Does anyone have any experience of ways to begin composing, I mean either with a teacher one-to-one or at a class. I'm in London and I've found a few college courses (pre-degree) at Morley College and Goldsmith's University but typically I am too late to join these.

I know that the obvious way is to just..er...start, on my instrument (piano grade 8-ish) but wondered if there are any good books etc that might be good to study.

I took the extra-mural Certificate in Harmony and Counterpoint at Morley College about ten years ago and it was excellent, very focussed and directed at practical stylistic composition skills and learning from the masters. You mostly study Bach, Mozart and Schubert; there is some content in avant-garde work and in orchestration too. This is the one that gets you out of a certain paper in the London University music degree syllabus, I think (there's also a History of Music course along the same lines). There was also a composition workshop at Morley which wasn't so useful because all you do is write stuff then sit around and discuss it. I would think you could join in mid-year.

Can you get their reading list if you don't join the course? There was a very good book called The Dynamics of Harmony by a bloke from Keele University; can't remember his name just now.

QUOTE (claire_c @ Oct 29 2004, 01:14 PM)

Does anyone have any experience of ways to begin composing, I mean either with a teacher one-to-one or at a class.  I'm in London and I've found a few college courses (pre-degree) at Morley College and Goldsmith's University but typically I am too late to join these.   I know that the obvious way is to just..er...start, on my instrument (piano grade 8-ish) but wondered if there are any good books etc that might be good to study.

I guess answers may differ somewhat depending on whether you know what sort of music you want to write. After considerable study of composition, I have decided that I am likely to remain close to what I was before I started doing so: a composer of rather old-fashioned music mostly for small groups of my friends. I started composing 38 years ago, after a lot of amateur and semi-pro performance on various instruments. By the time I started studying music at a university, ten years ago, I had produced only three works that I think are worth keeping, partly because I was earning my living outside music, and partly because I was very slow. I took a BA in music, specialising in composition and analysis, part-time over four years, and since then have been continuing studying composition at post-graduate level. The BA has probably been a greater influence on how I compose, though the post-graduate work has resulted in compositions of a larger scale than I had completed previously. The valuable parts of the BA were "Composition within a style", which was pastiche Haydn and Mendelssohn, "20th century compositional techniques", which was things like total serialism and minimalism as exploited by Stravinsky, and "Free composition", and one of the things that was valuable about them was having to produce an exercise in a particular style to a deadline, usually two weeks, but occasionally only one. Orchestration and instrumentation came largely as a by-product of these modules, since our lecturers were mostly experienced composers who would correct any serious mistakes, like instrumental range, and comment on dubious combinations that might result in balance difficulties.

The result of this study, as far as I can see, is that I now compose from 10 to 30 times quicker than I did before, am somewhat more courageous about using dissonances, and rarely have to consult "Instrumentation and Orchestration" for the ranges of instruments, but still write pretty much in the same style as I did before.

I think it's a good idea to start with instruments that you know and with ensembles that are available among your friends and fellow students, so that you can hear at least a play-through, preferably a prepared performance of what you write.

What are your compositional ambitions? Many young composers of today continue to come through traditional conservatoire training rather than a university degree, and I suspect one of the reasons was that they are surrounded there by very good instrumentalists, some of whom are happy to play their compositions. If you aim to become internationally famous, that is probably the best course. Some universities, e.g. Cambridge, can offer almost as good a performance environment: e.g. George Benjamin's "Ringed by the Flat Horizon", which he wrote at the age of 19, got its first performance from the C.U. Musical Society orchestra, although it only came to general attention when it was performed at the Proms, a year or two later.

Books on my music room shelves include:

Hindemith: "The Craft of Musical Composition";
Schoenberg: "Fundamentals of Musical Composition";
Schoenberg: "Structural Functions of Harmony".
Walter Piston: "Harmony".

I don't think I have read any of these from cover to cover, but I have got something from each.

Thank you both for your considered replies, I shall have a look at some of these books. I'm thinking that really the thing to do is a music degree and would be interested to know where you did yours part-time chateauferret. I already have one degree so part-time would probably be the route for me.

QUOTE (claire_c @ Oct 31 2004, 05:17 PM)

Thank you both for your considered replies, I shall have a look at some of these books.  I'm thinking that really the thing to do is a music degree and would be interested to know where you did yours part-time chateauferret.  I already have one degree so part-time would probably be the route for me.

I came across an article, called "How to Compose", with lots of good sense in it:

http://rightnowmusic.com/catalog/articles....b4120d8b483e5ae