Music Theory is a Vital, but Overlooked, Subject
If an alien came down to Earth and observed how we interact with music, it would find an extraordinary paradigm. While we ignore some sound waves, we find ourselves nodding or bouncing up and down with others. Sometimes, we find ourselves crying or smiling along with a particularly emotional set of sound waves; other times, we are filled with anticipation as a chorus seems poised to hit.
Music is quite a strange phenomenon indeed, yet we’ve all but abandoned the study of it. We’re content to let our bodies move and react to music in strange ways without questioning why we know when to clap, how to sing a tune, or why some harmonies fill us with happiness while others fill us with dread. In many ways, a thorough understanding of music would play a much bigger role in our daily lives than an understanding of calculus or world history.
It is staggering to realize how much we listen to music—in the car, in movies, while studying, at concerts, or on headphones while walking around. Some enjoy listening to music so much they can’t attend class without it, evidenced by the number of AirPods visible from the back of a classroom! There are not many areas music has failed to influence, but we still don’t question why we like what we like or why music affects us so greatly. Why don’t we consider it a vital part of our existence, worth understanding as much as any other subject?
Music should be considered as such, a common class on par with physics or history, and a basic understanding of music should be a tenet of a good education. Much like other core classes, music theory introduces students to logical and analytical thinking, while also contextualizing the world around us.
This is not as bold a claim as it may sound. In the original European universities, musicology was considered one of the seven liberal arts. It was part of “the quadrivium,” the four number-focused liberal arts, along with geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy. Most early American universities and colleges were also founded with this philosophy. But in many high schools, music class is either solely focused on performance or a glorified free period. The theory behind the music that high school students play is often impossible to learn at a school.
An analogy to a more “accepted” subject, English, may help. Much like language, music does not literally depict the world around us. Our understanding of the meaning of language and music comes from strict rules and norms that all speakers and songwriters follow, instead of from literal sonic representations. For instance, to depict sadness in music, one might write at a slower tempo and in a minor key, instead of replicating the sounds of crying. Similarly, while speaking I can just say, “That’s a bird,” instead of trying to imitate the sound of a bird. Just as the words I’m writing can only be understood because of the rules we have created, there is only meaning within music thanks to a series of rules that have been adopted over time.
Musicologists generally agree that there is almost nothing in music that carries an inherent meaning, just as no word has an inherent meaning. There is nothing universally sad about a minor chord, nor anything happy about a major chord; until the recent globalization of Western music, in some cultures, minor music was actually seen as happy-sounding. There is also no natural rule that music should be evenly subdivided or that it should be grouped into twos and fours, and there are no natural laws governing what sounds like “cowboy” music or what sounds “uplifting.” Yet we continue to understand music as having certain meanings because of our culturally imposed definitions and rules—these rules allow us to jump on beat, sing in time, and know the setting in a movie based solely on its music.
We learn to speak before going to school, understanding vocal sounds as attached to their abstract meanings. But after being taught what separate words mean, we can parse the differences in the words someone is saying and create novel combinations of words to create new meanings. Learning a language adds a middle step between sounds and meaning—a specific system of grammar that one can learn to manipulate. Not only that, this system helps one understand what a phrase means; why does “I am happy” mean what it does? Because one knows what “I,” “am,” and “happy” mean, and understands how they grammatically fit together. It allows us to read or hear something and know both the meaning of the sentence and from where that meaning derives. Certainly, we don’t need to learn a language in school to pick up on this; most toddlers have an understanding that separate words exist. But learning the basic rules of a language and being exposed to new texts and concepts gives one a richer ability to discuss language and writing, and to understand the nuances and specifics of what they already partially understand.
If we think of music as a language, we can see a similar but more pronounced phenomenon. One may hear a song and feel sad or hear an upbeat song and know how to tap their foot along with it, but not understand why that is happening. Or consider when a musician makes a mistake: when we hear a horribly strange note, we think, “That’s not right” in the same way a person who didn’t understand grammar would say “I bes happy” is wrong but couldn’t explain why. Much like a toddler who understands words and language to a degree, most people have been exposed to the concepts that music theory expands upon but can’t articulate how they work.
However, the difference between these two disciplines is obvious. English is taught through practice, books, and conversations, often before one even goes to school. Baked into the way we learn English is an understanding of the rules that govern it, and the individual words that make it up. While music is similar—we do pick up on elements of music without being in a class—many still lack a basic understanding of how what they intuitively know works.
In essence, music is most analogous to poetry—it’s a combination of artistic freedom and a series of implicit and explicit guardrails that define our interpretation. Both music and poetry use an understanding of grammatical rules to subvert expectations or play into preexisting notions. Learning the rules that guide poetry or music allows one to understand when these rules are being broken, and how they’re being used. Music, especially its composition, is not only based on “feeling,” as it is commonly described. Music theory can explain why a piece was written the way it was, and as a result, it explains the way we listen to it; it’s only because of a lack of music theory education that music has been relegated to the mere work of feelings, dismissing the complex grammar that guides it.
Once I started to grasp music theory a few years ago, this problem seemed glaring. We’re listening to music but have no understanding of what is happening! No way to articulate why something is pretty or incorrect or melancholy or danceable or even “tango-sounding” without using those exact words. Why does a certain melody sound like a tango, regardless of the instrumentation? “Well, it just does,” we’re forced to reply.
To me, this lack of basic understanding of something we cherish and connect with so deeply is maddening. We can’t even articulate why we like a certain sound, what makes one slow ballad soar and the other boring. But we could—if we learned music theory.
Learning music theory might feel like a tall order; it’s true that, much like other core subjects, music has layers of complexity. While more involved music theory is certainly interesting, the most valuable understanding of music theory comes from its basic ideas, which many people have already heard in some capacity (phrases like “major chord” or “four-four time”). I’d recommend looking into the beginner and intermediate interactive lessons on musictheory.net to learn more.
In the future, if music theory were taught in school there would be a common cultural understanding of music shared among all students. Music would no longer be an esoteric collection of sounds, but a language we could understand and discuss, allowing us to finally access this art form that has been so elusive, yet impactful, in our lives.
