Review:  Jeremy Arden’s PhD thesis on Schillinger

Eric Taxier

Until I write a longer review, I can not discuss all the individual points that Jeremy Arden makes in his paper, “Focussing [sic] the musical imagination: exploring in composition the ideas and techniques of Joseph Schillinger.”  This might not be necessary, though, since my primary argument here is a general one:  Arden makes certain assumptions about Schillinger and the average Schillinger student, which spoil his descriptions and discredit some of his conclusions that otherwise present a positive and meaningful message.

 Arden initiates his thesis with an outline of some of the System’s techniques.  Then he describes their relationship to music that he wrote before discovering Schillinger, and goes on chronologically to compositions inspired by the theories.  Oddly enough, Schillinger didn’t do much to change Arden’s music, except to help satisfy Arden that his composition methods never needed much changing.  Consider, for instance, that he had been using serial techniques (which, as Arden agrees, make sense in a Schillinger-theory framework) before he ever encountered Schillinger’s theories, and that he had usually applied these techniques with enough understanding of their effect.  Arden then used Schillinger to organize his isolated serial techniques into a more comprehensive system.   But as he vouches for the System, he assumes that all composers can or even should do the same as he did (and would, if trained with Arden’s understanding of the System).

 You see, Arden advocates a model of teaching Schillinger’s ideas entirely as end-product tools, rather than as a pedagogical method meant to improve students’ intuitive musical knowledge and augment their individual styles.  This is an important distinction:  in the first, the composer applies the tools and techniques, perhaps with some (or more – it doesn’t matter) understanding of their musical effects.   This can be a powerful model of composition, and acts as a step up from those who think Schillinger’s techniques get nice results when automatically and almost randomly applied.  But it still just acts as a first step.  Only such students of the System who never studied personally with Schillinger would consistently use the techniques in this way when composing music.[1]

 One should not advance Schillinger’s methods as directly applicable to composition, except for serial or semi-serial composers like Arden who consistently rely on automated methods in the composition process anyway.  For composers in general, though, Schillinger’s tools work much more powerfully as training materials, thus suiting any of their eventual incorporation into the composer’s vocabulary much more naturally.

 Arden might argue that he does something like that:  he starts with an intuitively desired practical end-result, and then applies Schillinger’s tools to reach that end (viz., through the psychological dial).  Again, I stress that this is indeed possible and powerful, but can only work well for composers who enjoy writing music with serial procedures.  Near the end of his life, Schillinger counted himself among these composers, so in some of his writings he actually advocates this model.  His best students often thought differently, (or studied with him before he came to some of his conclusions).  Composers who have a musical sense of what they want, and prefer working only with their intuitively conceived sounds and ideas will not profit from studying Schillinger if they expect to get the same thing that Arden got out of his studies.  But they can still benefit – indeed, even more so:  Schillinger’s tools, when applied correctly, help musicians efficiently absorb entire worlds of music, thereby expanding their vocabulary and giving them true technique (not just some useful tools) for molding their ideas.  

 I learned this when I reached a point two years ago where I disliked the results I got from most of Schillinger’s methods (even if I could predict their semantic effect to some extent), and preferred instead to invent and develop my own material.  I thought “this is it – time to throw away the big red books.” Of course, I assumed that most of what I had read about Schillinger was true, even by proponents like Jeremy Arden.

 Then I noticed whenever I listened to music that my mind would occasionally recognize a rhythmic pattern or voice-leading pattern that I had learned and practiced in my Schillinger days.   Schillinger’s general philosophical notions also had an effect on the way I heard and wrote music.   I then continued my studies and found out the hard way that Schillinger’s complete system is a pedagogical method, not a technical guide.  One should incorporate his techniques with a more fully developed form of his philosophy, which jumps around in Mathematical Basis of the Arts and pops up occasionally in System, and then apply them in a rigorous training regimen, rather than immediately in composition.  Those techniques will then naturally come into focus when writing music, and listeners will hear the results as sounding far more organic than they would otherwise. 

 Musicians who already use serial methods in their compositions will appreciate using the System as Arden did, and that’s wonderful (though many serialist and semi-serialist composers from older generations, like Carter and Babbitt, find some joy in mocking what they don’t understand); the rest of us should develop a new way of learning Schillinger’s theories, which means we must acknowledge that a) sometimes Schillinger’s writings as published are problematic, b) these mistakes are not fatal (i.e., can be corrected), c) for composers, his theories work better as training tools than as composition tools, and d) their direct usefulness as the latter only makes sense after serious and deliberate musico-mnemonic training.

 Note:

Commentary, suggestions, questions, etc. on this and other articles at the community forums is always welcome.  Dialogue can only benefit the continued development of Schillinger’s theories.