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Piano Tuition |
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Composition / Thory
Tuition |
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Lecture Recitals |
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Seminars / Lectures |
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EDUCATION
Composition/Theory Tuition |
"Works of art make rules; rules do not make works
of art."
Claude Debussy
My piano teachers have given me some of the best composition
lessons and some of my finest performance insights have
been given to me by my composition teachers. The nature
of music is not divisible. In a time when specialising
is crucial to achieving inclusion in the professional
ranks, it is an imperative that any aspiring young musician
persists to be as musically all-embracing as possible.
The subject of composition then is not synonymous to
a set of techniques and laws applicable to a static
contemporary style, but on the contrary, to a traditionally
and historically evolving craft.
True enough, every composer is self-taught to an extent.
The need to specify any directions for the performance
of a succession of sounds and silences cannot be taught
nor should it be externally controlled. But what can
be developed with the help of others is the ability
to have command over one’s creative impulses and
to know how to lose that control when necessary without
becoming voiceless.
Whatever the tuition time frame, the student-composer
must become as familiar as possible with basic acoustics,
common practice syntax and grammar, the depths –
if possible – of standard 19th century theory,
the various aesthetic directions of the early twentieth
century, electronic music and avant-garde techniques
and idioms, whilst at the same time trying his hand
on original, stylistically uninhibited work and analysing
works from other periods and other cultures. Finally,
an element of performance or physical presence of sound
is essential for the method to be complete.
From deciding to write a piece, to making the first
musical symbol on the page, to lifting one’s pen
after ending the work, to listening to the result, all
creative activity is defined by extreme esoteric intensity.
Writing music is therefore not a pastime, nor is it
necessarily a humourless chore. Composition for a musician
is at least as essential to life as life is to composition.
Frida Kahlo wrote: “I never paint dreams or nightmares.
I paint my own reality.” In the case of music
nothing, not even our art can escape the limits of Time:
we, the composers of music, have and need no reality
to paint for: to teach composition then is to teach
not answers to problems but questions without answers.
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