Looks like this thread has run its course already, but having followed it all the way, I thought I'd share a couple of thoughts.
As a lifelong academic, I found the main tension in this thread reminiscent of several others. For example, I remembered a heated debate following a seminar by a famous economist in which a couple of people argued that there was no point to economic theories - economics is just what happens (i.e., what people do). I remembered taking a course in modernist fiction in which we read some amazing writing, but also did some very heavy-duty literary criticism. I remember wondering at the end of it whether learning to apply literary theory had enhanced my appreciation of the works or mostly distracted me from fully absorbing the goodness in the books. In the fields of mental health, there are lively debates that address whether viewing human experience and motivation through a particular theoretical framework is helpful or dogmatically constraining. It's also not unusual to come across engineering types who can't fathom why mathematicians feel the need to prove things when running a few cycles of parameter estimation and tolerance testing on plausible models gets things built well enough - people built buildings that still stand and look gorgeous long before the maths of statics were formalised.
As a younger person discovering Western classical music (having grown up in a non-Western tradition), I read liner notes packed with erudite theoretical explications of composers' devices and interpreters' nuances and wondered whether understanding what they said would add to the experience of listening to the pieces. I suspect everyone has heard pieces of music that didn't touch them, but were highly regarded by people whose musical knowledge and taste we admired (recall the thread "Who's afraid of John Coltrane" in this very forum). It's not unusual to be told then that we'd get it if we understood the structure of it. But is appreciating Coltrane for his structure the same as being moved to tears by the soundtrack of Cinema Paradiso?
The aesthetic and analytical are not often of the same mind. Listening and playing by ear or by structure are complementary, which is what the views in this thread highlights, I suppose. But the key point for me is that we lose out when we dismiss a theoretical apparatus that is generative, i.e., helps us to do new things. Any child taking the ABRSM Grade 5 theory exam who has been taught a chord-based method of completing an 8-bar melody will testify that Western music theory is gloriously generative. A heavily theoretical approach to music production or appreciation may or may not be everyone's thing, and it needn't be. But even the most instinctive listener and player of music should see that music theory can guide the creation of awesome tunes, whether this is done on the fly on stage or over years at the composer's desk.
A final thought on this, Bernie?
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