Learning Rules and Breaking Rules – The Procedure of Studying and Creating Music?

Nadia Boulanger once said, “To study music, you must learn the rules. To create music, you must break them."  In my recent LinkedIn poll, I asked colleagues if they agreed with this famous quote. Unlike my previous LinkedIn polls, in this poll, a significant majority from each platform I posted voted “yes,” a few voted “no,” and several colleagues provided insightful comments.

This quoted statement is so absolute that it invites debates. I was intrigued by the comments that raised various issues about this quote:

About Learning the Rules:

1. What are the “rules” of what kind of music?

2. Do we have to learn all or just enough rules relevant to our musical interests?

3. Can we study music through other means instead of learning the rules?

About Breaking the Rules:

4. Do we have to break all the rules while creating music?

5. Can we keep some of the rules while creating music?

6. How many rules should we keep and break?

Finally, can we bypass the procedure of learning and breaking the rules and go directly to creating music?

To investigate the meaning of this quote, we need to understand Boulanger's musical background. The great pedagogue was trained at the prestigious Paris Conservatory at the turn of the 20th century. She studied and practiced European art music; the “rules” she referred to were counterpoint, harmony, form, etc. Those are the standard music theory/composition subjects in the music curriculum of conservatories and universities worldwide, subjects that Music Composition majors must take. The rationale is for composition students to gain a solid foundation and thorough understanding of this particular art form's musical language and styles before finding their own languages. Fair enough.

However, European art music is no longer the only music in today’s world. This quote poses a challenge: Do musicians who practice music from a different culture must learn the rules of European art music? Maybe not: different musical cultures have different rules. To interpret or create music in the authentic style, one must understand the syntax and style of that particular kind of music unless that musician also enrolls in a university that requires passing the theory subjects of Western Classical music.

You can learn the rules or syntax of the particular style of music you intend to write unless you want to create music that does not belong to any musical tradition. Even if you only want to create sound effects without melody and harmony, you must understand acoustics to achieve the ideal result.

Learning music by ear (without studying music theory) is possible. In this case, the “rules” of that music are internalized through the ear. The musician’s language is limited to the music the musician is exposed to aurally.  Learning a new repertoire or a new style of music without recordings would be impossible due to the lack of score reading and analytical skills.

If we agree on learning the “rules” of our favorite musical style, do we need to break the rules when creating music? What if we don’t? Let us put it this way: if you love Mozart, learn Classical music theory, and write a piano piece that sounds just like Mozart, would you be satisfied? Do you really want to sound like Mozart? What is your voice in the 21st century? Originality defines who we are. I believe Boulanger’s “breaking the rules” idea is to find your original voice instead of copying the past. We must somehow break the old rules to search for our new voice in the 21st century. Which rules or how many rules to break or how to break are entirely up to what we wish to achieve in our music.

At the turn of the 20th century, Debussy challenged tonality by using new scales and nonfunctional harmony to create new colors while still keeping the key signatures. Schoenberg's twelve-tone system was the most radical rule-breaking approach to tonality in the early 20th century, but Schoenberg still used Classical forms. The dodecaphony Schoenberg and his students practiced, in turn, became the Second Viennese School, the “new rules” younger generations followed. John Cage was even more radical than Schoenberg: all the rules of Western Classical music were abandoned. He was influenced by Eastern philosophy. Any sound or silence could be music. After Cage, what more rules can be broken?

Perhaps “Breaking the rules” can now be interpreted as any unconventional treatment of conventional materials, creation of unconventional materials, recycling materials and styles, integration of ideologies and traditions of different cultures, or redefining the meaning of music. These can be applied to most music since the second half of the 20th century, reactions to Western tonality and atonality in many different ways.

Musical elements are always present, and different treatments of musical elements define different trends and individual styles. Even though pop music generally utilizes tonal melody and harmony, some chord progressions are unconventional, and the sound is undoubtedly not classical. Jazz expands and enriches functional tonality with colorful chord extensions and substitutions, further including modality and playing “outside.”

The conventional musical “rules” are associated with pitch structure, whether tonal or atonal. When the focus on pitch structure is switched to other musical elements such as rhythm, timbre, and less predictable formal structure, many innovative sound worlds are created. Technology plays a significant role in the music today. Many Classically trained musicians are disappointed by the “lack” of melody and harmony in today’s music, but the creators’ focus is on specific timbre instead of pitch structure.

Can we bypass learning and breaking the rules and go directly to creating music? It would be impossible as we have already learned the rules through academic studies, self-study, or by ear. Whatever music we create reflects the musical language we know, whether notated or improvised. You cannot unlearn those rules but may forget about them and write anything you want as long as it represents you. There is nothing wrong with writing a lovely song with lush harmony, creating a soundtrack with sophisticated sound effects, or simply improvising on your instrument. Each has its own artistic merits. Trying to “break the rules” intentionally to create something novel is not a natural way to demonstrate creativity. When you try to express something unique to yourself beyond the “rules” you have learned, you will find a new way to realize it. Hey, you are “breaking the rules.” Congratulations! That is originality speaks. It’s time to celebrate!