For so many, the idea of rules conjures up really legitimate feelings of limitation borne out either insecurity of musicianship or of self or both. So one of the first things to do is to get over it. Paraphrasing Stravinsky, the more we limit ourselves, the more possibilities open to us. Obviously, he was thinking of limitations, of rules, as a liberating, necessary part of life. And obviously, he is one of the finest examples of what is possible when one really embraces rather than gets caught up in them. I don’t think adherence to or departure from “rules” has anything at all to do with whether music is dull or interesting (which just seems to have more to do with how frequently the expectations of the listener are met).
A long time ago, I became friends with a painter many years my senior. He asked if I knew about Joseph Schillinger’s book called The Mathematical Basis of the Arts, and went on to explain that Schillinger’s theory was that all art could be quantified in mathematical terms as something occurring in an ordered nature just as a conch shell. Schillinger went on to suggest that the art which has been the most highly regarded over time actually contains the fewest errors, and mathematically drew a distinction in music between first and second rate composers based on their number of errors. Well, this is serious rule time and people prodded this guy to write The Schillinger System of Musical Composition in 1941.
Henry Cowell begins his forward as follows:
“The Schillinger System makes a positive approach to the theory of musical composition by offering possibilities for choice and development by the student, instead of the rules hedged round with prohibitions, limitations and exceptions, which have characterized conventional studies.
If a creative musician has something of importance to say it is acknowledged as a matter of course. No great composer has ever omitted the study of techniques. Musical theory as traditionally taught, however, has always been a profound disappointment to truly creative individuals. Such men have invariably added to the body of musical theory with researches of their own. Invariably, also, they have not followed the “rules” laid down in conventional text-books with any consistency. If these rules had been based on something inevitable in the nature of music, composers would have had no reason to disregard them.”
Cowell goes on to suggest that Schillinger provides mathematical codification of that inevitable order and suggests that these are the real rules we follow – at all times and in all cases, quantifiably and without margin for error, inferring that all music finds itself somewhere on a continuum between right and wrong. But my advice before you go out and try to get a hold of these books is to tread lightly. They are expensive and attempts to use them in the curriculum at Julliard were discarded after just a couple of years because students couldn’t pass the class. It is obnoxiously hard stuff but not insurmountably with severe dedication. Maybe just google the book title and poke around the websites following this stuff if you’re interested first. Either way, this has been the only text that I’ve ever run across that talks about a set of unerring functional ideas that address everything from Palestrina to Led Zeppelin. As a bonus, you can learn how to reduce a Beethoven’s piece to math, multiply it by different factors and get things that sound like Debussy or Webern. Scary things, the rules.