From Prout to Grout

Scott Spiegelberg recently posted an obituary for a music theorist whose name I'd never encountered. The item caught my interest because Scott described the deceased as "the most wealthy music theorist in the United States", a description I'd never before seen attached to a music theorist. It turns out that this gent, Benward by name, was the co-author (with Marilyn Saker) of the best selling university level music textbook in the US, Music in Theory and Practice, the first volume of which, packaged with its companion CD, lists for $66.56 (which is still a goodly sum when exchanged for a hard currency) and is currently ranked #15,841 on the Amazon charts. Although volume 2 suffers a considerable drop in the Amazon rankings (down to #191,142), there was definitely some compensation for Benward in that another add-on product, a workbook for the first volume, for which he claims sole author credits, ranks #31,271, and lists at $34.38.

I am completely unfamiliar with the contents of these books, but the idea of expensive and widely used textbooks does invite some reflection. Textbooks in the states, even for a subject area as marginalized as music, can be big business, and I can't begrudge that. But I can begrudge the pricing system and can question the over-presence of best-sellers in the field. For introductory courses of mathematics and the natural sciences, there are usually a number of competing titles with subtle and not-so-subtle differences of approach. In music theory there is probably the greatest diversity of approach, although that diversity is probably connected more to the intended student audience (students in schools oriented towards more vernacular repertoire probably won't encounter Aldwell & Schachter's #34,944, $129.95 Schenkerian Harmony and Voice Leading) and within the directly competitive markets, books often adapt to trends (even Walter Piston's Boulangerie-style Harmony -- an academic standard in the past, but now reduced to #244,860 -- aquired some obligatory Shenkeriana of its own under the re-editing of Mark DeVoto) . In orchestration, there is probably the hottest competition, with titles by Adler (#23,566), Berlioz/Strauss (#94,929), Piston (#111,280), Rimsky-Kosakoff (#117,041), Blatter (#131,788), Kennan (#167,286) among those in contention, but, with perhaps the exception of the Piston, it's hard to detect any real diversity of approach. And in music appreciation (Machlis, in various editions) and western music history (Grout et al, #33,472) there are apparently unbeatable first placers. With the exception of the inexpensive reprints of the classic Berlioz and Rimsky texts, all of these are expensive textbooks.

(Let me put this in one bit of perspective: the most widely used harmony and counterpoint textbooks in German higher education are those of Diether de la Motte. They are sold in pocketbook-sized paperback editions, and cost about $20 each. (If you can read German, I highly recommend de la Motte's Kontrapunkt, a very practical book with a conversational tone, which never gets far away from what really happens in really great music.))

More critical than pricing and market position is, of course, the contents of these textbooks. There is a pronounced tendency of textbooks to become committee or even corporate efforts, and over time to bend to general and specific pressures and demands of the forces that decide to "adopt" one text over another. These corporate efforts tend to shy away from strong creative statements about their subject matters by individual artists or scholars. It's a real shame, methinks, because I do find myself turning back, time and again, to precisely those books which were written from the individual experience and voice of the author rather than a consensus opinion. The reluctance of institutions and teachers to let their students work with source materials in favor of such textbooks is a sad thing.

One last thing -- and this will date me, but who cares? -- I would really like to read a thorough deconstruction of Aldwell & Schachter or Grout et al -- to reveal the underlying music-theoretical/historical-ideological program underlying the text. What repertoire or techniques are being convertly pushed or denigrated by these texts?

Here's an old post listing some of my favorite books on composition & such.

I should have said something here about the advantages of having local traditions in music theory to go along with local traditions of music making; it is indeed a really cool thing that theories of harmony in Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna are so different from one another, with alternative terminologies and classifications and concerns. While individual traditions do often rigidify when they gain official status, I do think it's on the large healthy that at least there is this implicit competition between traditions. But that'd be another item, another day.