Schillinger System
The
Schillinger System of Musical Composition, named after its creator, Russian-born composer and theorist Joseph Schillinger, is a method of musical composition based on mathematical processes. It comprises theories of
rhythm,
harmony,
melody,
counterpoint, form and
semantics (emotional meaning, as in movie music). It offers a systematic and non-genre specific approach to music analysis and composition, a descriptive rather than prescriptive grammar of music.
Many of the techniques and procedures it pioneered were later independently advocated by others, whom history remembers as their creators. For example, Schillinger proposed a system of numerical analysis of pitches based on principles which later became incorporated into set theory, long before Milton Babbit and Allen Forte's work. Futhermore, Schillinger pioneered advanced algorithmic compositional techniques long before the work of Iannis Xenakis and other later advocates.
While the Schillinger System might have served as a road map for many later developments in music theory and composition, instead it languished in relative obscurity, due partly to the fact that Schillinger did not finish work on the texts he hoped would advance his theories in the realm of academia, his untimely death from lung cancer preventing him. In response, his widow and biographer, Frances Schillinger, hired editors to complete and publish the texts. They culled together his unfinished monograph with parts of his correspondence courses, resulting in a two-volume tome, which, despite its length, still presents only a partial exposition of the system. Furthermore, it is marred by a wildly uneven tone, at times neutral and objective, at times vehement and polemical. Critics almost universally panned the work, condemning Schillinger and his system to the footnotes of music history. However, his legacy lived on in the students whom he taught and in the music his system influenced--students such as George Gershwin, and music such as Porgy and Bess.
Schillinger was a professor at
The New School in New York City and taught such celebrated composers as
George Gershwin,
Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and a host of Holywood and Broadway composers. His books were published after his death and his system enjoys a cult following, although it is still considered controversial in traditional circles. There are a limited number of
Certified Schillinger Teachers of this system in the world.
Joseph Schillinger was a Russian-born composer and teacher, active in New York in the 1930s. Today his name is all but forgotten and his books are not widely read. Schillinger was a student of the
St Petersburg Imperial Conservatory of Music. Schillinger was a natural teacher and communicated his musical knowledge in the form of a precise written theory, using mathematical expressions to describe art, architecture, design and (most insistently, and with most detail and success) music.
In New York, Schillinger flourished, becoming famous as the advisor to many of America's leading popular musicians and concert music composers. These number, inter alia,
George Gershwin, Benny Goodman,
Glenn Miller,
Paul Lavalle,
Oscar Levant,
Tommy Dorsey and
Carmine Coppolla. Gershwin spent four years studying with Schillinger. During this period, he composed
Porgy and Bess and consulted Schillinger on matters concerning the opera, particularly its orchestration. In the field of
electronic music, Schillinger collaborated with
Léon Theremin, inventor of the
Theremin, an early electronic musical instrument.
His postal tuition courses were so successful he was able to rent a twelve-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. Schillinger accredited a small group of students as qualified teachers of the System and after his death, one of them, Lawrence Berk, founded a music school in Boston to continue the dissemination of the System. Schillinger House opened in 1945 and later became the Berklee College of Music where the System survived in the curriculum until the 1960's.
The reasons for the decline in awareness of Schillinger's work are complicated. During his life, he was criticised by the concert music establishment as a promoter of mechanised creativity. His work was radical, speaking directly to musicians involved in popular music, which fed largely on jazz, and was in conflict with an avant-garde who looked to Europe, and to certain ascendant figures, such as Schaeffer and Stockhausen for its theory.
Schillinger's celebrity status must have made him suspect, and caused his ideas to be treated with greater skepticism than they deserved. On the other hand, he became notorious for his arrogant style, ridiculing well-known critics and establishment figures. His flamboyant manner is evident in his published writings, and one can only wonder at some of his extreme assertions.
"These procedures were performed crudely by even well reputed composers. For example L. Van Beethoven…"
Later, in
The Theory of Melody, Beethoven is taken to task over the construction of the opening melody of his ''
Pathetique Sonata.
It is easy to make Schillinger sound like a trickster, but his pupils in the USA included some of the most distinguished Jazz musicians, interested in immediate practical use.
Following Schillinger's sudden death in 1943, three voluminous tomes were published based on Schillinger's own notes: but difficult for the uninitiated. The Schillinger estate resisted efforts by others to interpret and explain his theory, and consequently by the 1960s it was generally forgotten.
The thesis underlying Schillinger's research into the properties and behaviour of music can be summarised as follows: music is a form of movement. Any physical action or process has its equivalent form of expression in music. Both movement and music are understandable with our existing knowledge of science.
Schillinger's major contribution was intuitively recognising how to apply everyday mathematics to the making of music. He expressed the belief that certain mathematically derived patterns were universal, and common to both music and the very structure of our nervous system .
Although Schillingers work is forward looking, couched in an apparently modern form, it also clarifies traditional music theory by debunking misconceptions from the past. He was clear that his methods allowed any style of composition to be undertaken more effectively.
"My system does not circumscribe the composer's freedom, but merely points out the methodological way to arrive at a decision. Any decision, which results in a harmonic relation, is fully acceptable. We are opposed only to vagueness and haphazard speculation."
Music theory had become mired in tradition and in the 19th century attraction towards the cult of the inspired genius. Music education based on the observance of stylistic habits would quickly create pedagogical dogma. For example, the tendency of the leading note of a scale to ascend, or the dominant seventh chord to resolve are not universal laws but features of historical trends only true in certain cases and not in others. By revealing the underlying principles of the organisation of sound through scientific analysis, Schillinger hoped to free the composer from the shackles of tradition.
Many of the concepts contained in the System have already penetrated modern compositional practice. Schillinger's techniques are tools for the imagination. By themselves, they do not compose music but merely assist the composer to realise his or her vision through facilitating the planning and execution of large musical structures. The numerous techniques described by Schillinger in the field of rhythm offer a unique and attractive approach to the composer and to some extent compensate for an imbalance in composition literature, largely dominated by considerations of pitch.
Schillinger's System of Musical Composition is an attempt to create a comprehensive and definitive treatise on music and number. This has the disadvantage of resulting in a treatise of great length and elaborate nomenclature, but which ultimately succeeds because it is able to satisfy various conditions-
#All existing music is accommodated.#Techniques do not prohibit creative freedom.#Results are practical and effective.
Schillinger rarely attempts to predict the aesthetic consequences of his system but instead offers generalised pattern making techniques, free of stylistic bias. Schillinger's own point of view acknowledges a mixture of the rational and intuitive. The balance between intuitive and technical decision-making is not easy to define, and opinion during the second half of the twentieth century polarised. His work is thought provoking and consistent, attempting to reveal a methodological way to arrive at a decision.
Schillinger's style can induce a resistance in the reader being at times relentlessly dry, favouring algebra and music notation above words. Occasionally, in an attempt to shake the reader out of complacent thinking, the text is deliberately provocative. Schillinger's uncompromising tone is due partly to the culture, from which he emerged. During the 1930's, he was amongst those who called for science to sweep away outdated practices. Some contemporaneous commentators, like the philosopher Adorno, linked this movement with the aggressive agenda of capitalism but Schillinger is by comparison politically naïve, simply a worshiper of science and apparently unaware of any negative consequences when he predicts, accurately as it turns out, a musical culture driven by technology and at the service of industrialisation. And yet for all its rigour, repetition and challenge, the System was enjoyed and apparently used with great success for many years after its author's death. Schillinger's influence lingers on in the work of celebrated musicians as well as those who produced countless forgotten film scores and television theme tunes. Composers whose work is considered unique and non-commercial have also publicly endorsed its methods.
