# who was the most influential musical theorist of the 20th century



## MusicFree

in your opinion, encompassing any and all genres

who was the most influential theorist?


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## millionrainbows

Who was the most influential music theorist of the 20th century? It's gotta be Alan Forte.

He was musical, too.


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## elgar's ghost

Bernstein for populism and the Darmstadt school for smartass exclusivism.


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## MusicFree

what about Sun Ra?


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## elgar's ghost

Well, he said he was from Saturn so I'm not sure if he counts.


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## MusicFree

Schenker? maybe


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## MusicFree

what about greatest music theorist of all time

who would you put down for that?


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## MusicFree

was most theory that really advanced music more so within jazz or classical?


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## millionrainbows

MusicFree said:


> was most theory that really advanced music more so within jazz or classical?


I think that jazz theory really advanced tonal music. This affected tin-pan alley songs, TV theme music, all sorts of stuff.

I think for breaking new ground, and being truly new, classical theory has always been on top. But that veers away from popular forms and normal tonality.


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## arpeggio

Walter Piston. He wrote a book a basic music theory that was very common in college, _Harmony_. He also wrote textbooks on _Counterpoint_ and _Orchestration_.

Kent Kennan wrote books on _Orchestration_ and _Counterpoint_. We used his _Orchestration_ book when I went to college in the 1960's.

Vincent Persichetti wrote a classic book: _Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice_

I am familiar with Hindemith's _Craft of Musical Composition_

Although I have never read any of them, there are also Schoenberg's books: _Theory of Harmony, Structural Functions of Harmony and Fundamentals of Musical Composition_.

These textbook were very prominent in American Universities in the 1960's. I really have no idea what is in vogue today.


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## millionrainbows

arpeggio said:


> Walter Piston. He wrote a book a basic music theory that was very common in college, _Harmony_. He also wrote textbooks on _Counterpoint_ and _Orchestration_.
> 
> Kent Kennan wrote books on _Orchestration_ and _Counterpoint_. We used his _Orchestration_ book when I went to college in the 1960's.
> 
> Vincent Persichetti wrote a classic book: _Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice_
> 
> I am familiar with Hindemith's _Craft of Musical Composition_
> 
> Although I have never read any of them, there are also Schoenberg's books: _Theory of Harmony, Structural Functions of Harmony and Fundamentals of Musical Composition_.
> 
> These textbook were very prominent in American Universities in the 1960's. I really have no idea what is in vogue today.


Yes, I would put Piston, Hindemith, Schoenberg, and Persichetti on the list as in the top ten. Persichetti's ideas veer more toward the modernist way of thinking; and Hindemith, too;

Hindemith tried to create a general set of principles to apply to advanced ideas of tonality, which is very commendable.

Schoenberg's Harmony book is interesting for the asides and footnotes, where he goes off on tangents and starts surmising. It's a great read.

Kent Kennan taught at UT, didn't he? I have a CD of his piano music on Centaur that I like very much.


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## Triplets

I vote for Stalin and Hitler. Because of their theories of music and their Political Power, they influenced the course of music profoundly during the last century


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## KenOC

Triplets said:


> I vote for Stalin and Hitler. Because of their theories of music and their Political Power, they influenced the course of music profoundly during the last century


Tikhon Khrennikov was head of the Union of Soviet Composers during the era of the Zhdanov decree. He was never apologetic about any of it. In an interview given after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he said, "Stalin, in my opinion, knew music better than any of us."


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## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> Tikhon Khrennikov was head of the Union of Soviet Composers during the era of the Zhdanov decree. He was never apologetic about any of it. In an interview given after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he said, "Stalin, in my opinion, knew music better than any of us."


That's why, on top of my piano, I have a bust of Beethoven, as well as one of Stalin.


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## Che2007

For 20th Century: Heinrich Schenker, Hugo Riemann, Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Schaeffer, Allan Forte, David Lewin

For ever: Pythagoras, Aristoxenus, Ptolemy, Beothius, Guido d'Arrezzo, Gioseffo Zarlino, Marin Mersenne, JJ Fux, JP Rameau, CPE Bach, Johann Kirnberger, Gottfried Weber, AB Marx, Moritz Hauptmann, Hermann von Helmholtz, Heinrich Schenker, Hugo Riemann, Arnold Shcoenberg, Pierre Schaeffer, David Lewin

I couldn't whittle it down any more, there are so many I could have added!


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## norman bates

What about George Russell? 
And I'm not sure if it's a proper example but the Thesaurus of scales and melodic patterns has been an influential book so maybe also Nicolas Slonimski deserves to be mentioned.


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## Strange Magic

One of the most important theorists writing about how music works in our heads intellectually was Leonard Meyer of the University of Chicago's music department. His book, _Emotion and Meaning in Music_, University of Chicago Press, 1956, remains a classic but very densely written work on hierarchies and the interplay of surprise and confirmation as we listen to music. Meyer confined himself mostly to "classical" music in this book. A more accessible work is _Music, the Arts, and Ideas_, by Meyer, 1967, also U. of Chicago Press. You will find a fascinating analysis of what will/has befallen the arts within the past century; its return to an indefinitely long period of stasis, typified by a constant flux of small-scale trends and movements and genres and schools that he likens to molecular Brownian motion or the snow on an old TV screen.


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## Strange Magic

Regarding Leonard Meyer's notion that music and the arts in general have entered a new period of stasis, typified by a constant flux of small-scale trends, I recently finished Alex Ross' book on 20th-century music, _The Rest is Noise_. Ross, without ever mentioning Meyer, essentially affirms Meyer's thesis by noting in several places in _Noise_ the constant stream of rapid, chaotic changes occurring throughout the period, with none achieving any sort of longevity or any sort of larger audience. Brownian motion indeed.


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## Headphone Hermit

An acquaintance has given me a volume of *Adorno*'s essays - 600+ pages

Is it worth reading them, I wonder?


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## Mahlerian

Headphone Hermit said:


> An acquaintance has given me a volume of *Adorno*'s essays - 600+ pages
> 
> Is it worth reading them, I wonder?


He was very opinionated, and could at times be insightful, but at other times extremely obtuse. Regardless of what some may say, his point of view in no way reflects Schoenberg, who despised him and outwardly repudiated his book on modern music as too harsh on Stravinsky.

Adorno was one of the earliest writers to take Mahler seriously, though, and for me that counts for something, even if I disagree with much of what he says on the subject.


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