Learning: Music Theory (or not), Counterpoint, and Orchestration

During their interviews, these twelve composers emphasized repeatedly that they learned how to compose by creating music—by experimenting, trying things, and learning along the way. In effect, they were learning to compose by composing, not by studying how to compose or mastering music theory. When they did encounter music theory, what they learned (usually) made sense because they were already creating music. Theoretical studies gave them labels, strategies, insights, or confidence in what they were doing. Conversely, learning theory first, or encountering teachers who emphasized theory prior to composing, could actually thwart the creative impulse.

The combination of critique and an overemphasis on theory discouraged Connor Chee during his teenage years and throughout college:

As I got older and focused more on the piano, I did try writing things, but my teachers would critique it and tell me, “That’s great, but it needs to have form and needs to have structure and needs to have” all these things that I hadn’t studied. So,

I backed off for a long time. It was a total turnaround from when I was younger. I thought, “Wait, there’s a right way to do this. I’m not doing it correctly. I don’t know enough to be composing music” It held me back because that thought stuck in my mind: You just don’t know enough. You have to be super educated to be composing music or it’s not right.

Chee went to college for piano performance and took a broad spectrum of theory courses and composition electives, including computer and electronic music creating and score engraving, but he did not consider any of that activity composition. He “accidentally started composing again” when a project aimed at preserving the songs of his Navajo grandfather turned into a suite for piano.

Miriam Cutler, who changed majors from music to anthropology because of music theory, commented, “My brain cannot process music in that way. I know the circle of fifths, but don’t make me say it. I hear chords. I know what they are. I know I can recreate them. I just can’t think of music that (theory) way” And while Steve Hampton finished his degree in music theory and composition, he was skeptical about the value of two years of common practice music theory. “I did well in it,” Hampton said, “but I didn’t really like it. I wished there were other classes, but I didn’t have access to them”

Peter Bernstein wished for a class in high school that would have helped him “understand more what was inside the music. I knew I, IV, V from piano. I wanted to know why it worked the way it did, what’s underneath it all that holds it together” Mari Esabel Valverde pointed to the value of experience prior to theory. An avid school choir member, she liked to “sing through all the parts and put different colors and different qualities with chords. So, when I took music theory, it gave a name to the organization of sound that I was already perceiving.” In other words, for these composers, labels are secondary while creating. Steve Bryant explained, “As I compose, I try not to think, ‘This is what I’m doing. This is over an altered bass.’ I don’t want to think about that. It’s a sense of density and sound moving forward. The more word-less and label-less it can be, the more fun it is and the easier it is to do”

Counterpoint studies in college or graduate school made a difference for some of these composers. Mari Esabel Valverde found value in “understanding how a contrapuntal voice resolves and relates to other lines, or, if I cross voices, then how and why and what that sounds like.” She recalled, “One of our assignments was to compose in the style of a Bach Invention. While that’s not something that I aspire my music to be like, understanding that convention helped me to connect to the wires in my brain of how things are guided musically, melodically, horizontally . . . and to be more assertive about decisions in terms of crafting the music”

Similarly, some of the composers, including Valverde, pointed to orchestration studies as important to their learning. She explained, “Up until that point I had a crayon box with 12 colors, and I was really good with them. I knew how to do all the combinations of those colors. I found things that I loved and was confident about. But when I took orchestration and learned how to listen to symphonic music, those 12 colors turned into 64” Still, learning orchestration often occurred in action rather than in study. Jennifer Jolley explained, “Yes, I read an orchestration book, but I didn’t really have that connection until I had to actually do it”

The learning experience that many of these composers valued most, however, was listening to music, often with a score in hand and sometimes with a mentor beside them. Jennifer Jolley explained, “I learn most in a concert setting when I can actually see the physicality of what’s going on. I learned way after the fact that actually having the score in front of you while listening to the music was immensely helpful” Eric Whitacre described a similar experience in lessons with composer John Corigliano:

He’d sit with me with either his own scores or maybe Stravinsky or Bartok. We’d listen and occasionally he’d stop and just point things out. “You see this? How this is happening? How this is connected to this?” He taught me about the idea of structure, deep structure, and how important it was. I look back now and realize he completely altered the way I think about music and the way that I make music.