Music Theory and Intuition

There is one idea that is still wide spread in the composer community: the direct connection between music theory knowledge and quality of composition. I have discussed this topic already in another post about a year ago but want to expand on this a little further in this one and take it from another angle.

I remember very vividly when I started out studying at music university and having my first few courses with other students. Some of them studied music theory as their major and I remember being utterly intimitated by their knowledge. It seemed like they knew every obscure music theory concept and were able to explain it in an impressive way. This was one of these moments when I really felt the imposter syndrome kicking in. It was not like I didn't know theory back then. In fact I had some substantial understanding of it (otherwise I would have failed the mandatory application test) but the detail and depth of their knowledge really went way beyond aynthing I knew (and probably even know today). But I was absolutely sure that their compositions must be so much better than mine because they knew so much better about all these concepts.

My natural reflex in such cases is to quickly try to compensate for these subjective shortcomings so I started studying theory obsessively but pretty quickly gave up on that as I really didn't see a lot of practical use in many of the concepts.

Over the following years I kept seeing these people in other courses, sometimes in courses where we needed to compose little pieces as homework or excercises and to my surprise did their pieces not stand out in a way that I would have expected. In fact they were pretty mediocre. They felt "correct" but not particularly inspired. And I observed similar occurances more and more. I know some composers who are the absolute masters of theory with a knowledge about practically anything, and yet their music often feels lifeless and flat.

So it took me some years to fully understand that theory chops don't equal composition chops and this was quite a big realization for me. I thought for many years that if I expand my knowledge on theory my music would become better but in fact, theory only played a marginal role in that.

So why is that? Theory has one fundamental flaw when it comes to composition: it happens after the fact. Theory is always reverse engineering something. The path is almost always that theory is being confronted with existing music and tries to figure out what is going on in that music.

Of course it is possible to use theory as a source for writing music but you mostly end up in schematic music that feels like written on auto pilot. And don't get me wrong here, music theory can be extremely helpful for every composer. It elminates a lot of the guessing from the "craftmanship" parts of writing music. Being able to open a box of theoretical possibilities or quickly solving something by falling back on theory can be most helpful. Need a quick modulation path? Source it from theoretical knowledge. Need a compelling voice leading? Theory is here to help you. Want to try how some specific scale or chord works in the context? Get it from your theory chops.

But this is not how composition works. I have talked a lot to composer friends on how they compose and also tried to analyze how I work and while of course there are differences between different people and some have very specific ways of writing music there is one answer that I hear a lot and that also reflects in the way I compose:

I don't think about theory at all when actually composing but my inner ear provides me with different possible solutions on how to proceed and I pick the one I like most. In this way, I apply theory again "after the fact". I hear something in my head and most of the time I can then figure out through theory what it is that I'm hearing and get it on paper. But I'm not using theory to tell me how to "make the next step". What I personally find fascinating is that the more experience you get in that the more "correct" your inner ear becomes. In spite of not actively thinking about theory when I'm following the stream of consciousness, quite often my subconsciousness manages to provide me with solutions that when I analyze them afterwards are "theoretically correct".

So the way bigger factor for actual composition is intuition. And you simply don't train that when you study music theory. 

Of course you could bring up the argument: If your subconsciousness provides you with theoretically correct solutions, wouldn't you have also sooner or later stumbled across this solution if you simply tried out possible theoretical ways to proceed until you got to that one?

And this is where it becomes incredibly abstract. Because yes, statistically speaking you would have gotten there as well by simply going through what is possible. But composition is an endless series of micro decisions and fortunately not everything is covered by music theory. There is this fascinating middleground where things just sound good but you can't explain why, where a certain interval upwards creates a much stronger emotional response in you than an equally "correct" other interval. This is - for lack of a better wording - where the magic happens. And this uncharted territory can not be accessed through music theory knowledge.

It is interesting to see that there are alot of successful composers and musicians who write music without academical theory knowledge. Some of them have discovered and structured theoretical contexts in their own way while others trust their ear completely. Music theory knowledge does not influence inspiration and intuition. It does help to quickly come to solutions when craftmanship is needed but it doesn't help coming up with inspired ideas. So while I find it incredibly helpful to have theoretical knowledge it is not what defines me or pretty much any composer. 

I have pointed out Dominic Sewell's YouTube channel a while ago already where he goes into great detail analyzing John Williams' writing (focussing a lot on The Phantom Menace Score). He's pointing out recurring structures in seemingly atonal or free tonal parts in Williams' music and while I find it incredibly fascinating to discover these inner structures, I'm almost 100% sure that Williams doesn't write in a way that he says to himself "Oh, let me use this pitch class set for this passage" but he finds these solutions intuitively with just an extremely sharp subconsciousness and then crafts this idea to its full realization through his theory/orchestration/composition chops.

So the bottom line here is that in my opinion, theory is a great vehicle for the craftmanship parts of composition but intuition is what drives this process creatively. I'd be interested on how the process works for you so feel free to comment below.