Bill Pirkle wrote:

>Do we really know what Chopin was trying to teach?.

Yes.  Each of the etudes presents a different technical problem for the
pianist to solve, gives exercises solving those problems, and does it in
a highly musical fashion.  He was teaching piano players how to play the
piano better and he did it with genius.  The standard idea of an etude is
a technical study "Etude" means "study," or exercise.  Few pedagogues were
as musically gifted as Chopin, and many of his Etudes are played as concert
works.

Paganini's etudes are called Caprices.  Here, too, I doubt that Paganini
cared to teach composers.  He was instead developing violin technique ...
probably he created the largest major leap in technique since Bach's
Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas.  Great music? Not to me.  But masterful
studies.  They can't, however, come close to Bach in emotional depth or
variety of expression.

>Surely they realized that someone was going to "learn" something from
>them.

Open to speculaton.

>Don't you think that they felt that they were advancing the art of
>composition? Many modern composers were out to show that there was no need
>for a tonal center, that the piano was actually a percussion instrument,
>etc.  Surely Bach was trying to teach something.  What they were trying to
>teach us is how to composer music in their style and I think that it was
>implied that it is OK for use to use it.

I don't know if Bach WAS trying to teach "us".  His composed works are
there, in print, and student composers study the music scores, which is a
traditional way of learning, but I don't think that was the main reason for
Bach's compositions, just as I do not believe that writers of novels ply
their trade *in order* to teach other writers.  They have a story to tell
and money to earn, and if new writers want to read those novels for
themselves and draw conclusions about style and diction they are free to
do so, but if they want to be printed themselves, they had better have
something original to say!

>Why can't one compose a symphony today that sounds like it came from the
>19th century?.  What's wrong with that?.

Other composers have written neo-classical and neo=romantic music.  There
isn't anything "wrong" with it.  It just seems very silly and backwards
to me.  The great composers already pretty much said all that can be said
in their particular styles.  Even when we have Neo-classical compositions
by Stravinsky and Prokofiev, to name two, the composers put their own
recognizable stamp upon those works, and gave us the Classical Symphony (a
parody piece of a classical symphony) and Pulcinella (a new sound from olde
music).

You are trying to develop a composing teaching aid.  Nothing wrong with
that either.  But how you develop it will be interesting.  I have the
feeling we are being used as guinea pigs so you can work around objections
as they arise.  Are you thinking of cutting up musical compositions and
haveing your students re-use the quotes from the greats and near greats
in their "own" arrangements as if you were teaching English composition,
playwriting and poetry by using Shakespeare as a database and having your
students select which lines (in their opinion) ought to go together?

>I would like you to offer MCML a long list of what matters except the music
>itself - enlighten me.

Just saying "enjoy the music itself" means nothing much to me.  When I
listen to music, there are many variables that affect the way I hear it.
If any of the items below are missing, I might want to hear the composition
again, but in different hands.  We cannot always tell if a composition is
worth another hearing if the first performance was done badly.  I am
totally convinced that is why so-called "modern" music gets such a bad
reputation.  But that's a message for another day.

For me, the performance is as important as the composition.  I've heard
weak compositions performed brilliantly and enjoyed them at the time, even
if I was not interested enough to want to hear them again.  I've heard
wonderful compositions ruined by lousy performances.  And I've heard
electronic instruments perform things that were supposed to be written for
string quartet, and I have been absolutly unable to appreciate them because
a large part of the pleasure of a string quartet is hearing two violins, a
viola and a real honest-to-Runnion cello.

These are things that matter to me and they are IN SERVICE to the music.

technique of performers
quality of overall performance
tone colors and instrumentation
emotional quality of performance
emotional content of composition
phrasing
rhythmic vitality
dynamics
type of composition
variation of repeated phrases or sections (if appropriate)

if vocal lines -  all performance values associated with
   voice including diction, intonation, togetherness, breath control, tone
   quality, etc.

interesing individual melody lines
balance of parts (ability to bring out proper melody lines)
interesting inner parts
variety of elements (more important in a long composition)

I realize the slippery quality of such qualifiers as "interesting" ...
but I can't do any better at the moment.  Subjective qualities all.

Mimi Ezust