What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?
Every bit of theorizing I've ever done, including my interest in Berg, has come as a consequence of discoveries I made as a composer and interests that I developed as a composer. I never thought of my theory as being a kind of irrelevant activity to my composing.
Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling.
An ounce of doing things is worth a pound of theorizing.
The concept of intuition is more often used in philosophical theorizing than is the concept of observation in scientific theorizing (proportionately). One reason is that there is (proportionately) more ostensible conflict of philosophical intuitions than there is ostensible conflict of scientific observations. So much for the use of a concept of intuition in philosophical theorizing.
Nothing is more futile than theorizing about music. No doubt there are laws, mathematically strict laws, but these laws are not music; they are only its conditions? The essence of music is revelation.
I soon became convinced. . . that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a waste of time unless one first ascertained what the population of the universe really consists of.
From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is therefore the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.
I don't like theorizing about my work myself, but that's not to say I have no interest in theory. Other people are free to say what they want about my work.
I teach a graduate seminar called "Theorizing Improvisation" that is pretty interdisciplinary, but really makes students deal with black studies seriously. A lot of authors of color, a lot of women of color - those become central to the intellectual trajectory. It considers music, but it also considers areas of thought that might seem unrelated to music. That's partly because we're expanding the notion of what music is beyond objects, beyond scores, beyond things.
