In Defense of Part-Writing
Why do we part-write in this class?
So we can learn to compose!
No. Statistically, you are not a composition major, and you will never make a living composing.
Some of will be fantastic composers and may make a healthy living composing, but the majority of music students hope to be future educators and performers.
So we don't do part-writing to learn how to compose better.
So why do we learn the rules of part-writing?
Know the rules
Many of us you think "We need to learn the rules so we know when to break them."
As you've probably heard, broken part-writing rules don't always sound bad. Parallel 5ths and 8ves don't sound bad in popular music at all. Poorly resolved harmonies can sometimes be more interesting than correctly resolved ones.
But also no that isn't why its useful. It isn't to know when music sounds "bad" or "good." Some of the best music I've ever heard was very poorly written, and I've heard exquisitely composed music that I don't care for.
So, why...?
As a student of music, you need to understand...
- How some of the greatest musical minds thought
- How harmony works beyond naming chords and scales
- How this affects how music feels and sounds
If you look at Beethoven's music with the lens of popular music analysis, most of his music is really bad. But Beethoven is incredible. But if you look at Kendrick Lamar's music with the lens of classical era musica analysis, most of his music is really bad. But it isn't.
We use part-writing as a laboratory, and its a much more useful one than I can adequately describe. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, all the composers you'll learn about knew all of the things we'll cover in this class, whether they used the same names for these things or not.
The goal is to gain the understanding to look at a score and be able to recognize things like style and technique. In what ways did Wagner write differently from Mozart or from Taylor Swift?
So I don't want you to think about "does my music sound good or bad?" It'll most likely sound pretty good as long as you have something close to the right notes.
I want you to think about things like: "What does this chord want to do?" "Why do we double that note in this context?" "Why does this note want to resolve in this way?" "Which 'rule' would be better to break here?" "Why did the composer include this note? "