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Personally, I think this thread is pretty clever manipulation on AssBlaster's part. Some may call it trolling, but whatever it is, it's funny.
Anyway, about h8kurdt's post: music has its roots in religion. Almost every aspect of western music has its origins in church music. Some of the greatest musical works of the western world were directly influenced by religion . AssBlaster is right about Bach - I listen to the St. Matthew Passion even though I don't believe in Jesus. And I like Messiaen too, and I'm not Catholic. This is really lame of me to go on at such length about some old post that was probably made as a joke anyway, but I also have to address your (h8kurdt's) signature. It was inevitable since I'm a music theorist.
You must like Debussy a lot, so you know that his music is very spiritual and apparently uncalculated (this is disputable). I like the quote because the "music theory" that Debussy was refering to (or his translator...where is that quote from anyway?) was indeed pretty shitty. Theorists had a lot of ridiculous ideas that were pretty unmusical and wacky back then and they often just added programmatic little stories to instrumental pieces and passed it off as "analysis". Music theory today is as similar to music theory back then as modern psychology is to Freud - owes a lot to it while dismissing it. But what a lot of people think of as "theory" today is just rudiments of music. Debussy benefitied A LOT for traditional "theory" studies such as harmony and counterpoint and form. What he didn't like was understandably pretty stupid, but if you think his quote is reaffirming the idea that learning scales and key signatures is pointless, well I think you're missing something. There is a quote from Hindemith that you would love - he's one of the most important theorists and composers of the 20th century, but he despised "theory". I'll try to find the quote - he goes on about how theorists are just musicians that couldn't cut it as performers or composers and there's a lot of truth in what he's saying. I don't know what he'd think about being considered such an important theorist today...I'll shut up now.
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