I consider it Classical? No. Do I think knowing this can help me in my performances? Absolutely Not.

Apparently, later on there was going to be a bit on Pierre Boulez and other "classical" electronic artists. But all the same, is it really neccessary for performers of instrumental music to know about this stuff?

In the next semester, we study this electronic music, and also Post Modern music. Now, For me, I cannot understand why electronic music is a neccessary part of Harmony 3/Orchestration 3. This "music" is supposed to not need instruments. It's Noise. This is not going to be an issue for the majority of performances.

Why can't this course deal with issues that are most likely to arise in our careers as professional musicians. Sure, keep Impressionism and Dodecaphonic, but why not look at some other compositional styles that instrumentalists (who make up the majority of the class, there's about 3 or 4 composers) are going to run into. Why not look at Film Composition and TV soundtracks? With many major orchestras being aligned with Movies these days, if we're lucky enough to get a spot we are most likely to going to need to know about this sort of music. What about contemporary Australian compositions? Why don't we learn about the music of composers such as Sculthorpe, Percy Grainger, Ross Edwards? These are Australian composers who are composing right now.

But no, we learn about electronic music. Why? Because that's what our composition lecturer - a noise artist - specialises in.

There are rumours about that WAAPA is going to be losing full-time staff. I'm hoping that in this reshuffle that this lecturer gets replaced, or at the very least the Harmony 3/Orchestration 3 course is overhauled to better suit the students.

From John Lanceley
Posted on May 31, 2006 at 1:53 PM

Ben, I can sympathise with this situation, It must be quite frustrating. Try to stick it out, it could be worse, they could ask you to stop playing violin and become an opera singer. I wouldnt put it past some people...

From Elizabeth Chavez
Posted on May 31, 2006 at 7:10 PM

wow...that is VERY interesting.

From Emily Grossman
Posted on June 1, 2006 at 12:17 AM

Hey... it might be interesting. Give it a chance.

From Jessica Hung
Posted on June 1, 2006 at 12:18 AM

I find pieces like Boulez's works for (real) instruments and tape interesting, and I do think some electronic works will be a part of our future--things you may be asked to play at a competition or audition the incorporate electronic elements. But I don't understand the idea of removing the real live musicians entirely. When machines rule music-making, then we can all just go home.

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What is really neccessary?

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