PALATINE
Presentation by Adam
Moore
25/01/2010
Huddersfield
University
Hi, IÕm Adam Moore; IÕm a professional teacher in an FE
College in Norfolk where HE is also delivered, IÕm a semi-professional musician
and sound engineer and a part-time academic.
In order to give myself a thread
that will keep me in line with the aims of this group I have chosen to talk
about my research in the context of responses to three of the questions posed
in the PALATINE literature;
Today, IÕll recount some of what students have said in my
pilot study interviews, as this is perhaps the newest material for this
audience.
My position, very generally, is
that I think creating new music is a wonderful thing and that it is worth
pursuing as an end in itself. I think that teaching composition is very
worthwhile, although my concern is that composition teaching, or at least my composition teaching, doesnÕt get across musical creativity to students as readily and
powerfully as I want it to. I see a divide between being able to manipulate
materials at a surface level, even with great dexterity and complexity, and
becoming effective in music at a deeper level where one connects the process of
manipulating musical materials to oneÕs own world and existence. As a teacher I
find it difficult to communicate getting across that divide
to students who, it seems to me, do not already fundamentally understand it or
have made the leap already. This is partly because I think it is difficult to
put that difference into words.
This is what draws me to the study
of composition teaching. I am at a fairly early stage in my PhD research
looking at student experiences of studying composition and, for now, this has
been narrowed down to studentsÕ experience of doing summative assignments. By
Ôdoing assignmentsÕ I mean what they think they are being asked to do and why,
what they think they are learning in doing it, what they think they can
reasonably be assessed on, what help they want, whether they ultimately judge
their work on the same criteria as the tutor and whether they separate their own
artistic and creative personality from their work as composition students. I
think the path to understanding my concerns with composition teaching is rooted
in these questions.
IÕve completed the proposal;
literature review and pilot study and am currently in the process of redrafting
the proposal based on what IÕve got so far. I have asked a small number of
students from my own college about their experience of doing their summative
assignments. Those students were, at the time, on the second year of a
foundation degree in popular music and taking a compulsory semester-long module
called Advanced Composition and Arranging.
These students are from a non-classical background. I asked them some general
questions about the composing experiences that had brought them as far as this
composition module, what they had made so far and in what settings it had been
presented, whether they saw themselves as composers and so forth, and then
asked them some more specific questions about a piece they were working on for
the summative assessment in this module.
I asked my students what they
thought of their pieces in progress and how they judged the quality. TheyÕd
been working on one piece which was a response to an image, and the other was a
piece based on three criteria – a time signature, a key and a subject
matter – they werenÕt being taught by me. One said of his image-based
piece:
ML: I like it, if
I can please myself thatÕs a good thing. I guess thatÕs all I really attempt to
do with anything, Õcause if you canÕt make yourself happy then youÕre not going
to make anyone else happyÉI suppose.
Significantly, this student was home schooled until 16.
Whilst another one said of his three criteria piece:
RR: Does it fit
the bill? Éthe brief wasnÕt Ôwrite a piece of music that you like and judge it
on your own opinionÕ it was Ôwrite a piece of music that fits these
boundariesÕÉso we did.
Whilst the second response seems ultimately more
businesslike and useful, I donÕt know which of the two is actually more real or
right as a response to the direction to compose. Maybe we can say that the
second student is more likely to be on the right lines in composing to a brief.
But, in H.E. I would hope that playing in Bm, 3/4 and writing about death or
whatever isnÕt where the quality of the composition exists. So where is it?
******
Provided students can be taught to understand composition as
a broad practice and not a very particular classical skill then is very
powerful to unlocking or unfixing studentsÕ notions of musical rules, laws and
possibilities. Sometimes the word composition can be a problem here as for many
it can still mean classical or orchestral writing.
MLV: Well,
composer you kind of, you think more classical when you hear ÔcomposerÕ rather
than songwriter. And I suppose if I wasÉand ÔcompositionÕ, I suppose, is
something that we do at college and as a songwriter I donÕt think I call myself
a composer very often.
MLV: I think itÕs
just the way IÕve compartmentalised things – that itÕs more classical.
And if I was to perhaps write something for choir I would have composed it
rather than if I write a song for the band then IÕm a songwriter.
Different titles seem to give different people different
freedoms or encourage certain restrictions; ultimately, however, reaching that
real and free capacity to compose makes people effective in music. It means
that they can change it rather than be governed by it.
There is, of course, a further
issue in that one can still be a brilliant composer without training, even more
so if we make sure we include songwriter
in this definition. I know IÕve stood in front of classes and can pick out
students whose music I consider to be great or better than mine. Yet, here am I about to teach them somethingÉand
always at the back of my mind is a little voice saying Ôif you explain what you
know you might make them worseÕ, or hamper their seemingly free creative
capacity by loading them with concerns they didnÕt otherwise have. If we
suppose, as I have done, that teaching to compose is leading people to some
sort of freedom, then that freedom may already be in place through dint of
upbringing, experience, fluke of some kind, who knowsÉ
Structure –
this area seems to be of great significance to us all as composers. Also, it is
often one of the few specific aspects of music listed in grading criteria.
However, describing clearly why it is important is not easy. Further,
identifying whatÕs good or appropriate in a musical structure without referring
to those same words - good and appropriate - is very challenging. If we accept
partly political notions of structure in which musical elements are seen as
maybe representative of aspects of social structures we might
have an easier time. However, if we settle on more absolute and non-referential
notions of music and its structure then communicating to students what makes a
good one is difficult, at least for me.
As it stands, I feel confident in
saying that a structure has Ôtoo muchÕ of one element or Ôtoo littleÕ of
another, or that some element should appear ÔsoonerÕ or ÔlaterÕ. Certainly, it
is not an exact science, but in many respects feels like it is the most
significant aspect of composition – as its continual appearance on module
specification, grading criteria and so forth would support.
Written justifications of
compositional choices - many composition modules or classes include some
form of written submission along with the music itself. Even in making students
aware of different aspects of composing, including structure, it does not
necessarily follow that students can say a great deal about their choices, or should be able to say same.
MLV: I kind of
cheated really because some of it pulse wise, the pianoÕs very sort of lazy and
not quite there and I sort of made out that I did that on purpose, but I wasnÕt
really sure how that happened, so I sort of weaved that into my write up,
Certain types of material lend themselves better to
assessment than others. Often students' description of their work and their
thought processes, genuine or otherwise, are easier to latch onto that the
pieces of music themselves. In asking what aspect of composition can we teach
we are likely to find ourselves thinking in part about what aspects can be
assessed. In some respects my student
was doing her tutor a favour in suggesting she had a plan for this bit of piano
playing because the tutor can use it as justification in their assessment.
Ultimately, verbal justifications
of creative processes are problematic and I think are always going to be
missing something significant that the composer doesnÕt see in themselves and
what they are doing. More importantly, for me, however, is the idea that when
we ask students to justify or explain their compositional processes we push
composition towards a form that favours processes that can be explained and
justified. This is a linguistic conception of a non-linguistic phenomenon. In
so doing we perhaps marginalize notions such as Ô I just like itÕ even though
these might be the kinds of response that, although not articulated with any
depth as would suit an academic or pedagogical setting, are in fact the answers
that most accurately reflect in words the rightness of composition or whatever it is that is good for us
in composing.
ML: I like it.
Yes, I mean IÕveÉstuff I like I tend not to really care how cheesy or whatever
it is. I donÕt care if it had five different time signatures and that many bars
or if its straight 4/4 – A, E, D, you knowÉ
Maybe this studentÕs response to his own work is more real
and more valuable than something with more detail and weight and the l like
it phrase is the be all and end
all of the debate? However, some students
accept more readily that the completion of a composition assignment is an end
in itself and that so doing will lead to composition learning in some
unspecified way. Here the student puts trust in the tutor to construct
assignments that result is developments in composing ability. I must confess to
being less confident in connecting specific instances to learning to specific
composition procedures than maybe some other people are. Rather I am able to
say that if I set a composing task it will hopefully generate some
new thought in a fairly broad field, say
structure, melody, types of creative stimulus, chance and so forth. This said,
some of my students seem comfortable being assessed on very restricted aspects
of composition. Quite rightly, they feel they know where they stand with a
clear and restricted assignment brief.
RR: Éagain that
has to come back to the academic boundaries that were set for us. All I hope to
communicate is an ability to work within the boundaries of composition, the
compositional boundaries that we were set. I donÕt hope to communicate anything
to do with my viewsÉ
Perhaps, assessment necessarily has to be much more
restricted than tuition and summative assessment in music composition is not as
clear cut as an exam or essay that demonstrates that the student has taken on
board the entirety of the course. In this sense it is not reasonable to
construe from restricted, probably craft-focused assignments, that a student
has grasped the full extent of composition teaching in something as limited as
a single semesterÕs module for example.
Perhaps whatever it is I am talking
about here is the same thing as Ôpersonal development of an artistÕÉ
As a tutor assessing work I find it easy to end up
discussing only the craft of the composition and attendant skills such as the
clarity of recording or performance. It is much easier to say these vocals
are well recorded than pass a valid judgement
on the lyrical content.