Professor Richard McGregor is Professor of Music within the Faculty of Education at the University of Cumbria. His research interests include composition and the application of composition in the classroom. Richard is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and of the Society of Antiquaries (Scotland).

Sounding Off:

Order versus Chaos: technique versus freedom of expression

“If you write a waltz just like this you’ll get good marks at GCSE”,

What are we doing here??

I was brought up on a musical diet of chord progressions (I, IV, V etc etc) and pastiche writing in the style of J.S. Bach which led to University harmony and counterpoint work using, inter alia, Bach Fugues and Palestrina 5 part motets (in original clefs). That taught me about manipulating notes and harmonies but it was stylistic pastiche – all of it. It didn’t teach me to write my own music. I did that myself by initially modelling Bartók, Shostakovitch and Prokofiev. And yes, that was stylistic pastiche too, without the tramlines (i.e. given melody or given bass).

Pastiche in the style of Bach etc. certainly gave me an understanding of HOW to work with pitches in an harmonic context, but, on the other hand, selecting my own models allowed me to work within a stylistic framework which I chose and which satisfied ME for a time. It wasn’t long before I moved on to late Romantic and from there to atonality and serialism. Now that suited me to move in that direction then but it was my choice, just as the choice to leave serialism behind and try to establish my own identity in an extended tonal framework later was also my decision.

This short ‘blog’ was really kicked off by working, in a research skills context, with PGCE Secondary Music students on the article by Rebecca Berkley ‘Why is teaching composing so challenging’ (British Journal of Music Education 2001 18:2, 119 -138). At the risk of doing a great injustice to the content of her article, one of her observations, perhaps not conclusions, was that composition appeared to be most successfully taught by composers (2/11 in the schools visited). This was possibly an ‘accident’ of the schools used for the research but it does raise some rather interesting questions.

A composer only really finds his or her own ‘voice’ by exploration. By that I mean finding out in what way manipulating notes on the page gives them the greatest satisfaction – to be rather simplistic about it. Lucy Green’s latest work Music, Informal Learning and the School (Ashgate 2008) is really all about this process of exploration and self development. But, let’s face it, schools are geared up to process learning leading to examinations, and in examinations it is really rather hard to be experimental and informal. Wasn’t GCSE meant to promote exactly that – all those years ago I thought the move away from GCE and CSE was designed to allow more freedom of expression and development of self through, for example, directed research. No, I must be wrong – it was about getting high grades wasn’t it?? “If you write a waltz in this way you’ll get high marks”.

Isn’t it time we looked at this again? Creativity in music comes from wanting to experiment and the more technical understanding you have the more you have to experiment with. I just wonder if a junior John Cage came along and presented for GCSE composing whether the system would allow that kind of creativity or would it just be dismissed as juvenile tinkering, not very good, and certainly not deserving high marks. (Maybe the examination board wouldn’t give mature Cage high marks either??).

Is it not possible then to find a way of promoting the acquisition of technical skills and encourage free expression? I imagine that now, in 2008, as distinct from when I was being educated, a pupil would want to experiment with contemporary (often ‘popular’) styles maybe even to look for a way of fusing styles together. At the same time they also need increasing technical skills, vocabulary and understanding. But year 10 is far too late to start this process!

The acquisition of technical knowledge in the subject can be initiated early in a child’s development. I know this is an area on fundamental disagreement with some of my colleagues but I believe that children in Primary school can be taught to read music. The Hungarians manage to start at the age of 6 with simple games and interactive work. What is the problem with this? Somehow it seems to be assumed that teaching notation stifles creativity. That’s just not true. It’s only true if all you EVER do is work from notation, and staff notation at that. Yes I do believe in staff notation but, also, there are many ‘notations’: the function of notation is to convey ideas so that someone else can reinterpret your ideas. Surely it’s not difficult to have such learning going on one level and to balance it with opportunities for children to develop free expression through composing activities designed to promote exploration, play, and fun. Oh sorry, I forgot primary school is about learning not about experiment and certainly not about fun (how many times is the word used in OFSTED reports??).

When very small children go to the nearest piano and start to experiment with the sounds they produce how many parents/adults drag them away saying ‘don’t make such a noise’. We keep doing that all the way up to GCSE and beyond – only the language and the control processes are just that much more subtle.

It’s time to rethink. Creating music is about balancing order with chaos, technique with experiment, learning with playing (not to mention learning through playing – and I use the word deliberately ambiguously). Unless we address this issue now from the earliest years onwards (and certainly NOT just at Year 10) then 30 years from now people are still going to be asking the question ‘Why is teaching composing so challenging’ and the answer is not simply as Berkley begins ‘because composing is challenging’.

In short I believe it is time to revisit the way in which we develop the technical elements in school – including notation, but I also think it’s time we re-evaluated how to promote experiment in music, and crucially, the way in which the two areas – my ‘order’ and ‘chaos’ interact with each other.

richard.mcgregor@cumbria.ac.uk
01524 384234