[Smt-talk] COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY

[Nigel Morgan]

I agree with Mark that 'rhythmic motivic / development technique ought to be
first', and would side with Paul Hindemith, who also believed in the primacy
of rhythm in the composing act (in his advice to students at Yale -
reference in the links of my earlier mail). He prefaced even that with the
notion that what 'really' needed to come first was reflection on the
'conditions' that surround the performance of any composition. Composing
does not exist in a vacuum of abstraction. It is surely about the means to
performance. 

Student composers are possibly best treated from the start as 'real
composers' writing living music, just as good art teachers treat their
students by putting work in a frame and on display as though in a gallery.
The conditions Hindemith talks about are all the aspects that make up an
imagined performance. Considering instrument(s), voice(s) or media, along
with context, generates appropriate and focused composing thoughts. Does
thinking about music for a flute produce identical thoughts about music for
a violin? Of course not. Technique is all very well, but what we want to
help our students to develop is their imagination.

In the UK this mode of thinking has been at the very root of the composition
pedagogy found in the books of Prof. John Paynter, Sound and Silence and
Sound and Structure. These 'sensible' ideas have influenced two generations
of music educators in the school classroom (and beyond).

Nigel


Nigel Morgan
Visiting Research Fellow
ICCMR
Plymouth University
UK



On 20/3/09 19:16, "Mark Hijleh" <Mark.Hijleh at houghton.edu> wrote:

> On Stephen's point about integrating composition with theory, I say "hear,
> hear!" Actually, rhythmic motivic/development technique ought to come first,
> followed by adding linear pitch (i.e., melody). I'll also add that doing such
> work in a wide variety of stylistic traditions (gleaned or derived from
> different cultures) is, I think, essential in the 21st century.
> 
> If, David, you are asking about the training of composition majors
> specifically, I actually start the same way as described above, giving them
> compositional etude-type projects that force them to focus on only one or two
> elements (rhythm, linear pitch, vertical pitch, timbre, texture, etc.) at one
> time and to make music out of those. I picked those ideas up from Ellis Kohs'
> old book "Musical Composition" (now re-issued by Scarecrow Press), but then
> extended them a bit.
> 
> Several folks have inquired into the "field" of composition pedagogy recently.
> A number of doctoral students from different schools are doing or have
> recently done studies. (Though I don't recall names/schools).
> 
> Certainly there was no "composition pedagogy" curriculum widely in effect when
> I finished school some 20 years ago. Seems like most teachers (including me)
> pick and choose what they found most helpful from THEIR own teachers and
> resources, and put together some sort of system.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Mark Hijleh
> Professor, Greatbatch School of Music
> Houghton College (NY)
> ________________________________
> From: smt-talk-bounces at societymusictheory.org
> [smt-talk-bounces at societymusictheory.org] On Behalf Of Chair of Music
> [jablonsky at optimum.net]
> Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 10:40 AM
> To: SMT Talk
> Subject: [Smt-talk] COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY
> 
> David,
> 
> Your inquiry raises an interesting question: Why is composition taught
> separately from theory? An investigation of the major theory textbooks reveals
> that most of them do not discuss the fundamentals of the composition process
> at all. The only writing they encourage is the addition of bass lines or inner
> voices to already composed melodies, but there is virtually no discussion of
> how to write a melody. If you look in the index, the word "melody" rarely
> appears or there is a reference to a very brief discussion in the text.
> 
> Melody is where the world of composition begins--the creation of a musical
> line that is coherent and has proper musical syntax.
> Students in theory classes should be introduced to the process of composition
> by instructing them how to write folk melodies in the first semester of their
> studies. In the second semester they can learn how to do soprano-bass
> counterpoint and compose more complicated melodies they can arrange for piano
> or small instrumental ensembles. In the third semester they can learn to write
> more sophisticated short binary or ternary form pieces. After that they are
> ready to move on to a composition class where they can explore a variety of
> styles and structures. This curricular scheme is based on the premise that
> music theory instruction should include composition and analysis, not just
> analysis and filling in Bach chorales or completing perfunctory exercises. I
> believe that everyone of my students is a potential composer and should be
> allowed to explore that possibility as early in the theory sequence as
> possible. With that in mind I included a chapter entitled "How to Write a
> Melody" 
> in my Tonal Facts & Tonal Theories.
> 
> I have had great success with this program. By the end of the first semester
> my best students have written four-phrase folk tunes that people want to hum.
> By the end of the second semester they can write their own sequence-based tune
> over chord progressions from American Standards (Gershwin, Berlin, Porter,
> etc.). And, by the end of the third semester they can write a binary or
> ternary piece for solo instrument and piano that makes sense from beginning to
> end and employs modulation.
> 
> The most important thing any beginning composer has to learn is how to
> hear--how to listen to what makes sense in the work of others and then use
> this skill to assess their own compositions. It is the job of the composition
> (theory) teacher to determine where a student's work goes off the track and to
> offer a set of options for fixing the problem. This is not always easy for
> theory teachers who are not composers. One of the big problems today is that
> many (most?) of our students do not have much experience listening to good
> music from a variety styles and genres. If all they know is House, Hip-hop or
> video game music you will have a difficult time getting them to understand
> Mozart, Richard Rogers, or even the Beatles. That is why I get them listening
> to "model" pieces that they can imitate after they get it in their ears. Over
> three semesters they listen to tunes sung by Burl Ives and Pete Seeger and end
> up with Mel Torme and Frank Sinatra.
> 
> Finally, what I try to leave with my students is an understanding that the
> most important part of the compositional process is the editing, hoping that
> eventually they will be able to supply their own solutions to the problems
> they find in their pieces and they won't need me.
> 
> 
> 
> Prof. Stephen Jablonsky, Ph.D.
> Music Department Chair
> The City College of New York
> 160 Convent Avenue S-72
> New York NY 10031
> (212) 650-7663
> 
> 
> 
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> rg