Comment by intrikate
3 hours ago
> I doubt there is any composer that actually is relying on music theory for their compositions.
Would you expect an author to disregard all of the conventions we've discovered and codified through specified language because it's just "more natural" if they let it flow out of them? No, I don't think you would. You'd find it difficult to read and interact with, both as a reader and a fellow writer. Music is the same.
Music theory is just the natural language definitions of the sounds we hear. A composer is absolutely thinking in those terms and using them to construct the piece they hear in their head. It gives you a way to communicate, with words, the sounds you are hearing in your own head. It does not constrain music in any way.
You have it backward. The conventions were discovered first, music theory came after composers did things. Music's theory describes what we already know works, not how to make things work.
No composer I know thinks in the terms of music theory. They often use a chord progression that music theory describes why it works, but they're not thinking of it in terms of music theory. They're thinking in terms of chord progression, just like the composers of thousands years ago were thinking of their chord progressions the exact style changes and so a thousand years ago they went to thought in terms of modern chord progressions but they were still thinking in similar terms.