Good writing on music from 100+ years ago

KingDuppy · 2024-05-10T23:31:11.380Z

About 20 years ago I picked up this book at an estate sale, The Theory and Practice of Tone-Relations, by the excellently named Percy Goetschius, Mus. Doc.

I finally cracked it open this week, and found the Preface is quite beautifully written, so I thought I might share it here.

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guga · 2024-05-11T00:50:56.896Z

this is nice, it feels kinda weird (in a good way) thinking about the people that played music back then, i wish one could go back in time to experience that.
now, go ask them if they preferred a dawless jam, if they were into modular or which sample rate they used for their recordings…

KingDuppy · 2024-05-11T00:59:05.817Z

guga:

this is nice, it feels kinda weird (in a good way) thinking about the people that played music back then, i wish one could go back in time to experience that.

I think about this all the time.

Almost everything I think of as “normal” in terms of how music is performed, listened to, recorded, shared, and talked about, only came into existence since my grandparents were born. It makes my head spin.

Matoshi · 2024-05-11T07:07:37.222Z

“Melody is the soul and life of good music” I believe Percy and I would have got on well had we ever met.

thejewk · 2024-05-11T07:14:08.055Z

amazon.co.uk

On Playing the Flute

4.6 out of 5 stars, £17.57

This is one of the older musical gems in my library, even though I play the recorder and not the flute. But overall, the book has great value as an overall look at late Baroque performance practice, and the ‘rules’ of ornamenting and improvising on old dance structures.

shigginpit · 2024-05-11T07:50:44.687Z

I agree that to clinically understand some kinds of music there’s a bit of context required, but I think that there’s also a bit of a disconnect between this described mentality and the modern interpretation of what is or is not “music”.

In fact, rather than saying melody is the soul and life of good music, I might say melody is the soul and life of emotive music. The hinge of melody is abandoned in many genres and even at the time this forward was written, other parts of the world were doing things that defied the logic of the western musical construct but are still clearly music and (subjectively) good.

I have some other thoughts but I’m not trying to argue with an author that’s been dead for 100 years, just thinking that as much as I enjoy a good melody it’s not necessarily the crux of all good music.

Matoshi · 2024-05-11T08:09:38.297Z

Music without melody has no soul - Percy is quite clear on this!

In fairness the book predates recorded music (more or less), I imagine he had very limited exposure to music not part of his culture even if it existed elsewhere in world.

Fatbenjamin · 2024-05-11T10:22:17.521Z

Thanks for sharing @KingDuppy. For those interested in reading it is available at the following…

Internet Archive

The Theory And Practice Of Tone Relations : Percy Goetschius : Free Download,...

KingDuppy · 2024-05-11T16:26:57.396Z

He’s only been dead for like 80 years!

I think there’s a lot in that preface that comes off extremely dated, both in worldview and language (for instance his use of “he” to mean “anyone”). But to me, that makes the relevant insights feel even more universal.

Incidentally, when I looked up Dr Goetschius on the 'pedia, I discovered that he mentored my grandaunt, Lillian Fuchs, when she was in music school.

This world of ours is so small and tightly woven.

aMunchkinElfGraduate · 2024-05-11T17:53:31.756Z

The first two paragraphs of the the OP’s book-excerpt, above, are the subject of occasional debate on this forum. I am guessing that Percy Goetschius would argue that knowing music theory is a good thing.

I’m guessing few on this forum would argue with the following: Machines have a learning curve, that the process of mastering them can interrupt creativity, we need to practice on our machines to avoid sucking at them, that we may have to stop and read the manual, that knowing about our gear is desirable, etc.

Replace machines with music theory and suddenly people are offering sacrifices to the gods of intuition to ward off evil spirits.