Intrinsic Impediments to Teaching Composition

The intrinsic rationales for not teaching composition are: (1) musical, (2) pedagogical, (3) psychological, and (4) sociological. Each of these are learned behaviors, and each can be overcome.

Musical Impediment. Teachers cannot teach what they cannot do themselves. No textbook, workshop, or methods course can prepare someone who has never composed to teach composition. The accrediting organization for collegiate music schools in the United States and Canada, the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM), requires that all music majors have opportunities to compose. The reality is that in many colleges these creative experiences are merely technical exercises in a music theory class. Without authentic, meaningful composing experience, music education majors would be less likely to realize the value of composition for their own students.

There are colleges that prepare pre-service music teachers in a more authentic way. The University College of Music Education in Stockholm, for example, offers popular music genres as a major and teaches songwriting to music education majors. The University of Southern California allows singer-songwriters to become music educators.

To understand how the emphasis on large ensemble performance and relative lack of composition and chamber music in college music curricula came about, it is necessary to look at a 200-year-old paradigm. In the early 19th century, orchestras and opera companies were spreading rapidly throughout Europe, due to a burgeoning middle class. Secular conservatories were established in many European cities to meet the need for large numbers of classically trained musicians. The music curriculum in those conservatories was designed to prepare graduates to take their place in the growth industry of classical music. The primary educational emphasis was on orchestral and opera experiences, with small group instruction on a primary instrument or voice, music theory and sight-singing using solfege, some piano, and 19th-century European music literature.

The musical world of the 21st century has certainly changed, but the core curriculum for most music majors, including music education majors, has been surprisingly resistant to conversion. Many colleges are still preparing music majors to take their place in a nonexistent music world in which positions in large ensembles and opera companies are plentiful.

Audition requirements for collegiate music students vary widely regarding students’ compositional ability. In the United States, it would be a rare college, indeed, that would ask students auditioning to be music majors to compose a simple melody. By contrast, in England, the “A-Level” music tests for entrance to most collegiate music study require potential music majors to compose two pieces: one four and one-half minute composition in response to given guidelines, and one free composition (AQA, 2019).

Pedagogical Impediment.A second reason for not teaching composition in music classes and ensembles is a lack of pedagogical knowledge. A teacher with experience composing may not have strategies for teaching composition to others. This is a problem that I faced myself. I have composed songs since I was 13, and I had included guided composition activities for my music students from middle school through college aged. But when one of my college students in 2000 asked me if I could teach songwriting class, I did not know where to begin, because I had no pedagogical models. The class had 18 students enrolled, and I learned how to teach songwriting as the semester progressed.

Collegiate music methods courses are increasingly emphasizing the teaching of composition and other forms of creativity, such as improvisation and arranging. The obstacles of musicianship and pedagogy may be the easiest to overcome in the education of music teachers through updated curricula. However, there are other, more potent, causes for some music educators’ resistance to teaching composition: psychological and sociological.

Psychological Factor.Possessing a high degree of creativity is not necessarily a positive characteristic. It simply is what it is: some people are very creative, some are very uncreative, and most are moderately creative. Creativity is domain-specific, meaning that a creative mathematician is not necessarily a creative chef. Creativity is learned and not genetic. Some people are more creative in certain domains and other certain conditions than are other people. Some may assume that all music educators possess a high degree of music creativity, given the subject they teach. But this is not necessarily so.

The Field Theory of creativity says that human behavior is a function of the individual and the environment (Selby, Shaw, & Houtz, 2005). In other words, one’s creativity is determined by interaction with other people, the presence or lack of stimulation, and the rules and expectations of the domain in which the person functions. Creativity is not stimulated when another person directs one’s action toward a predetermined end.

Let us apply Field Theory to large ensemble performance. In most settings, the music teacher studies a score and develops a mental map of how the piece should sound. Students’ performance is then guided toward a particular goal, with the teacher stopping performances to eliminate errors, clarify instructions, and occasionally praise the performers. Given Field Theory, this is not the way to develop students’ musical creativity. If music educators do not necessarily value creativity, it is not because they are poor musicians. It may well be that the ways they were taught to be musical required them to follow directions rather than be creative themselves.

An analogy may explain my point. In high school, I took three art courses: drawing and painting, advertising, and photography. Making art (and music) was my passion, to the point of my spending two months in art class capturing the details of a rutabaga in a large charcoal drawing. I also enrolled in a class in mechanical drawing to fulfill a high school requirement in vocational education. The contemporary equivalent to mechanical drawing is cad-cam, computer-generated drawings to illustrate complex designs. In the late 1960s, these drawings were done by hand while working over a tilted desk with protractors, rulers, and compasses. Students were given models to recreate.

I enjoyed the exacting precision of mechanical drawing class, but it in no way was like an art class to me. My teacher in mechanical drawing class would walk past our rows of desks, deducting three points if the angle of a line we drew was imprecise or five points if our lettering was not Thinch high using all caps. Looking back at the experience, the class was more about following directions and avoiding errors than it was about creating anything that reflected me personally. I could not imagine my art teacher deducting three points because I did not use enough blue in a painting or five points for drawing my rutabaga too large. Art was about something more personal and significant than avoiding errors.

My concern is that what is taught in large ensembles and other music settings is similar to what I was taught in my mechanical drawing class. The experience can be enjoyable for the precision required, but it is not exactly music as an art form. The question I am asking is: are we teaching music as the aural equivalent of mechanical drawing? Is it the music teacher’s job to inspire their students’ musicality in ways that are personally meaningful and expressive or to aim their students toward technical perfection in accordance with pre-established rules? Avoiding errors is not particularly inspirational. I have never used mechanical drawing even once after completing that course. The theme of “mechanical music” will be reprised in the conclusion of this chapter.

Sociological Factor.In most classrooms, music teachers control the flow of information from teacher to students. Teachers select the music, they distribute the music, they organize the rehearsals, and they decide when the music is ready for performance. In elementary classrooms, this music is often taught by rote; in secondary ensembles the music is passed out with scores. This flow is disrupted when students themselves are the creators of music.

Levin and Nolan (2014) describe several types of teacher authority in the classroom that enable teachers to guide student learning. Expert authority stems from the teacher being perceived by students as having superior knowledge of the subject. Referent authority derives from teachers being perceived by students as a decent person, one who cares about them and has the students’ best interest in mind. Expert authority is especially valued by students at the secondary level. The expertise that music teachers bring to the classroom is, at least theoretically, derived from their years of performance on a single instrument or voice type, in large ensembles and through private instruction.

In most music learning settings, students respond in various ways to music provided by their teachers. In a composition or songwriting class, this situation is reversed. The teacher responds to the original music students provide. When I started teaching songwriting, I needed to readjust my teaching to provide an environment for nurturing creativity rather than guiding students toward a predetermined set of curricular objectives. The flow of information from students to teacher may be perceived as undermining the teacher’s expert authority. Some educators have worried that the loss of the music teacher’s control through superior expertise in classical traditions “may be sowing the seeds of our own demise” (Allsup, 2008, p. 5).

The obstacles presented in this section may be explained as educators’ fears: I fear that my musicality does not include composition (musical), I fear that I do not know how to teach composing (pedagogical), I fear that I am personally not very creative (psychological), and I fear that my control of the class/ensemble may falter if I am not perceived as the musical expert in the room (sociological). These unspoken fears are certainly not universal among music teachers, by any means. But they are learned behaviors, based on being musically educated in a system based on a 200-year-old paradigm.