Colloquy/débat: How We Write Music Theory; How We Read It: A Dialogue with Harald Krebs's Fantasy Pieces/response to Lynn Cavanagh

Abstract Krebs' s unusual monograph demonstrates that the writing of pure music remains an essential enterprise-particularly in the relatively neglected rhythmic domain-but only if the reader undertakes active reading and has prior knowledge of how the music goes. Within the monograph, perpetuation of the image of the misunderstood and suffering artist as a clue to the extramusical meaning Schumann associated with metrical dissonance leads to biased results. This essay's supplementary analysis of the first movement of Schumann's Symphony No. 3, informed by the history of ideas, proposes that in this movement metrical dissonance is used to reinterpret an emblem of the past so as to convey a vision of the future. Resume La monographie inusitee de Krebs demontre que l'ecriture sur la theorie musicale pure demeure une entreprise indispensable, en particulier dans le domaine relativement neglige du rythme. Mais cela, a la condition que le lecteur prenne une part active a la lecture et qu'il connaisse deja les mecanismes a l'oeuvre dans la musique. Les resultats de cette monographie sont alteres par la perpetuation de la figure de l'artiste incompris et malheureux comme indice de la signification extramusicale que Schumann associait a la dissonance metrique. Le premier mouvement de la Troisieme Symphonie de Schumann fait l'objet d'une analyse complementaire a l'essai. Cette analyse, basee sur l'histoire des idees, suggere que la dissonance metrique de ce mouvement est employee pour reinterpreter un embleme du passe afin d'evoquer une vision de l'avenir. Lynn Cavanagh He explained to her the various types of metrical dissonance and the labels associated with them, and the processes within which these metrical states can be employed. She listened raptly, delighted by the lucidity of his exposition and captivated by the material.1 Is this a manuscript about music or about mathematics? I am sick to death of these numbers and Xs and Ys!2 Over the past two decades, concern has been expressed that the North American approach to thinking about music called theory has become self-referential and reductionist to the point of being little more than a scholarly equivalent of T. S. Elliott's hollow men. To re-engage performers and historical musicologists in dialogue with them, theorists are advised to eschew structuralism, be wary of essentialism and, when not occupied with examining the way they apply analytic methodologies, engage in the multidisciplinary approaches needed to determine meaning in music. Whether with a sense of fervor or obligation, scholars engaged in work they call music have increasingly adopted the most consistently recommended tactics for its rehabilitation.3 Harald Krebs's Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann is both an extreme and an instructive case in point. Does music discourse tend to be dry? Krebs's book is a literary fantasy, set within Schumann's imagination and fictionalized private life, in the course of which Florestan and Eusebius read aloud and discuss a music manuscript of mysterious provenance. Do theorists give the impression that they codify abstract phenomenon for codification's own sake? The anonymous author of the manuscript makes it clear that metrical techniques are defined and labeled for the purpose of heightening aural perception of musical expressivity. Do analysts tend to concentrate on each musical work as a thing in itself? Here, analyses of individual works are linked with knowledge of Schumann's life and critical writings. Are some theoretical studies disappointingly narrow in scope? Although foremost a study of one musical parametre in the oeuvre of one composer, Fantasy Pieces also demonstrates that its methodology has explanatory power for rhythmic expressivity in other tonal and non-tonal repertoire. The present essay, like the book it discusses, contains both informal remarks and detailed description. …

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