Music Theory & Music Theories

Last Monday was the first day back after Christmas, and that marked the beginning of a second module on the second year of my MA. From the beginning of the second year up until Christmas, I had a composition lecture specific to our (the students) work and our ideas/processes etc, but now alongside that we have our theory based lecture, named "Creativity & Knowledge", where we discuss various topics in relation to our practice (in my case composition).

We had been given a "short" reader a few weeks previous, when all the MA students met for a day of sharing and told the specific texts to read from in preparation for the next weeks lecture. The main focus of the reading was "practice based research" and before I arrived at the lecture I knew only what I absorbed from the reading.

In short, It's a way of presenting "knowledge" through means of a practice e.g music/dance/theatre etc, instead of through academic means such a paper or a book. There are a lot of grey areas when it comes to defining what can be quantified as "knowledge" in a performance, so in order to pinpoint specific qualities in a piece of work, a governing body came up with a set of criteria that could be placed against any practice to see whether it was worthy of funding and therefore worthy of the "research".

As an exercise we were asked to write a fake research proposal in response to three major criteria:

The Question (What am I going to research?)
The Context (The value. Where does it sit in the "grand scheme" of things?)
The Method (How am I going to go about it?)

I found it really difficult but below is my "fake" research proposal.

Question

- To what extent does my music show my influences?
- Does my music have any affect on an audience?
- Am I good enough? / Is my work good enough?
 
Context

- Composers I admire
- Choral music in recent times
- Classical music
- Young choral composer
- Being a student
- Being a student composer
- Bottom of the composer ladder : No publisher, can't get permissions for texts etc
 
Method

- Looking at scores
- Spending time at a piano (becoming more familiar with groupings of notes/progressions/harmony in general)
- Trial and error
- Listening, listening, listening, then listening some more
- More public performances
- Seek feedback from mentors/established composers

I'm still trying to get my head around the concept but I think looking at it with a specific question in mind helps.

As always, Thank you very much for reading.

Liam