From: david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth)
Newsgroups: rec.music.compose
Subject: Re: academia, power, priveledge...
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 03:23:46 EST
Organization: DAVID A. ROTH MUSIC
Reply-To: david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth)
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.5v4


In article <1992Dec28.134620.16506@zip.eecs.umich.edu> (rec.music.compose), fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields) writes:
> 
> In article <0105009A.m82a58@david.roth-music.com> david@roth-music.com (David A. Roth) writes:
> >
> >In article <1992Dec26.173521.4709@zip.eecs.umich.edu> (rec.music.compose), fields@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Matthew Fields) writes:
> >> 
> >> In article <1992Dec25.190909.25191@zip.eecs.umich.edu> I write:
> >> >In article <gXecwB1w165w@dorsai.com> idealord@dorsai.com (Jeff Harrington) writes:
> >> >>  Bach and Mozart wrote music which was judged by 
> >> >>intelligent, cultured music lovers.  I'm sorry, this ain't the case no 
> >> >>more.  
> >> >
> >> >Intelligent, cultured music lovers don't grow on trees! Hence modern
> >> >academia.
> >> 
> >> But I've oversimplified and failed to explain why I love to teach
> >> composition.  This cuts right to the heart of the joy of teaching.
> >> You hand out seeds of ideas that you don't even have to make up
> >> because your own teachers handed them to you, and each student finds a
> >> niche for that seed in her or his own fertile mind---and week in, week
> >> out, you get to see instantiations of ideas blossoming back at you in
> >> ways you couldn't ever have imagined.  This is fun.
> >> 
> >> But nobody should be teaching composition who doesn't complete at least
> >> one new symphony or 3 new sonatas and quartets or one scene of an opera
> >> fully orchestrated per year, consistently, imho.
> >> 
> >I don't think anybody should be teaching composition period because
> >it can't be taught to begin with, imho. 
> 
> Two comments here.  First, I believe strongly that composition CAN be
> taught, but the cultural category of "greatness" can't be taught.  If
> there were nothing that could be taught about composition then it
> would be kind of funny to have this newsgroup, unless every posting
> announced composers' contests.

Are you saying that the purpose of this newsgroup is to teach composition?
If that's the case then you really don't understand what it takes
to compose or you think that composing is music by numbers -- music
theory.

>  Composition can be taught because so
> many nifty ideas have already been worked out by composers of the
> past, and so many of these ideas are fluid enough to be adaptable to
> individual types of expression.  

This is the purpose of studying scores and listening to works of others.
 No one can teach you how to compose.  They can only teach you so-called
music theory.  What can be learned by studying the works of others
can only be of use to the person doing the actual listening, since it is
up to them to decide on what elements are important to them.  Having
someone else do this for you and try to "teach" it to you misses the
point.  At best all they can do is go through the motions without the
emotion which leaves only music theory not composition making it nothing
more than math.


> Raw creativity is very tricky to
> elicit, although sometimes you encounter a student who is fairly
> bristling with creativity but just lacks the confidence or nerve to
> try it out, and instead keeps trying to stick to straight-arrow
> rule-based systems or whatever---and in that case a teacher CAN

The reason they have this problem of sticking to some method is because
yet another person thought they too could teach composition which
was really music theory.

> encourage the student to take advantage of their innate creativity,
> which still doesn't say that creativity can be taught.

This is being a cheerleader for someone not teaching them how to compose.
The same could be said for someone who doesn't have the nerve to do
public speaking although they really have something to be said. 

>  Compositional
> craft and technique can be taught.  The situation is similar in
> painting, creative writing, or even mathematics.

Math, huh?  Music serves a purpose of an emotional impact and to even
put it into the same context as composing shows that you are only
talking about the trappings of music composition "taught" through
the eyes of music theory.  Music theory is music theory not composing.
Calling it a "craft" and "technique" are more ways that music theory
teachers use to mask when they claim to be teaching composition.
> 
> Secondly, when I listed what I think a professor of composition should be
> doing regularly, I intended to be inclusive of all truly compositional
> activities, but not to include administrative work, computer support for
> other composers, abstract research with no work of entertainment as its
> end goal, or political maneuvering.

In other words, waste resources while the University foots the bill
creating music theory works called composition to be played by a captive
audience of students who have payed dearly to attention a place of
higher learning.  Music created with no entertainment value should
be left to the math or EE depts where it belongs.  This is *not* the
activity of someone who claims to be a composer attempting to teach
composition should be up to.  At the very least should be gathering
professional credits for their work instead of music theory based
works.  If someone wants to learn music theory to teach music theory
than they have come to the right place, but people who are studying
composition want to really compose *MUSIC* not math.  Leading students
down the path to creating works that have no entertainment or emotional
value is doing the student a great disservice.

Music theory can be taught just like math can be taught.  Music composition
can't be taught in this manner.  The best advise anyone can give is
to listen, read scores and figure out what is important to them and
find their own approach.  Someone elses approach is fine but it can't
be applied to everyone else.  To attempt to do so short changes the
student and spawns another lesson in music theory which is not
what a composer needs.  Why isn't this told more often?  Because it
is easier to get grant funding claiming composition as an activity
instead of theory.

David
david@roth-music.com