Mozart or Bust?

Ah, music! It’s always been a wonderful social and artistic outlet, and now it’s also been scientifically proven to be a stress reliever. It lets us use our brains in healthy ways, and bolsters creativity and productivity in other areas of our lives. But do we really create?

...Or do we just repeat the same works over and over again? Many of us have been quite involved with music, and have enjoyed a full menu of musical activities. Have you ever taken music lessons, gone to a band or choir rehearsal, or given a play, concert or dance? Often, these are the most fun activities, real high points in our lives.

Why is it that so many of us, including scores of music professionals, never even learned how to make our own music? The mindset of pure imitation is surprisingly pervasive. Entire lives are spent re-creating and reproducing other composers’ works. Some extremely gifted performers never composed or even improvised any music of their own and, unfortunately, can’t benefit from the perspective these activities lend to their interpretive skills. How have we all, including both recreational and professional musicians, arrived at this sorry state? Many answers are found in how musicians are presently trained.

My friend, Marian Dioguardi, tells me visual artists were also once taught primarily to imitate. That emphasis has wisely been abandoned, in favor of more effective approaches. But what if it hadn’t been? Later, I’d like to illustrate these points in a fun way, by taking you on an imaginary journey. We’ll see what would our world look like, if today’s future painters were trained the same way as our aspiring pianists…

Many students quit music lessons. Why? There are many contributing factors, but a large part is sheer stultifying boredom. Often, not a shred of composing, not even improvising of any sort, is included in their studies. All they ever do is reproduce and reinterpret other composers’ pieces. How odd! Surprisingly, even at conservatories in today’s world, countless students of “serious music” are still primarily encouraged only to imitate and narrowly interpret pieces of music other composers throughout history have written. Improvising is usually considered to be the exclusive turf of jazz players, then jazz course material is segregated off into a different department not required for all students (this happens even in America, the birthplace of jazz). We need to take steps to improve this situation, or we’ll continue to miss out on what a truly well-rounded music education has to offer in both its immediate and trickle down effects.

All students, from those who only take a year or two of lessons to music school degree candidates, can benefit from a truly more creative approach to learning. Even in the first year of lessons, adult beginning students are quite capable of improvising and combining musical elements in their own creative ways, all incidentally, without having a past as a child prodigy. (A large percentage didn’t even take lessons as children.) Young students who make their own music don’t have to be among the exceptionally gifted few to benefit. Many piano teachers would agree; it’s not just little Mozarts who enjoy combining musical elements to make fun pieces. Scores of young beginning keyboard students have done exactly that, and many have their own unique fluency. Of course, they don’t possess Mozart’s natural and easy elegance, but that’s not the point. Through this creative work, young students simply understand music better. Many early attempts at making musical pieces are, indeed, quite remarkable in their own right.

Sound odd? Well, this is exactly what happens in many colleges, universities and conservatories offering music degrees, and countless private studios of many otherwise fine teachers who received training in those places. Indisputably, it’s not all bad; a well-rounded music curriculum should include the study of master composers’ works. This very highly valued and fine interpretive skill should in no way be underestimated or underappreciated. Yet we are missing out on a huge educational opportunity.

Composing, as a whole, is not the exclusive domain of a privileged gifted few. But because many world famous composers have produced staggeringly beautiful works of art music, we’ve become overly accustomed to thinking of the activity of composing as their untouchable territory. But it’s not, and we’ve been omitting a terribly important part of music education. Plus, lesser works by lesser composers have always had irreplaceable value in the learning process. And a student composer/pianist/artist has to start somewhere. It’s also great fun!

Music is not rocket science; let’s stop learning and teaching it as though it were. Patterns abound. Let’s learn and start teaching the building blocks, and really become familiar with the ins and outs of it. Exploring composing and improvising, aside from being extremely beneficial from a learning standpoint, has many uniquely entertaining aspects. It’s fun! It adds a whole new dimension to students’ lessons. Fortunately, there are only 12 major triads, not 100! Music is a beneficial, creative art, yet pianists and keyboardists are often primarily encouraged to only read and reproduce notes from a page. We can do much better, by developing a world where they are given the tools to be imaginative and make their own music.