Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!smh
From: smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Schillinger
Message-ID: <1373@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-Feb-84 22:11:25 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1373
Posted: Tue Feb 28 22:11:25 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 22:40:05 EST
References: <2623@alice.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 29

x
	I thought that "why be a second rate Ravel when you can be a first rate
	Gershwin" was just a line from the Robert Alda movie about GG.

The story of the meeting between Gershwin and Ravel seems widely accepted,
although I don't have a citation at hand.

	Gershwin did study formally with Joseph Schillinger, a composition prof
	at Julliard, and the author of a fat book detailing the Schillinger
	System for composition.

This is surprising.   is indeed a rather
substantial volume detailing a novel system of music theory.  If I
remember correctly, it is pretty much directed towards providing a
system of composition.  It is a very confusing book which, in the
opinion of most music theorists, is an unfortunate exercise in
pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics.

The book was reviewed long ago (by Wayne Slawson, if I remember
correctly) in a fairly early volume of .
The review has nothing good to say about the book and takes apart many
of its more ridiculous assertions.

None of this, of course, reflects upon Gerschwin in the slightest.  In
fact, it doesn't even reflect upon the *music* of Schillinger, with
which I am, alas, unacquainted.

Happy to serve as resident music theorist for Usenet,
Steve Haflich, MIT Experimental Music Studio