Music is an untapped pedagogical resource in the effort of cultivating rationality. Were it utilized to abstract empiricism and the formation of models, students could conceive through derivation a most unequivocal and clearly defined codification of the scientific method while concomitantly honing tools for their lifelong discovery and comprehension of art and reality alike, rather than for merely their appreciation.
Mastering the world is a prodigious human ambition. And it could be more arduous yet: A straightforward path forward might proffer taking copious observations—of things, of happenings—; and, in much time, our species will come to have enumerated all of the things that are and ever were since of our conscious senses. After all, that is at least a piece of the goal, obtaining knowledge. The tediousness of the task once left rise to religion, representational art, and philosophy “from a chair”.
With science, however, a similar approach, that of shortcut-ing, has evinced an unrivaled expediting and expanding role. By familiarizing oneself with a tendency, hypothesizing one means of describing it generally, and then successfully applying a new model to forming accurate predictions—, theory emerges. Such are the constructs that render a seemingly unending act of learning more efficient than any alternative tactic. Furthermore, these principles guide our decisions and become premises for the cutting edge inventions from technologies to ethics. The advantage of conjoining knowledge to the future reckons science the superior grounds for decision making. It answers “How?” rather than only “What?”, a deeper goal, attaining wisdom.
Those “gifted” in refining the skill of– and nurturing the motivation for– learning, in this quicker and more substantial way, speed ahead in their endeavors. The difference between unrelenting talent and steadfast mediocrity seems to rest on the presence of intuition for figuring things out. But a paradigm of music can attenuate the aptitude for achievement-gap by demonstrating how we can proactively learn to learn: The skill of honing a skill can be honed. And, moreover, this capacity also engenders the vehicle for astute judgement of art and of reality.
Our main tenet must maintain that a universe is “closed”. This defines the term. It may consist of things and changes; and qualities of these “objects” can be observed or “measured” to be “facts”. We may notice “tendencies”, seemingly nonrandom relationships. And, lastly, modelable “processes” can operate to describe these tendencies and furthermore connect them to other processes, forming reasonable unforgiving and overarching “laws”. Whether all these components comprise a universe, without exceptions (“outliers”), or not—designates it “essential” or “nonessential”.
History has time and time again seen science accommodate seemingly outlying object after object into its processes and dissenting process after process into its laws and so on, such that the natural world exemplifies a most rich essential universe. This qualifies reality. A rational view of the world therefore either must subsume an exception or eventually reckon it false. The “Universe” manifests a functional discreteness from much of thought and belief.
However, such a premise resembles a leap to those for whom the scientific worldview and every angle of their perspectives have been bestowed, given by lecture rather than discovered by critical thinking let alone by experiment. Complexity and nuance of reality exacerbate the difficulty. As an edifying practice, then, the teacher would be empathetic to propose a simple analogue to the rational universe.
Absolute music is this paragon, a fine art abstract medium rendering its substance explicit and rarefied at once. And in coherent music, the terms for a universe hold.
First, though, a primer, such a lucid and elemental prototype so as to be immediately intelligible: This list of objects and but a few associating axioms is displayed as a rulebook for “Game of Games”. Knowing the rules ahead of time, the class can immediately draw conclusions about how things may enfold generally as well as make predictions about specific scenarios.
The class divides in two. Each group conspires independently to alter the game. The associations are redrawn, though the objects and rules regarding them remain. At the reconvention, a new meta-game is announced to ensue: that, in view of each opposing team, each team is to play the game they have refashioned while attempting to elucidate the changed rulebook for the game they have NOT refashioned.
This demonstration likewise continues, confounding the content of the axioms, then dissolves to finally obfuscating the rules and their associations and even the objects. Both exhilarated and stifled the class will be, with not knowing feeding their focus and investment. In this spirit, the period will end with a culminating game that only the teacher knows; for, the students, in workshop fashion, will together uncover the components to a framework that adumbrates the rules of voice leading in music.
The homework may be for each student to devise their own game, the rules of which must be quickly decipherable by a new player. A list of rules and a video of their being discovered will be submitted.
The next meeting will center on active listening and art music, aiming to build a sequence of steps that could have been used to quickly uncover the rules of the games and to apply this methodology to discovering thereby those of a musical world:
1.) Listening is Studying (We engage with music.)
2.) Hearing is Empiricism (We accurately sense and recall music.)
3.) Familiarity is Judgment (We notice tendencies and hone reliable expectations: intuition.)
4.) Knowing How is Comprehension (We hypothesize and test for syntax.)
5.) Prediction is Application (We impose our deeper understanding to other music within this realm, in order to test our judgment and discover.)
6.) Reconciling is Expanding (We home in on more cohesive models: realization.)
Emphasis on contrasting musics will elucidate what partitions a musical world from others:
1.) Closure (limitation)
2.) Objects (events)
3.) Tendencies (nonrandomness)
4.) Processes (impetus)
5.) Laws (rules)
Notably, two musical universes may share similar elements, but they nevertheless do not overlap. The possibilities determine the world. One example of a musical world is introduced and an aspect of it explained. Per this essay, the melodic realm of modal music is considered.
Homework may require that students examine a rigorous motet by Palestrina with a more aberrant one by Monteverdi, to write a short analysis comparing related examples from each.
A more long term project may have each student create a work of performance art (music, visual art, poetry, dance, a picture book, etc.) stripped of complication. It must be such that the sequence of learning can be done successfully by the exposition, with processes linked to the nexus of law. Extra points cay be awarded for pieces containing an unexpected event in the exposition which is in time elucidated by the rest of the work.
The third landmark meeting will redirect discussion to the natural world. With the cardinal postulate that understanding one universe requires prescinding it from others, plurality can appropriately distinguish “musics”, “arts”, and other genres of worlds entirely. That of the Universe is necessarily isolated from the worldviews of art and religion. The class brainstorms in small groups about applying the tools used to consider games and music, now to nature. They also discuss how the features of a musical world apply to (and in what hypothetical ways they could be contradicted by) the real world.
Can these indicators of a universe describe a religion? And what can our methods of mastering a world glean from a belief system? Can one imagine a theology so rigorously conceived as to resemble an essential universe? If a religion upholds an outlier of its own constituency, then no, it is in that case not essential. If it at least upholds an outlier of the real world, furthermore, then it is functionally partitioned from reality. One would not be prudent to apply an orthodoxy as a tool for understanding nature. Although some aspects may agree, each would be redundant for elucidating those commonalities and insidious for frustrating the distinctions.
Credit for the course will rely on successful completion of an aptitude check that calls for the student to uncover the characteristics of three to five abstract universes via the methods of critical thinking. Lastly, a presentation of select performance art assignments in lecture/salon fashion will act as the program’s recapitulation.
Music and fine art are at their most elegant when they demonstrate essentiality and moreover offer surprise reconciled by realization. Writ in their design exists an opportunity from abstract systems to foster logic and drive curiosity around the real world so as to forge the tools for understanding, problem solving, and peacemaking among cultures that otherwise perceive sincerely from conflicting and at times stymieing points of view. An incipient motion for and towards rationality as the approach for decision making may with tenacity precipitate an unyielding momentum directed to a multitudinously thoughtful and secure humanity, one whose civility reflects its self-expression. Thus may our optimism obviate HOPE and instead rest on data that render progress ineluctable.