Hindemith's Craft of Musical Composition I: Theory Chapter I

Hindemith, Paul. (1942) The Craft of Musical Composition. Translation by Arthur Mendel. London: Schott & Co., Ltd.

p. 4

There are two types of theorists: the teaching composer, and the avowed specialist in teaching musical theory.  A gifted composer in not always a good teacher.  But his instruction is bound to have a certain creative warmth, even when the composer is of modest gifts, because he is passing on directly what he himself has experienced.  This is not true of the usual theory instruction, such as is given in most schools.  The specialist who gives such instruction without himself being gifted for composition is in  a difficult position. .....

The teacher must not base his instruction simply on the rules of textbooks.  .....What he teaches must have been developed out of his own exercises in writing.

p. 6-7
.....One teacher sticks close to what he has had handed down to him. ..... His pupil learns the old styles of writing: he can modulate, write counterpoint almost in his sleep, from the first species to the florid fifth, and construct fugues to order, made according to the text-book rules, and containing anything but music. (<--!!  at least the student can write counterpoint in his sleep!)

p. 8
.....Anyone who has for years taught students who wish to know why the masters are free to do what is denied to them, why one theme is good and another poor, why harmonic progressions may be satisfactory or irritating, why sense and order must prevail even in the wildest turmoil of sounds, and why such order cannot be arrived at with the traditional tools; anyone who has not sidestepped this unending struggle with the Why of things, and at the risk of laying himself bare before his pupils, has taken each new question as a stimulus to deeper and more searching study--anyone who has faced these issues, I say, will understand why I feel called upon to devote to the writing of a theoretical work the time and trouble which I would rather spend in composing living music. (rather spending in composing living music<--this is a composer talking, yes, a lot of times I wonder why I need to go through some of the absolute basic with the tertiary students all over again, didn't they supposed to know all these before commencement of Bachelor degree in composition???)

p. 9
I address myself above all to the teacher.  True, I cannot (as is understandable in the case of a composer whose theorizing is only incidental and enforced0 offer him a book of rules, polished down to the last details, in which he can simply assign to his pupils three pages per lesson.  Perfection cannot be attained at the outset of an innovation such as the present one, and the comprehensive working out of the material presented here will require the efforts and the experience of many musicians.  The teacher will find in this book basic principles of composition, derived from the natural characteristics of tones, and consequently valid for all periods.  To the harmony and counterpoint he has already learned--which have been purely studies in the history of style: the one based on the vocal style of the 16th and 17th centuries, the other on the instrumental style of the 18th--he must now add a new technique, which, proceeding from the firm foundation of the laws of nature, will enable him to make expeditions into domains of composition which have not hitherto been open to orderly penetration.

p. 12
The road from the head to the hand is a long one while one is still conscious of it.  The man who does not so control his hand as to maintain it in unbroken contact with his thought does not know what compositions is.  (Nor does he whose well-routined hand runs along without any impulse or feeling behind it.)  The goal must always be such mastery that technique does not obtrude itself, and a free path is prepared for thought and feeling.  .....To do this we need precise knowledge of the tones and of the forces that reside in them, free from aesthetic dogma and stylistic exercises such as have characterized previous methods of instruction, but leading the composer rather according to natural laws and technical experience.

In this attitude toward the technical side of composition I am in agreement with views which were held long before the classic masters.  We find such views in early antiquity, and far-sighted composers of the Middle Age and of modern times hold firmly to them and pass them on.  What did tonal materials mean to the ancients?  Intervals spoke to them of the first days of the creation of the world: mysterious as Number, of the same stuff as the basic concepts of time and space, the very dimensions of the audible as of the visible world, building stones of the universe, which, in their minds, was constructed in the same proportions as the overtone series, so that measure, music and the cosmos inseparably merged.

Somehow I am under the impression that the great composer and teacher Paul Hindemith had asked similar questions as I am now.  The questions one can't help asking after experiencing the frustration while taking the tertiary level music composition students.  The concert/art music composers no longer compose in the same style as composers did in 17th, 18th or 19th even 20th century.  However, learning and understand music theory is still crucial to us who wishes to go down this path with only dimmest light.  Composers should learn theory with a different approach from just obeying and memorising the rules.  Rather than following the rules, composers seek the reasons and causes beyond the surface hence will understand the consequences of their actions.  It is sarcastically easier to work with people actually know how much they don't know than the one felt knows everything.