Can You Really Study Composition Self-Taught?

I am self-taught.

If you want, you can succeed on your own.

The point of the matter is time.

If you are in front of a teacher, you learn in a minute;

if you want to learn by yourself studying books, it takes a bit more time, perhaps even months.

Often the teacher gives you examples that immediately fix the subject in your mind, whereas books (unless you find good ones)

can help you, yes, but you have to know how to read them.

And just to complete the example, if you have a doubt, the book won't tell you, while the teacher will.

Thanks Raffaele, if you are self-taught how do you know what it would be like with a Teacher?

Curiosity and not provocation

Even though I don't have experience, I think Raffaele is right; however, the real question is: can I do it in a lifetime? Given the amount of music to know and study before being able to express oneself FREELY as a composer?

raffaeleb wrote:

I am self-taught.

If you want, you can succeed on your own.

The point of the matter is time.

If you are in front of a teacher, you learn in a minute;

if you want to learn by yourself studying books, it takes a bit more time, perhaps even months.

Often the teacher gives you examples that immediately fix the subject in your mind, whereas books (unless you find good ones)

can help you, yes, but you have to know how to read them.

And just to complete the example, if you have a doubt, the book won't tell you, while the teacher will.

I also grew up self-taught and, only for a few months, I have had a teacher. Raffaele has fully hit the mark on this issue, in my opinion. It is possible to do it alone, and with much time and effort, but in that way one can acquire enormous gaps. I'll add a small anecdote: at three years and two months old, I read my first word (a shop sign); nobody taught me how to read or write words, I was simply consumed by curiosity, and my "self-taught" ability (at an age much earlier than average) caused amazement; but knowing how to write is a different thing from knowing how to read a shop sign...! Do you see what I mean? I mean that one does not reach the point of being able to express oneself freely with a language (provided that music is a language, but let's be clear...) through natural talent and self-sufficient study alone; one needs the reference of someone external to rely on, whose judgment and teaching one can trust, otherwise one truly risks building a world apart, with its own rules, that is entirely self-referential.

Reply to Gennarino

Since I have been on this forum (about a year or two), I have learned much faster than in years of being self-taught.

In particular, thanks to Frank, I learned some things that even though I had studied them, they wouldn't stick in my head; and yet, even from a distance and without physical presence, and above all thanks to Frank's kindness, I learned some things that I would not have learned alone and which, above all, allowed me to take a huge leap forward. Anyway, one can choose to stay in one's own bubble of pride and go without a teacher, but believe me... humility is the key that has allowed me to enter into many lines of reasoning and learn. Clearly, I do not have much liquidity to allow me to access masters, but I know that if I did, I would not hesitate to go there.

You are very kind Raffaele, but I only gave you 2 tips via email

Gennarino, I agree with Gerardo in the sense that if you had been born in the 1300s, you would have looked at a couple of clauses, if you were at the forefront of a bit of counterpoint and you were done.

Perhaps you have no idea of the things one should know; then, if a little harmony and the C major scale are enough for you... then it's a different story, although we would still have to see

I am not saying that you must necessarily have a teacher, I am saying that it is a nice convenience and above all it depends on what we aim for in relation to the time we have at our disposal.

Be that as it may, you must have the ideas yourself and no one can give them to you... in fact, you might even be disappointed if, by going to lessons, you expected more than anticipated.

Ok, I think I understand... it's not just a matter of pride, Raffaele. I always find myself unable to find the right teacher and, responding to Gerardo, are we no longer free in the absence of filters?

Two tips that turned out to be very useful for me.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's

As a pianist, I studied harmony biennially and realized that such a study is very, very difficult to do without a teacher; I don't say impossible, because with willpower anything can be done; let alone the entire composition course... One commits errors at the beginning that an aspiring composer hardly recognizes, which is why the intervention of a teacher is necessary, not so much for the study of rules, but for the correction of errors and for advice on how to avoid them without upsetting an original idea. After all, even W. A. Mozart had Leopold's teachings at his disposal. Anna Marie Mozart (Nannerl), W. A.'s sister, who was always overshadowed by her brother's genius, had excellent musical ideas that were not, at least in the early years, supported by a knowledge of the rules of counterpoint and composition more generally. Nannerl, in fact, often tried to spy on the composition course lessons that her father Leopold gave to her little brother W. A.

This is to say that even Mozart's genius was supported by the teaching of a Master, his father, who gave the world two children who were authentic musical geniuses, but being born a woman at that time was very limiting... A woman could not play organ and violin, she was not given the opportunity to understand the rules of composition and despite Anna Marie being a great clavichordist, she is not talked about much because of her brother's prodigy which overshadowed her.

TheSimon wrote:

Besides, W. A. Mozart also had Leopold's teachings at his disposal. Anna Marie Mozart (Nannerl), W. A.'s sister, who was always overshadowed by her brother's genius, had excellent musical ideas that were not, however, supported—at least in the early years—by a knowledge of the rules of counterpoint and composition more generally. In fact, Nannerl often tried to spy on the composition course lessons that their father Leopold gave to little brother W. A.

This is to say that even Mozart's genius was supported by the teaching of a Master, his father, who gave the world two children who were authentic musical geniuses, but being born a woman at that time was very limiting... A woman could not play organ and violin; she was not given the opportunity to understand the rules of composition, and although Anna Marie was a great harpsichordist, she is not spoken of much because of her brother's prodigy which overshadowed her.

... let's not forget Father Martini, eh!

Gennarino wrote:

Ok, I think I understand... it's not just a matter of Raffaele's pride. I always have time to not find the right master and, responding to Gerardo, are we no longer free in the absence of filters?

Regarding the discussion about filters, it depends on how the master carries themselves, and then there are forms of freedom that are actually slavery... even if it seems to us that we are free.

Consa, what do you mean by being free?

Natan wrote:

 

 

... let's not forget Father Martini, eh!

 

But of course, the great Giovanni Battista Martini !!

Nannerl, I read a book about Mozart in 1996, quite a spectacle, and I remember well that the sister was only "spoken of" regarding Mozart's early childhood years.

Recently, I have read a book on Schumann for the 4th/5th time, and speaking of women, one cannot help but speak of Clara Wieck; from the testimonies that have reached us, she seems perhaps the greatest pianist of the 1800s, superior (as a pianist) to Liszt, as some said, and the gesture of leaving the piano to Robert, in order to be able to compose with complete freedom, cannot but be understood as a gesture that goes beyond the love she may have felt for her husband; and she too was a composer, and personally (I have only listened to 1 out of many that she wrote) from the little I have been able to listen to, she wrote lied that are no less than many other composers'.

Natan wrote:

What do you mean by being free?

Following my instinct and following what my taste is... could that be enough?

One can also study composition as a self-taught person, but if you aren't Wagner, it takes a lot of time.

The best thing would be to start from an intermediate level of study and go from there, which is more or less what I did, having been forced to quit three-quarters of the way through ...

the same applies to orchestration.

Then, as Frank rightly says ... you need to have music in your head to write, otherwise there's no helping it.

Gennarino wrote:

Following my instinct and following what my taste is... could that be enough?

And how was your taste formed?

This discussion seems very interesting to me, also because I feel personally called into question... I won't bore you with my biography (!), I will only tell you that since I was a boy I began writing music, and for a long time I did so in a completely "instinctive" way, meaning somewhat by imitating the style of the piano pieces I was studying. Many years ago, I also attended a year of harmony (consonant only), but I do not have a good memory of it, partly because my relationship with the teacher was not exactly idyllic (he is a musician who is quite talented and well-prepared, but in my opinion too obsessed with rules). Then I decided to leave professional music studies to dedicate myself to something else (who knows, perhaps it was a grave mistake!), but in the following years I continued to compose, always basing it on known music (not just piano music), and simultaneously losing (unfortunately) my piano technique, which was already not impeccable. Only in recent years (by now... at a certain age!), I got tired of being ignorant and decided to look for a composition teacher to start studying more seriously. In these years, I have had the opportunity not only to do some harmony work that I had never known before, but also to experiment with chorales, orchestrations, piano romances similar to the old 4th-year exam, chorales, etc., and recently I have also started working on counterpoint. With this teacher, things are going very differently, not only because of his impressive ability to immerse himself with extreme ease into any style, but also because of his more relative view of the rules. To put it better: it is clear that the rules exist, but always "relative to a style". There is no such thing as an absolute error; there is only something that is "out of style". Therefore, for example, when harmonizing a chorale in the manner of Bach, it is appropriate to respect certain rules simply because that is how one obtains a result comparable to what Bach did, so it is right not to do something "because he wouldn't have done it". But the rules are not immutable; what seemed "forbidden" in a certain era was perfectly legitimate before or after, as happens in every evolving language.

Now, returning to the initial question (can one do everything alone?), I would answer "yes and no". If I could go back, I wouldn't wait so many years to start studying seriously, because effectively certain things can only be understood with a guide. For example, in many pieces written "in my youth," I faced the problem of finding a nice melody and then the right "chord progression" to harmonize it, somewhat like one does with songs; the harmonization was almost always for fundamental states, and only occasionally did I use inversions, often in a somewhat "strange" way, at least relative to the rules I WOULD LATER discover. Now I can say that I use certain resources of harmony more consciously. Therefore, from this point of view, a course of study has its utility. However, I would also like to speak in defense of "self-teaching": I am convinced that a composition diploma does not make a composer, just as knowledge of painting techniques does not make a painter. There must be a "natural instinct" in the search for melody and the development of forms—a natural instinct that is obviously better if it rests on good technique rather than fragile legs, but it cannot be absent. But there is a point from which, in my opinion, one cannot deviate: just as one cannot be a painter or a sculptor without knowing what others have done since antiquity, and just as one cannot be a writer while ignoring Manzoni or Balzac, it does not seem possible to me to compose without knowing much music, from various eras and for different instrumental groups. I don't mean only at a "technical" level, but precisely for the pleasure of listening, like someone immersing themselves in listening to a language to assimilate it and make it truly "their own". In conclusion, a teacher is needed, a clearly understood and assimilated technique is needed, but if one does not know music and it does not spring "from the heart," all the basses or chorales, the counterpoint or orchestration exercises that can be done in years of study do not "truly" teach art.

Forgive me for the long rambling. Greetings to you all.

Gino (Rome)

I don't know how to thank you... on one hand you reassure me, on the other hand perhaps I am a little more frightened.

Time will tell

Hello, I can improvise on my piano; I can jump from a C to an A flat, to an E flat, but I cannot compose what I would like. I can do many varied harmonic exercises, I write quite a bit of music, and little by little I am making progress.

But something is missing, perhaps composing while playing and maintaining the same chord. One must use nearby notes, modulate from time to time, and practice in this way.

I accept advice.

Giovanni Ciampi

Livorno