20th C Scandal: Performing but Not Composing?

Thanks to a teaching friend* on Google+, I was alerted to a short article by Stephen Hough called Can You Be a Musician and Not Write Music? which talked about how the 19th century public would have viewed musicians who performed, but didn’t compose.  I’m not alerting you to this to make you add “compose major work” to your New Years resolutions, but I did think his observations were quite interesting.

Should All Piano Performers Compose?

Writes Stephen Hough:

I have often written about and spoken about the issue of pianist-composers, pointing out that until the 2nd World War it was virtually unheard of for someone only to play the piano and not to write music as well. To arrive in a town to play only someone else’s compositions in the 19th century would have provoked a raised and not entirely approving eyebrow. Every great instrumentalist was not a great composer, but each one wrote music, published music, performed their own music. Learning how to compose musical notes is no more difficult than learning how to write words – it is a technique.

The article gives one excellent point about the benefits of helping our students compose music with which I wholeheartedly agree.  Stephen says,

I do think that music students should be required to write music. We look at other composers’ notes on the page in a different way when we have struggled to write our own. If we have spent time debating where exactly to place a certain dynamic marking or how to space a chord I think we will look at those same issues in the music we play by others in a different, in a more intelligent way.

The article mentioned that Hough would have a follow up post, but I can’t seem to find it even looking now several years later. Let me know if you do.

What do you think? Should students learn to compose even just a little bit? What difference do you think this might make in their education and their ability to play?

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*Thanks LaDona Ahenda!
*photo by rockmixer

1 thought on “20th C Scandal: Performing but Not Composing?”

  1. I keep track of Stephen Hough via Twitter. He writes very interesting and thought provoking articles. I cannot imagine my teaching career without all the writing and composing/arranging that I’ve done. It probably has been the greatest influence on my teaching. I’m always teaching with an eye to the compositional features of the pieces I teach; whether it be a Bach composition or a simple piece out of a method book.

    Another related point. I was given an old 8th grade exam of the late 19th century. The music questions were highly challenging; even broaching questions on form and analysis. These questions were not for music students but question for the general education of ALL students.

    What Stephen Hough proposes is nothing less than taking the bull by the horns and asking teachers to continue bring great depth to the comprehensiveness of our music tradition to our students. It was seen not only in professional musicians of past generations; it was also part of general education in American schools.

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