humnab

Good Viscount, I began by tossing notes onto staves when I had no clue what I was doing. Does that make me any worse? (Don't worry; I know your answer.)

However, what about the fact that when I did actually take theory, my compositional vein dried up almost entirely, even though when I did write what I wrote was excellent? (You yourself have testified to this, and I don't think my taking theory had much to do with the advance in my writing.)

Thinking of theories... French classical drama, and many others elsewhere, like Ben Jonson, were smothered by Aristotle's notes on drama. What Aristotle did was describe what was done in Greek drama of his day and prior ones, but during its rediscovery, these descriptions were taken as prescriptions for the only possible way to write plays. I have to ask: is theory a description Ã* la Aristote of how music works on the level of physics and of how composers have written, or is it a set of rules? Just wondering...