A Course in Composition

If ever I have to give a course in music composition--hey, stranger things have happened--then I think this is how I would organize it.

First we need some history; you need to know the context and background of the artform. Second, we need some theory. We should not be accused of not teaching the basics. Third, we need some aesthetics for inspiration and guide. Then you have to do a lot of work, figuring out just what sort of composer you are.

I. History

I would go right back to 12th century Notre Dame and the music of Léonin and Pérotin because often it is the older music that can be most appealing to young composers fearful of being influenced by the Latest Thing.

In a university context you should be able to count on your musicological colleagues to teach a lot of this, but absent that, we should have a look/listen to Guillaume de Machaut:

A little Renaissance sacred music:

And something secular:

Then some French Baroque:

J. S. Bach, of course:

Haydn:

The nearly-cancelled Beethoven:

Berlioz:

All that should take a while because I would want to talk about what these composers were doing and how they were doing it. Now I know that this kind of instruction fell by the wayside during the Crazy Years of modernism. Someone like Steve Reich, for example, hardly studied any of this. He was a drummer in his early years and then became a philosophy major at university. Then he studied African drumming and Javanese gamelan. His first years as a composer were spent with tape machines. He refers to the 19th century as being dominated by "brown varnish" music or words to that effect. Philip Glass was different, though. He had a solid education in music at Peabody, the University of Chicago, Juilliard, and studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. You don't get more establishment than that.

Part of my sense that the education of a composer should involve exposure to the traditions of Western European music comes from the experiences of a friend of mine. He did a BFA at a Canadian university during the years when the visual arts were in the throes of "concept art." Instead of doing things like learn how to draw, perspective, life drawing studies, all that stuff, they did projects like figure out how to wrap an egg so it could be dropped two stories without breaking. Oh, and etchings, I'm almost sure they did etchings. In later years he complained bitterly about not getting a decent education in the basics of art and would sardonically refer to his credential as a "bachelor of f**k all." So if I have the opportunity of teaching composition students at some point, they are going to come out of it actually knowing something about music!

Theory and Aesthetics to follow in future posts.