I woke up this morning . . .

thinking about music. Thinking about how it is we go about teaching music. I find myself wondering what we are teaching? Are we teaching music? To do so would require that we define music. I don't recall any time during my early education that there was a serious discussion about what music is, which is a bit troubling. We just sort of jumped into organum and four years later we find ourselves at Stravinsky, surreptitiously eyeing that strange addendum in the back of the book where they discuss, the afro/black music, jazz -- feel free to read that if you want to . . . WHAT? Well, is this music? This is, in my opinion, not the way to go about teaching music. This is a listing of musical works, this is a listing of musical practitioners . . . this is music history, which is not so concerned about what music is, rather more concerned with what music was. To put it into focus, some music teachers are concerned with teaching music, some are concerned with teaching culture. Is there a difference? Well, I do think so.

For instance, is it possible to teach music as if it resided in a vacuum, outside of culture? Which is not to say, "Hey, remove culture from the equation," but rather,"Bring all cultures into the equation and look for a preponderance of similarities." Ergo, what are the cultural, political, sexual, psychological, physical, . . . etc., elements in music that are universal? That old adage states that music is the universal language (not true, really, if one defines language . . . music fails the semantic test, but that's another entry for a later time). If we hang on to the theory that music is universal (as it is found in all cultures) then how does it work? What makes it do its thing? What is its purpose and where do we go from here?

I should cut this short this morning, but consider this, we teach technique (chords, voice leading, synthesis, Fourier transforms, etc.) These are the building blocks of music, per se. So, if we wanted to create music we just need to employ these techniques . . . Dr. David Cope can teach the techniques to a computer. His machine is a brilliant copyist of Bach (and others) -- it's great, interesting research. Is it music? Well, on the outside is certainly appears so. But how does it function? What is it's reason for existing. Well, Dr. Cope has brought his analytical techniques (that WORD again) together to answer/approach a question. Certainly his research asks questions . . . what is the value of computer crafted music, how does the musical mind think, what, again, is the place for music in society, etc. etc. etc. All great questions . . . but, I guess the computer is not the composer here, really. The composer is Cope himself. The computer is merely a tool, an extension of his mind. So, why does society feel the need to create automatons to replicate human behaviors? Can of worms here.