Brilliant

One needs some background in basic music theory to appreciate or even really understand this fairly technical, fairly lengthy, but brilliant essay on certain problems and pitfalls attendant current pedagogic practices in music theory. But quite apart from the essay's thesis and intended purpose, its reading — no matter how haltingly and half-understood, even by the untutored music-lover — will give one a revealing and perhaps new sense of, and feeling for, how music is actually made.

[T]he payoff of [learning] counterpoint comes as a surprise. Given enough time and energy, at some point the student writes a 20-measure exercise, a little three-voice motet; it gets sung in class, and with a shock she recognizes that it is... perfect. No expert could prove that it was not written by Nicholas Gombert or Adrian Willaert. If she's followed the rules religiously, she can produce something that transcends her own personality, that is demonstrably correct and solid and lovely, like an elegant mathematical equasion. Unlike harmony, which always maintains a connection to subjectivity and personal feelings, counterpoint may teach her how powerful it feels to be a mere vessel. She may learn what T.S. Eliot means when he says, "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

RTWT here.