Hummm.Well, I hope we all agree composing can be learnt, but can it be taught?

While I think one has to have an aptitude,it needs nurturing and training.There are examples of composers who had a good basic talent but never realised their full potential,and I wonder if this is because they didn't get the  right guidance.

Composers  are like painters and unlike poets and novelists in that they usually sit under the wing of an earlier artist forafew years at forts. It needn't be someone they know personally  or have lessins from;one thinks of Elgar and Dvorak,whose influence on Elgar's music in the 1890s was enormous.

Buy some composers definitely did teach specific things  to specific younger composers: Holst and Rubbra, Parry and Vaughan Williams .

The again,maybe the right teacher and the right composer come together sometimes,and  other composers never meet the person who would have been the right teacher for them. . 

I'm rather inclined to think that the situation may be somewhat analogous to that enshrined in Ravel's oft-quoted remark to Stravinsky that some composers compose at the piano whereas other compose away from the piano, in that some composers' best route to creative salvation is auto-didacticism whereas that of others is receiving formal tuition. I realise, of course, that this is a rather hopelessly black-and-white conclusion in itself, for all composers spend - and indeed have to spend - at least some time in figuring things out for themselves and, were none of them to do this, everyone's music might risk ending up sounding more or less alike. It's a matter of proportion. Elgar and Schönberg are indeed major examples of composers the route for whose voyages of discovery largely by-passes the classroom, but in order to appreciate that for what it is, one should not assume that this is the "best" way - rather that it was the "best" way for Elgar and Schönberg.

Again, in my own case, I am very conscious of what "smittims" alludes to in that all-important distinction between what can be taught and what can be learnt. Just as there are probably quite a few pianists who learnt from Shura Cherkassky over the years despite Cherkassky's claim never to have given a formal lesson in his life, I cannot say that Humphrey Searle really "taught" me this and that but I would be doing both of us a gross disservice were I not to admit that I learnt a great deal by attending "lessons" with him on a weekly basis - one reason for this is that he listened (with unending patience!) to what I was trying to do and seemed to have an unerring instinct for introducing me to just the right music (by others) that I didn't previously know at just the right time.

I would say, therefore that, although I attended "composition lessons" at a conservatoire, I figured out most of it for myself before, during and after that time (and, like the rest of us, am still doing so, of course!); in fact, to return to Cherkassky, when asked why he'd never taught, he answered that it was because he was still learning how to do it himself...

Best,

Alistair

My experience of being 'taught' composition suggests that it depends on what you mean by 'taught'.
Feldman talks about advising a composition student to find the right pencil, or the right chair - practical questions about being a composer.
Sometimes, these are the most important things that you can teach a student (I suppose that this includes orchestration).
Other times, you can teach them something about composition that doesn't necessarily have to do with composing (how other composers compose) that could prove useful and fruitful for them at a later stage.
Christopher Fox spent most of our sessions teasing questions out of me - getting me to question what I was doing (teaching me to teach myself? - surely one of the ultimate transferable skills!)
I suppose that the best that a teacher can do at the one-to-one stage is to look at the music that the student brings and get them to talk about it - 'why did you do this?' etc. If they're not ready to answer questions like that, perhaps it's time to focus on technique - simple exercises that can help focus what they actually want to say. If they don't want to say anything, they're probably barking up the wrong tree and this can be diagnosed here.
This is probably a lot of rambling nonsense, but I think that it's important with composition to find out where the student is coming from and to help them get where they want (or should) be. It's not to do with a fixed curriculum and jumping through specific hoops. You help the student along the path that you yourself are discovering and in the process of this navigation you discover yourselves and each other?

This is something I do wonder about in connection with certain assumptions that underlie some university composition teaching. Isn't it possible that a composer, young or old, might be doing something important, but not necessarily able to verbalise it - or perhaps even what they are doing doesn't lend itself to verbalisation. When composition PhDs require extensive write-ups of all the hows and whys to accompany one's portfolio (so as to make composition qualify as 'research') I wonder whether many composers from the past would necessarily have been able to this in such a manner?

Couple of points there, Ian: not all universities require those write-ups. And when they do, they don't need to be about the hows and whys (god, not the 'hows', please!) - they can be much more broadly contextual. So, at least for the moment, composition per se is still regarded as research for the purposes of grant income...

Sure (not meaning to criticise the system particularly - something has to be done to keep those great funders in the sky happy) - rather interested in what sorts of broadly contextual things are generally deemed appropriate? Could someone write in general about what motivates them to compose, how they see the role of the composer, that sort of thing?

My PhD write-up was concerned with the wider themes of my portfolio rather than a note by note justification for the workings of my ideas. We include the commentary under pressure from the university, but the department seems to be at pains to stress that it has to complement the portfolio, not justify it. The difficulty comes of course when you have a student who is gifted at composition but can't string a sentence together. Not sure how they would deal with that.

To clarify what I meant when I was talking about 'what a student wants to say' I was including non-verbal things in that as well. Helping students discover what they are trying to do is one of the most frustrating and rewarding things that I've been involved with over the last three years. Hope that this clarifies.
Yes. I agree with this, but it gets rather more tricky when you're dealing with larger classes. We don't have the teaching hours here to have one-to-one composition lessons before the third year (and then they're often two-to-one) and I think that it's generally agreed by the academic staff that something is needed before that stage, to steer and to sift.