Text: Markku Klami
Serving in elected posts in the field of music and working as a teacher have been significant for my professional composer profile. I have taught composition in basic education in the arts since 2001, both individually and in groups, and I have also taught subjects in the structural awareness of music broadly, from sight-reading through music theory, music history and music analysis to philosophy of music. At universities, I have given lectures, instructed teacher students and provided training for various parties particularly in basic composition teaching. In my capacity for instance as a member of the Boards of the Society of Finnish Composers and the Finnish Music Council, I have widely explored the field of music at home and abroad in the professional, education and amateur domains.
My view is that a young composer should not only study composition but also acquire a broad general education and competence in a great variety of fields. Indeed, most young composers today seem to be doing just that. In today’s (and probably tomorrow’s) fragmented working life, multiple competencies open up exciting and inspiring opportunities for collaboration and also have the effect of removing people from their social and professional bubbles.
Composing and maturing as a composer is a lifelong journey where solid, substantive competence in the craft of composition is the fundamental enabling factor and basic necessity. Because of this, sufficient time must be made for composing both in an individual’s personal life and in education structures.
Investments in the arts, culture and creative activities foster good things in the long term in ways that we cannot perhaps even imagine. Creativity does not come out of nowhere; it needs to be surrounded with resources and structures that nourish and maintain it, from high-quality amateur pursuits through diverse and comprehensive education to ensuring the operating potential of professionals and facilitating new approaches for them.
My view is that a young composer should not only study composition but also acquire a broad general education and competence in a great variety of fields. Indeed, most young composers today seem to be doing just that
New basics for teaching composition
In recent years, composition and improvisation have attracted in Finland national interest in the curricula of comprehensive school and basic education in the arts. This has brought up a number of questions, one of the most important of which is: who can teach composition? At comprehensive schools and in basic education in the arts, teaching composition mainly involves elementary instruction in composition, while the broader and more systematic composition studies leading to professional qualifications are traditionally found at the level of higher education.
However, preparatory and goal-oriented professional composition studies are quite a good fit in the new curricula of music institutes too and in their evolving operating culture. Students at Finland’s music institutes can now have composition as their main subject instead of an instrument.
Introductory composition education could be feasibly divided into two portions: composition coaching and composition teaching. Composition coaching is suited for group tuition situations and for encouraging students to undertake creative activities and explore their musical inventiveness. Any competent educator in the field of music can provide such tuition.
But as with instrument studies, composition studies gradually progress and require increasingly specific and broad-based competence of the teacher. At this point, it is more feasible to teach students one-on-one, and the best fit for a teacher is a professional composer.
About engagement and student-oriented approach
Teaching situations are always about engagement. Whether in a one-on-one lesson with a student or in a group situation with multiple students, each participant brings their own unique contribution to the table. A classroom situation is not a formulaic, one-way transfer of information from teacher to students; new ideas, information and views are passed back and forth. The ideal teaching situation is a dialogue – an interaction, an exploring of ideas, experimentation and continuous constructive feedback and evaluation through discussion and perhaps through music too.
Although educators may construe composition as a craft akin to instrument skills, goal-oriented and serious study of composition always also requires the acquiring of knowledge. The knowledge needed for composition is gained through advanced courses in music theory, music analysis and music history, for instance.
In my experience, composing is for many young students a highly personal and therefore a highly important, sensitive and also fragile thing. In writing music and in learning how to compose, we often have to immerse ourselves deep in our personal worlds, and unveiling these to a teacher may be a very big and stressful thing indeed. It is therefore vital for a safe and trusting rapport to be established between the student and the composition teacher.
Accordingly, when planning how to teach composition it is important to consider which matters can be feasibly shared and contemplated in a group tuition context and which matters are better and safer addressed in a one-on-one situation. I have repeatedly observed that group classes are effective at the early stages of introductory composition education, as it feels natural to experiment with and share musical ideas in a group.
Nevertheless, despite this community aspect, composing is almost always a solitary pursuit, and as students progress, they increasingly develop the desire and the need to focus on doing their own thing. The further they go and the more personal it gets, the greater the need is to have individual tuition in composition.
Finland’s new national core curriculum in basic education in the arts underlines a student-oriented approach, opportunities for diverse and flexible learning pathways and creative activities such as composition and improvisation. These are all of vital importance for the study and teaching of composition and therefore do not represent a radical departure from a composition teacher’s point of view.
Composition teachers must keep an extremely sensitive ear out at all times, attempting to find the best ways to support and encourage their students. At the same time, they must ensure that they are conveying a wide variety of knowledge and competence. Dead ends are unavoidable; everyone comes up against a wall sooner or later. It is in these difficult situations that teachers’ professionalism is truly tested, as they must have the experience and the vision that enables them to resolve such blockages. (See also the article by Pasi Lyytikäinen)
But as with instrument studies, composition studies gradually progress and require increasingly specific and broad-based competence of the teacher. At this point, it is more feasible to teach students one-on-one, and the best fit for a teacher is a professional composer.
Professional competence and tacit knowledge
Composition students must also be taught comprehensively about the career profile of a composer, including the process of rehearsing and performing compositions and the whole range of cooperation with performing artists and bodies, writing and talking about one’s own music, and promoting one’s work and building up networks (even if the latter typically only becomes relevant at university level and in the early stages of the composer’s professional career).
Slowly acquiring professional and tacit knowledge in this way can be best facilitated by a professional composer in particular, which is why a composer is the best possible composition teacher, particularly for systematic and progressive composition studies.
Introductory composition education through practical examples
The following paragraphs are descriptions of some of the exercises I have devised for the Opus 1 website, discussing possible ways of using them and progressing through them. These exercises are suitable for group tuition contexts such as composition workshops or a composition class, but also in some ways for tuition in structural awareness of music or in instrument workshops.
From movement to improvisation
Music has always been closely associated with movement. Moving with music is a natural activity especially for very young students, and movement is a good impulse to use for fostering ideas for improvisation or composition. In assignment 24 on the Opus 1 website (Small assignment: Movement – sound), I present one way of perceiving and rehearsing the connection between movement and sound. This approach provides tools for an introduction to graphic notation and can also serve as a warmup for more extensive improvisation exercises. It can be used as a one-off warm-up or as a recurring exercise over several lessons.
A good way to start the assignment is to select a leader, which can be one of the students. The leader demonstrates movements, and the others respond with various sounds, whether sung or produced with body percussion or on instruments. The concept of ‘instrument’ can be understood broadly: students’ own instruments, classroom instruments or any objects that can be used to make a sound.
The situation can also be reversed: the leader produces sounds, and the others respond with movements. The leader should be replaced several times in the course of the assignment, so that everyone who is willing can try out the leader role. In group tuition, the assignment can be carried forward by dividing the students up into smaller groups or pairs.
Combining movement and sound improves reaction skills and opens up a host of possibilities for trying out and developing musical ideas, such as contemplating various ways of producing sounds and creating musical gestures. During and after the exercise, you should take time to talk about what thoughts the exercise prompts in the students and what they have noticed about the relationship and interaction between movement and sound. Does everyone react in the same way? Can one movement inspire different kinds of sounds?
Combining movement and sound improves reaction skills and opens up a host of possibilities for trying out and developing musical ideas.
The movement–sound exercise is a suitable warmup for a variety of improvisation assignments. In assignments 14 (Small assignment: Beginning improvisation) and 46 (Improvisation: Stage 2) on the Opus 1 website, I present a number of ways of proceeding with improvisation. The key goal in assignment 14 is to encourage students to improvise, which they have in fact already been doing (perhaps without realising it) in the movement–sound exercise. The purpose of this assignment is to create musical events through improvisation, using one’s own voice and instruments in multiple ways.
This improvisation may be completely free, or the group may agree on topics to govern the improvisation, such as seasons (summer/winter), tempo (fast/slow) or tonal colour (bright/dark). Topics can also be decided in the movement–sound exercise by examining the sounds prompted by movements. An improvisation may be based on one or more topics. With multiple selected topics, the exercise will also involve thinking about opportunities and means for switching from one topic to another in the course of the improvisation, such as agreed signals (raising an arm, giving a thumbs-up, etc.) or specific musical gestures (a brief, clear melodic or rhythmic motif) that instruct the students to shift from the current topic to the next.
Although the musical events in assignment 14 can be separate and non-continuous, even at this early stage there is an opportunity for observing that improvisation actually requires a knowledge of musical elements and in some cases advance planning. Enough time should be allowed for improvisation, and this assignment can easily fill up an entire lesson or be extended over several lessons.
Assignment 46 is about taking the improvisation further, involving the perception, construction and testing of a variety of musical entities. The assignment will then focus on how to combine and alternate diverse musical idea, i.e. exploring the concept of musical form. It is also a good idea to discuss with students beforehand which elements should be left completely up to inspiration in the movement and which parameters should be decided in advance. An extended improvisation may be divided into sections each focusing on a specific musical parameter: given intervals, rhythmic patterns, meters, harmonies, etc.
Through these contemplations, discussions and experiments, the use of improvisation for inventing and developing musical ideas will come to be understood as a tool in the toolkit of a composer. Assignment 46 can easily be continued across several lessons: for instance, the first lesson might be about coming up with a variety of musical ideas in rapid succession, while the second would focus on how these ideas can be combined.
Notes should be made of any interesting sounds or soundscapes created in the course of these assignments for later development and expansion. Making notes of an improvisation is a natural stepping stone in the process of converting sounds to notation.
From improvisation to notation
Although a musical composition is a time-bound sound event, the documentation of a musical work – the music on the page – is a key tool in the composition process and for subsequent performances. The notation does not have to be traditional music notation; it may be a graphic representation, for instance. It is important to have the students discuss what would be the most practical notation method for particular musical gestures, situations or compositions.
In assignment 15 on the Opus 1 website (Small assignment: Graphic notation: introduction), I introduce ways of progressing from the exercise combining movement and sound to ways of notating interesting sound events. This assignment can follow on directly from the movement–sound exercise.
If the students have discovered interesting phenomena and gestures of sound and music in the movement–sound exercise, some time should be spent analysing the features of these elements and structures. What is the sound like – loud, soft, high, low, soft, sharp, thick, thin, etc.? Is the sound or musical gesture static, rising, falling, pointy, stretched (e.g. legato), steady, erratic, etc.? In addition to describing the sounds in words, students may start thinking about how to represent these features graphically.
If a movement–sound exercise has involved, say, a gradually rising pitch, students may be invited to contemplate what would be an intuitive way of representing this phenomenon in a drawing? Perhaps a gradually rising line? How could the line otherwise represent the sound? Would a thin line be appropriate for a single rising tone, and a thick line or several lines for a thicker, cluster-like tone or a combination of several tones (parts)?
What is essential in this assignment is to point out that although traditional musical notation is very flexible and can be applied to the documentation of a wide variety of musical ideas for performers to interpret, there are other ways of representing musical ideas in graphic form. Using graphic notation is a good idea especially if students are not yet very competent in producing traditional musical notation or do not have a clear idea of the specific pitches or rhythms of their musical ideas or of the instruments that may be used to perform them. Graphic notation serves as a sketching tool and a means for progressing with the composition process. The material can be transferred to traditional notation with more precise pitches and rhythms if and when the situation so warrants.
Graphic notation is also a good aid for improvisation exercises. Notes or graphic representations made in improvisation exercises may serve as a sort of map for students, specifying the order in which musical situations are performed and what their key elements are that should remain more or less constant even if the improvisation is quite different each time.
Using graphic notation is a good idea especially if students are not yet very competent in producing traditional musical notation or do not have a clear idea of the specific pitches or rhythms of their musical ideas or of the instruments that may be used to perform them.
Narrative as a means for developing compositions
Whatever the style and the period, music always has a discernible form. I have sometimes noticed in my teaching that students find it challenging to shape their sometimes diverse ideas into a finished composition, a musical form. As I noted above, improvisation can be a way of approaching musical form. Another, very effective way is to consider music as a narrative.
I am convinced that we, as humans, whatever our background, have a natural penchant for hearing stories. Perhaps the ultimate power of stories lies in how they link individuals to a broader community. Through stories, we can find ways to connect with other people, to engage with our community and thereby broaden our world view while reflecting on how we occupy our community and the world beyond. I have found that stories often also provide a fruitful substrate for conceiving and developing musical forms.
In the case of purely absolute music, a narrative is perhaps not the most feasible starting point for musical form. On the other hand, in my experience students, particularly young ones, rarely come up with completely abstract musical ideas. Quite the contrary: there is generally some sort of story underlying them.
Composing to a narrative is a procedure that works well both in group contexts and in individual tuition. The narrative can be worked out with the group as a whole or divided up to be devised by small groups or pairs, and the narrative does not need to be traditionally linear or clear-cut. In this approach, the narrative should be thought of as a mind map that serves as a tool for storing ideas and for further development. Once ideas for the story begin to emerge, musical ideas to reflect them may be explored (improvisation is a good method for this too) and adapted further. Ideas that work and seem interesting can be incorporated into the narrative or drawn on the mind map. Once the overall musical form begins to take shape, the musical elements can be pinned down more precisely in notation.
A narrative can provide a framework for the sequence of events. If the story begins with tranquil, dreamlike music, will there be a more dynamic and contrasting section to follow? Will something be repeated, or does the music constantly go forward? How can we describe ideas that we hear in our head? Although questions like this can seem quite abstract, I have found that an underlying narrative can help students resolve not only how to come up with individual idea but also how to outline the overall shape of the piece according to their wishes. Often the ideas generated with the aid of a narrative evolve into finished compositions.
Composing to a narrative is a procedure that works well both in group contexts and in individual tuition. The narrative can be worked out with the group as a whole or divided up to be devised by small groups or pairs, and the narrative does not need to be traditionally linear or clear-cut.
In conclusion
In my most recent twenty or so years as an educator, I have been gratified to see how creative activities – such as composition in the case of music – has become more widespread and is now available to increasing numbers of young students in Finland. Giving composition and improvisation a prominent role in national core curricula opens up excellent potential for encouraging students at an early age to engage in creative activities and to offer interested students high-quality instruction in the area of musical composition.
Bringing composers into the field of education as composition teachers is a valuable input into high-quality teaching. It has been wonderful to see how the Ääneni äärelle [Finding my voice] project of the Society of Finnish Composers has been taken up by music institutes around Finland. In this project, professional composers who have undergone pedagogical training and orientation have been providing composition tuition and in some cases have also trained instrument teachers and teachers of structural awareness of music at music institutes in how to coach students in composing in group tuition contexts.
Composers are pleased to be involved in improving Finnish music education. This is a trend which fosters further advancements and expansions of creative activities that will benefit students and, in the long term, society at large.
Photos: Markku Klami
