Adventures in Music

I hate getting up early. Few things in life will make me as cantankerous as an alarm in the wee hours of the morning. But sometimes early mornings are necessary. The way the economy is right now, I think I'd be willing to get up at three or four in order to get a job if I did not have one. Overseas trips are another good reason. My wife and I got up at 4:30 AM the day we moved back to the States. But apart from jobs and travel, the only other thing that would wake me early is something that makes everyone shiver with excitement: music theory.

There's nothing like some German augmented sixth chords bright and early. Yes, I subjected myself to four straight semesters of 8 AM classes my first two years of college just so I could learn how amazing Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner were. Strangely (in my opinion), music theory is to music what organic chemistry is to science - a weed-out class, the class many music students have the most. But I loved it, from basic voicing to serialism and everything in between. And as a business student, while I always received puzzled looks from my teachers on the first day of class, I enjoyed the complete incongruity between this subject and my other courses.

The only other subject that music theory resembles significantly is English. In particular, music theory constitutes a sort of framework for poetic analysis. Early on we learned the basics: scales, chords, modes, inversions - analogs of rhyme, meter, and diction in poetry. We then piled on limitations - the rules of counterpoint (which are quite extensive), chord progressions, periodic structure. These are like the rules of grammar. Then we started getting dangerous - modulations, chromaticism. Eventually we ended up junking the rules and going atonal. And just like in literature, interpretations ranged from feminist to chauvinist to Marxist to fascist to Freudian etc. And there were mysteries and ridiculous theories about some works. Nobody really knows the function of the Tristan chord. And at least one critic thinks the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (the Ode to Joy) depicts a rape scene. (This was brought to our attention the day of a concert featuring Beethoven's Ninth - it scarred several students for life.)

In addition to the vast amounts of information gleaned and the new ideas glimpsed, music theory emitted a wonder beyond the walls of the classroom. That wonder was found in many places, like the breakfast group that always met in an act of solidarity before the early class. We would arrive at the dining hall in our pajamas, eyes glazed over from a lack of sleep, but just the sight of other comrades kindled a fire inside. The attendance policy for the class was strict, so we often had to wake each other up via cell phone or door-knocking to avoid any fatal absences. Though sometimes vague in my mind due to the early hour, the memories of our breakfasts are very fond, full of terrible jokes, ridiculous food combinations, and friendship.

Then there was the "lab" that was a corequisite with music theory: ear training (officially, aural skills). In this class we learned how to translate what we heard into notes on paper. It started easy, but by the end of our fourth semester it was no walk in the park. By that time the melodies we wrote down sounded like random noise, and in fact, they were. They would tell us the first note and then proceed to play eight measures of complete musical nonsense, and we had to figure out what they were playing or pay the price. The excessive homework and frustrating practice of these skills bound us all together. (We also had to sing a string of random notes - I forgot to mention that.) There's nothing like a little hardship to solidify friendship.

Some people thought I was crazy for subjecting myself to such torture, but of all the classes I took in college, the music theory classes were the best. I met some of my closest friends there and we survived together. It was not easy, and sometimes not very fun, but few good things in life are easy. I could point to many other courses at college that were easy but which profited me nothing, intellectually or personally. With music theory I gained friends, memories, and needed skills. I cannot begin to tell you how many times a Neapolitan sixth chord has saved my life.

Many college students plow through college in a single field, not bothering to test the fertile ground elsewhere. After the core classes, it's all business or all education or all history. It is easy to become sequestered in one place, never attempting something new, never diversifying. After college it is easy to ignore literature as a business person or science as an English teacher. But knowledge easily cuts across fields. To limit yourself to one arena is to limit your capacity for ingenuity and to lead a much duller life than necessary.

I believe we overstress the need to discover early what we want to do in a career. College students seldom know what they really want to spend the rest of their lives doing, but many parents do not seem to recognize this (my parents, gladly, were very understanding). I have heard many stories of parents having conniptions when their son or daughter decided to change majors, realizing that the "dream" of becoming a doctor belonged to their parents, not themselves.

While finding a worthwhile and enjoyable career is very important, this search should not eclipse and is not exclusive of the need to develop personally and explore the vast worlds of knowledge. The more comprehensive a student's understanding of the world, from science to philosophy to business to the arts, the more employable that student is anyway. Every employer loves a worker who can offer new perspective on an issue and not just repackage the same old prosaic formulas.

So take those music theory classes, that seminar on the philosophy of religion, or read a book outside your normal range. Maybe while you explore something new, you will unwittingly gain friends and memories too.