# Is it possible to compose a great work if...



## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

...you have no music training? And can’t play an instrument?

I don’t mean pop or rock music songs, by the way, and I’ll grant you that there are many great works in these fields. I mean, a great, complex, innovative work of classical music...


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

If by "no music training" you simply mean that one is completely self taught, then I would guess it's possible though exceedingly unlikely. If by "no music training" you mean one has not studied music at all, I would say it's impossible.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I suppose it's not impossible, but highly unlikely. A complex, innovative work would presumably mean an orchestra. Composing for an orchestra requires knowledge of each instrument and how to notate the music. Pretty complex stuff.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Yeah, I’m thinking of somebody who has great talent, instinctual understanding of how music works, but no real technical knowledge. I imagine that the more instruments or voices involved, then the task becomes nigh on impossible?

So what’s the main obstacle? Communicating what they hear in their heads to an amanuensis? Or does the problem run much deeper than this?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Could the person compose a simple song as a starting point? A deep instinctual understanding of music does not always translate into the ability to create it, and it can sometimes be a painstaking process to convey it to others. The obsessive, overwhelming desire to compose is also usually a prerequisite or it may not be that person’s destiny.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

A man might build a shack or even a modest house without much training but doubt whether he'd be able to build a suspension bridge or block of flats without architectural training. Similarly with music. Irving Berlin wrote some cracking songs but doubt whether he could have written a symphony.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Could you architect a complex building without having any architecture training? I think the answers to this and your question are the same.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Great, complex, innovative..." Like Mozart's G-minor Quintet, or Beethoven's C#-minor Quartet, or _Tristan und Isolde?_ No one has ever done it. The answer is almost certainly no.

As a self-taught painter and pianist, I don't undervalue the achievements of autodidacts. Many artists have never had formal training. But self-training is apt to be less than thorough and limiting; one can spend a lifetime trying to acquire skills on one's own that could be learned efficiently with proper instruction. I doubt that anyone can reach the heights of any art (except writing) without the technical discipline of formal training.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

No, it's not. The word "compose" means a lot and a primary requirement is that it is written down in some form so that others can perform it. Without training of a significant type, it's not going to happen. Irving Berlin "composed", but he couldn't write it down - he had a secretary do that. But a serious, long, complex work - not a chance.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Without even informal musical training, it is pretty safe to say no.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

When I saw this question, I thought about Elgar, who I had read was “self educated.” So I looked him up.

Turns out that he came from a very musical family and took violin and piano lessons. He showed obvious musical talent, but his father couldn’t afford to send him to the conservatory in Germany. So he studied scores assiduously and got hold of every book on music theory he could find.

So the self-educated part is mostly true, but “uneducated”? Never.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The question also made me think of William Mulholland, who designed and managed the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 233-mile system to move water from the distant Owens Valley to the Los Angeles area. His feat is celebrated (loosely) in the move _Chinatown_, and there's even a character based on him.

Amazingly, Mulholland was not a trained or certificated civil engineer! That may have been a factor later when he designed the St Francis Dam, a thin-walled concrete dam that abruptly collapsed in 1928, killing at least 431 people and devastating towns and cities along the Santa Clara River all the way to the ocean, 54 miles away. Said Mulholland, "The only ones I envy about this whole thing are the ones who are dead."

I would guess, though, that an untrained composer would pose less of a risk to society.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

What defines a work of music as 'classical' to us is partly an awareness of and working through a particular tradition, which by definition has to be learned. So no. Western classical music is a particular cultural construction and not something intuitive to anyone without training.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

It is not necessary to play an instrumental in order to compose art music.

Training in theory and composition is essential but thorough, top-to-bottom training with a teacher or teachers is not absolutely necessary. Three of the greatest composers, Bach, Haydn and Wagner received minimal instruction; they were all essentially autodidacts...but of course they were also all geniuses! However, none them started from scratch and taught themselves everything. They all had some early instruction.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gallus said:


> What defines a work of music as 'classical' to us is partly an awareness of and working through a particular tradition, which by definition has to be learned. So no. *Western classical music is a particular cultural construction and not something intuitive* to anyone without training.


Western classical music may be a cultural construction, but to someone who grows up in the culture its music is quite intuitive: learned, yes, but learned unconsciously, as the verbal language of the culture is learned. Unless an intuitive grasp of the musical syntax is there as a foundation (in this case, common practice tonality), training in its techniques will be a difficult slog, just as becoming a writer in English will be difficult if a basic sense of English grammar and a basic speaking vocabulary are not established (just ask any English professor dealing with the present standard of literacy among young people).

The question here isn't whether a person without training can learn "Western classical music" - most of us do that to one degree or another, and many of us do it very well - but whether training in specific techniques is needed to make supreme musical achievements possible. I wrote a very nice fugue and could improvise well in classical styles in my teens without having studied theory or counterpoint, but would have needed a disciplined study of those techniques in order to acquire the facility necessary to unleash my full creative imagination and compose complex music.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

KenOC said:


> The question also made me think of William Mulholland, who designed and managed the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 233-mile system to move water from the distant Owens Valley to the Los Angeles area. His feat is celebrated (loosely) in the move _Chinatown_, and there's even a character based on him.
> 
> Amazingly, Mulholland was not a trained or certificated civil engineer! That may have been a factor later when he designed the St Francis Dam, a thin-walled concrete dam that abruptly collapsed in 1928, killing at least 431 people and devastating towns and cities along the Santa Clara River all the way to the ocean, 54 miles away. Said Mulholland, "The only ones I envy about this whole thing are the ones who are dead."
> 
> I would guess, though, that an untrained composer would pose less of a risk to society.


As a qualified civil engineer who has worked on large dams(4), I think I will leave composing to the qualified as the thought of someone unqualified building a large dam scares me and will result in less offending of sensitive ears.............


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

No, I don't think so. But at least you don't need any training to decompose. A lot of great composers are very advanced decomposers.


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## Guest (May 3, 2018)

ArsMusica said:


> Three of the greatest composers, Bach, Haydn and Wagner received minimal instruction; they were all essentially autodidacts...but of course they were also all geniuses! However, none them started from scratch and taught themselves everything. They all had some early instruction.


Bach was an autodidact? I'm sure the Bach experts will correct Wiki if it's wrong, but if it's true that he was born into a family of established musicians who all had a hand in instructing him, "autodidact" is slightly misleading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach#Childhood


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> "Great, complex, innovative..." Like Mozart's G-minor Quintet, or Beethoven's C#-minor Quartet, or _Tristan und Isolde?_ No one has ever done it. The answer is almost certainly no.
> 
> As a self-taught painter and pianist, I don't undervalue the achievements of autodidacts. Many artists have never had formal training. But self-training is apt to be less than thorough and limiting; one can spend a lifetime trying to acquire skills on one's own that could be learned efficiently with proper instruction. I doubt that anyone can reach the heights of any art (except writing) without the technical discipline of formal training.


Right, I tend to agree with this, that the gaps in musical knowledge can't just be swept away by great imagination or mental effort, the assistance of a secretary taking dictation, also, I take it that you say "except writing" because we all speak and can write the language we'd write in, and maybe have some innate knowledge of structures etc, without having to be taught? But with music, we may hear a lot of it, but can't write it and don't have the same knowledge, until it's learned?

What about music that involves less architecture - such as lieder, one voice accompanied by piano?

And does any of this say anything about our ability to enjoy music? I must admit, I feel the gaps more keenly when reading about music, than when listening to great works...


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

KenOC said:


> When I saw this question, I thought about Elgar, who I had read was "self educated." So I looked him up.
> 
> Turns out that he came from a very musical family and took violin and piano lessons. He showed obvious musical talent, but his father couldn't afford to send him to the conservatory in Germany. So he studied scores assiduously and got hold of every book on music theory he could find.
> 
> So the self-educated part is mostly true, but "uneducated"? Never.


That's interesting, so he made a lot happen, considering. But he obviously had good instincts and knew how to apply the little he'd already learned to the bigger picture...

EDIT: having said that, "the little he had" amounted still to a sort of musical education. I suppose growing up in the climate, ideas and musical theories were everywhere for him...


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I think it is possible for a person without any musical training to listen to a complex piece of music and then to be able to create a similarly complex piece of music in their mind. However to then put that piece of music into a form where other people could observe and perform the composition, the individual would need to study some aspects of music like notation. Even though this kind of situation would not be common, or likely, I think it is possible.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I don't see why a self-taught composer - someone who had a powerful inclination to express "important things" through music and has access to the music of the classical music tradition - should not write great classical music. It may be hard to imagine that their learning will not have led to their being able to read and write music and to have at least have some idea how to play an instrument. However:

- Literacy (in language rather than music) is said to have extended our thinking capabilities but perhaps not as much as you might think. It greatly facilitated communication - which greatly expanded the horizons of thinking - but aside from this it may not have been that significant a prerequisite for complex thought. Many preliterate peoples are known to have routinely had memory capabilities that astound us in the literate world today (whether it be in knowing details, going back many many generations, of land ownership or being able to remember and recite and develop huge epics).
- There is technology these days that can write music being played (or presumably hummed) and vice versa. 
- Similarly, we have had technology that allows music to be composed on computer and built up in layers for quite a while now.

Also, do we need to accept that complexity is a hallmark of all great classical music or that this is what distinguishes it from popular, jazz and folk music or from the musics of other traditions? Surely, there are many very great but simple songs within our classical lieder? A noted classical critic (Edward Greenfield) claimed in the 1960s that Lennon and McCartney were the inheritors of Schubert. He may have underestimated the role of George Martin?

And there are plenty of examples of great and fairly complex jazz masterpieces. Even if it is complexity we are looking for there are certainly examples from jazz that demonstrate what can be done by the self taught.

The only thing that you can't do without, perhaps, for someone to create great classical music without training or dexterity with an instrument are real inclination, perfect pitch, real talent and vision and (I believe) a real feel for the tradition.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> *I don't see why a self-taught composer - someone who had a powerful inclination to express "important things" through music and has access to the music of the classical music tradition - should not write great classical music. *It may be hard to imagine that their learning will not have led to their being able to read and write music and to have at least have some idea how to play an instrument. However:
> 
> - Literacy (in language rather than music) is said to have extended our thinking capabilities but perhaps not as much as you might think. It greatly facilitated communication - which greatly expanded the horizons of thinking - but aside from this it may not have been that significant a prerequisite for complex thought. Many preliterate peoples are known to have routinely had memory capabilities that astound us in the literate world today (whether it be in knowing details, going back many many generations, of land ownership or being able to remember and recite and develop huge epics).
> - There is technology these days that can write music being played (or presumably hummed) and vice versa.
> ...


I agree that we shouldn't be too quick to place limits on what the human mind is capable of. But what is imaginable in theory and what is likely are two different things. There are no instances I can think of of anyone creating classical music we've generally come to consider "great" without having studied and worked at the fundamentals of the craft of composition and having put in some time learning to play an instrument (usually a keyboard instrument, since those enable us to play chords and counterpoint). In the case of a few prodigies - people with extraordinary aptitude - those fundamentals are mastered easily and early. But of course a mastery of techniques still doesn't guarantee that great music will result. Inclination, talent, vision and a feel for the tradition may fill a person's head with interesting sounds, but not much that's concrete, complex, strong and coherent is likely to congeal out of the ideas that swarm in his brain, much less get put down on paper, without practice. (Nobody needs perfect pitch, by the way.)

We need to clarify what's meant by being "self-taught." Most of what we learn is "self-taught," in the sense that we don't have someone standing over us pointing out the solution to every problem. That doesn't mean we aren't learning from the example of others, and that we don't need guidance or correction, even if that comes from the scores in our library. Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn didn't grow up in the woods, and their music didn't come out of the sky like lightning. Their natural aptitude led them to study music, and they worked hard at it.

Pointing out that a simple song might be written by a musically unsophisticated person - roughly the definition of folk music - is essentially changing the subject. Schubert, whom you mention, wasn't creating folk music. His songs are not as simple as they may appear.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> Bach was an autodidact? I'm sure the Bach experts will correct Wiki if it's wrong, but if it's true that he was born into a family of established musicians who all had a hand in instructing him, "autodidact" is slightly misleading.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach#Childhood


I assumed it was clear I was discussing Bach as a composer, not an all-around musician. Yes, he received training in his childhood (I wrote: "However, none them started from scratch and taught themselves everything. They all had some early instruction.") but even according to your Wikipedia article that training was in violin and basic music theory. Not one word about any training in composition.

From Harold Schonberg's "The Lives of the Great Composers":

"To a large extent he was probably self-taught."

From Paul Johnson's "Creators":

"…once he [Bach] had acquired a mastery of the keyboard (and the violin, which he played to a professional standard), and of music notation, a process accomplished by his early teens, he became an autodidact and remained one all his life."

"…he learned about music by poring over scores in music libraries, and, whenever possible, copying them out himself."

So, yes, as a composer, Bach was an autodidact.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> I agree that we shouldn't be too quick to place limits on what the human mind is capable of. But what is imaginable in theory and what is likely are two different things. There are no instances I can think of of anyone creating classical music we've generally come to consider "great" without having studied and worked at the fundamentals of the craft of composition and having put in some time learning to play an instrument (usually a keyboard instrument, since those enable us to play chords and counterpoint). In the case of a few prodigies - people with extraordinary aptitude - those fundamentals are mastered easily and early. But of course a mastery of techniques still doesn't guarantee that great music will result. Inclination, talent, vision and a feel for the tradition may fill a person's head with interesting sounds, but not much that's concrete, complex, strong and coherent is likely to congeal out of the ideas that swarm in his brain, much less get put down on paper, without practice. (Nobody needs perfect pitch, by the way.)
> 
> _*We need to clarify what's meant by being "self-taught." *_Most of what we learn is "self-taught," in the sense that we don't have someone standing over us pointing out the solution to every problem. That doesn't mean we aren't learning from the example of others, and that we don't need guidance or correction, even if that comes from the scores in our library. Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn didn't grow up in the woods, and their music didn't come out of the sky like lightning. Their natural aptitude led them to study music, and they worked hard at it.
> 
> *Pointing out that a simple song might be written by a musically unsophisticated person - roughly the definition of folk music - is essentially changing the subject. Schubert, whom you mention, wasn't creating folk music. His songs are not as simple as they may appear.*


OK. Fair enough. But I have merely been responding on the possibility - not the likelihood. It is certainly no surprise that it hasn't happened yet. The likelihood today and for the last few centuries is that someone with real gifts would be identified and nurtured even if only by the local church organist. Someone in the past who lived in such an isolated place that this nurturing couldn't happen would then also have had no access at all to classical models to learn from so, whatever they did produce, it would not be classical music but it could be sophisticated and powerful and act as models for future generations if there was a way of preserving it. Today s/he might have access to the modern technologies I referred to and to the models but, again, they would be noticed and nurtured unless they lived on a desert island or a very isolated and wild place with no opportunity to move. So very unlikely but possible.

As for Schubert's wonderful songs. I certainly do not accept that I was describing them as if they were folk songs. Clearly they show considerable _sophistication _(among other qualities) and I did not say or wish to imply that this is not so. But, compared to much classical music - including much of his own - Schubert's songs are _relatively _simple. Developing the ability to "write" (or invent) even one of them might take a lot of effort but the resulting song would not need to be complex and might be dashed off in an afternoon by someone who had developed the ability to do so.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> The only thing that you can't do without, perhaps, for someone to create great classical music without training or dexterity with an instrument are real inclination, *perfect pitch*, real talent and vision and (I believe) a real feel for the tradition.


Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky did not have perfect pitch.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ArsMusica said:


> Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky did not have perfect pitch.


I didn't know that. It surprises me with Wagner, especially. But it might still be an essential if you have no training?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

ArsMusica said:


> I assumed it was clear I was discussing Bach as a composer, not an all-around musician. Yes, he received training in his childhood (I wrote: "However, none them started from scratch and taught themselves everything. They all had some early instruction.") but even according to your Wikipedia article that training was in violin and basic music theory. Not one word about any training in composition.
> 
> From Harold Schonberg's "The Lives of the Great Composers":
> 
> ...


This conclusion reflects considerable confusion or lack of imagination on the part of the authors you quote. Learning to play keyboard to a professional standard at the time of Bach's youth required being able to realize figured bass on the spot. This in itself is a difficult form of extemporaneous composition-and it is far beyond what anyone could call basic theory. Playing organ to a professional level then, as now, required being able to improvise chorale preludes, processionals, recessionals and the like. This, done well, is composition at a high level. Living among professional musicians with these skills, it is certain he received criticism on his improvisations. Such criticism is in effect composition lessons. Copying music of masters was a primary means for learning composition in this era-a major part of "formal education." Anyone growing up in the Bach family and learning the family business was getting just about the best musical education one could get. You might as well say that CPE and JC Bach were autodidacts.


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## adamrowe (Mar 19, 2018)

Possible and not likely. I wanted to make some argument about Renaissance composers (just about anything was innovative to some degree back then), but I'm pretty sure they knew their instruments very well.


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## Guest (May 4, 2018)

ArsMusica said:


> I assumed it was clear I was discussing Bach as a composer, not an all-around musician. Yes, he received training in his childhood (I wrote: "However, none them started from scratch and taught themselves everything. They all had some early instruction.") but even according to your Wikipedia article that training was in violin and basic music theory. Not one word about any training in composition.
> 
> From Harold Schonberg's "The Lives of the Great Composers":
> 
> ...


Whether it was playing or composing, it is still, IMO, misleading to use the term 'autodidact' which seems to me to imply someone who started from scratch with no external help at all. Plainly this was not the case with Bach. The relationship between teaching and learning is often mistakenly characterised as the imparting of knowledge by a teacher to a pupil in a formal setting, and without the school and the teacher, the pupil won't learn. This is also patently untrue. If it were, so many more great composers would have been created by the mere act of sending them all to music school.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Anyone can compose these days with computers that will play the notes, but good luck composing even a simple melody, if you do not know what are you doing - at least basic acoustics and understanding harmony, some sense of rhythm and proportion are required.


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## Guest (May 4, 2018)

ArsMusica said:


> It is not necessary to play an instrumental in order to compose art music.
> 
> Training in theory and composition is essential but thorough, top-to-bottom training with a teacher or teachers is not absolutely necessary. Three of the greatest composers, Bach, Haydn and Wagner received minimal instruction; they were all essentially autodidacts...but of course they were also all geniuses! However, none them started from scratch and taught themselves everything. They all had some early instruction.


Further internet research casts doubt on the claims that any of these three 'greats' were 'essentially autodidacts'. Allegedly, according to a review of Johnson's Creators, he doesn't have much time for genius. New Grove says "[Haydn] was scarcely an autodidact, as myth used to have it", and Wagner had a teacher too.

I'm not sure of the value of pointing to these three as examples of what you can do if "you can't play an instrument" as the OP asks. However much teaching they did or didn't have, they were exceptional cases, who all had talent and opportunities to take advantage of, being immersed in a musical milieu.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> Further internet research casts doubt on the claims that any of these three 'greats' were 'essentially autodidacts'. Allegedly, according to a review of Johnson's Creators, he doesn't have much time for genius. New Grove says "[Haydn] was scarcely an autodidact, as myth used to have it", and Wagner had a teacher too.
> 
> I'm not sure of the value of pointing to these three as examples of what you can do if "you can't play an instrument" as the OP asks. However much teaching they did or didn't have, they were exceptional cases, who all had talent and opportunities to take advantage of, being immersed in a musical milieu.


I never stated that those three composers never had teachers; they did. I think that is clear in my original statement. What I should have stated was that none of them received structured composition instruction they way Beethoven did, for example. *They essentially taught themselves how to compose.
*
My statement about not having to play an instrument was completely separate from the paragraph about Bach, Haydn and Wagner. I intended no connection.

Anyway enough of this for today...I am going to spend the rest of the day revising my string quartet.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

This is interesting. I went to see a powerful performance of Giselle yesterday - so great, I got a ticket to go again tomorrow - with modern and classical ballet styles designed by Akram Khan, and the music modernised by Vicenzo Lamagna. In this video, at about 6'30", he describes how he used Gavin Sutherland as an orchestrator. The music was quite powerful...


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Could a computer bot composer a great work?


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

Kieran said:


> Yeah, I'm thinking of somebody who has great talent, instinctual understanding of how music works, but no real technical knowledge. ...
> 
> So what's the main obstacle?


No real technical knowledge.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

I am reminded of a poster I saw in the art department of the university: 

You are so dedicated to art that you will do anything for it. Learn to draw.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> View attachment 103324
> .


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


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## id0ntmatter (May 8, 2018)

I'm going to go with no. I mean, perhaps you feel that way because of Mozart writing stuff at age 6, but that was only possible because he was under the tutelage of his Dad. Great musicians are made possible through the careful crafting of a great teacher. It's like thinking you can go in the Olympics track run thingie without any endurance training whatsoever.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

id0ntmatter said:


> I'm going to go with no. I mean, perhaps you feel that way because of Mozart writing stuff at age 6, but that was only possible because he was under the tutelage of his Dad. Great musicians are made possible through the careful crafting of a great teacher. It's like thinking you can go in the Olympics track run thingie without any endurance training whatsoever.


Good point!

I wasn't really thinking of the young Mozart, but that's a good point too. I was more wondering about how much/little the imagination and a great familiarity with complex works can compensate for lack of knowledge, and if it's possible with the help of an amanuensis to create difficult, complex works, but the responses here have been very helpful, in this regard...


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Kieran said:


> Yeah, *I'm thinking of somebody who has great talent, instinctual understanding of how music works, but no real technical knowledge*. I imagine that the more instruments or voices involved, then the task becomes nigh on impossible?
> 
> So what's the main obstacle? Communicating what they hear in their heads to an amanuensis? Or does the problem run much deeper than this?


Maybe Moessorgski fits your criteria some way?


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Razumovskymas said:


> Maybe Moessorgski fits your criteria some way?


Thanks Razumovskymas! According to wiki, he studied music with Mila Balakirov, and was an accomplished pianist. But his education does eem limited, according to the article he began to teach himself when he was around 23.

He does fit my criteria "in some way", but he also shows that a lot of piano skill and some small teaching can incite a composer to more....


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Kieran said:


> Thanks Razumovskymas! According to wiki, he studied music with Mila Balakirov, and was an accomplished pianist. But his education does eem limited, according to the article he began to teach himself when he was around 23.
> 
> He does fit my criteria "in some way", but he also shows that a lot of piano skill and some small teaching can incite a composer to more....


Tchaikovsky considered Moussorgsky the most talented of that group of composers. He had a much lower opinion of his technical skills. In that regard, Rimsky-Korsakov was the only one Tchaikovsky spoke highly of.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

I think that maybe the fact that Mussorgsky pops into my mind as being not very technically gifted while he probably was actually much more technically gifted then the average musical teacher proves that to compose a "great work" one has to be gifted with a minimum of technical knowledge exceeding that of the average amateur by far.


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## Capeditiea (Feb 23, 2018)

Well, to suggest this, what would the first music creation be? 

Hymn of Nikkal? no. 
it was not created by humans. or Gods for that matter. Animals and nature along with the ambience of the surrounding one was focused. 

Anyone could make a rap, edm, anything electronic and have it synthetically sound good. 

Yet, i am getting a little ahead of my self here. 

to put it bluntly, (since i am kinda preoccupied currently with certain things...)

Music has evolved and has been slowly getting perfected through the various epochs... 

yet now, folk no longer take on the art of playing an instrument, where they can simply notate things with a drum beat and boom. There is a hit. 

A bunch of folk fail to see that if we want music to live long. we would need to impliment the evolved states of Electronic styled music into the the beauty of Classical music. (among the various other epochs.) 


I don't have enough knowledge to accurately say this, but once folk can look at music objectively in a sense of a learning process, and trying to play the instrument caling out to them. This will inevitably lead to far more divine music. 



As a composer, my works are basically the best ever in my eyes. (ears...) but to others it could sound crappy as hell... 

where for me, i compare other's works to mine. how i do this is, if i would be willing to listen to it over my own or listen as background. 


(so the work is objective.) Now, am i educated with every form of music... yes and no. 
I have no traditional education, with a tutor or anything like this. 

but, I study music by listening and learning the structure of the songs, and seeing how the work. 
So back to the evolution of music. You can learn from examples from the previous composers to compose. and you can learn things your self. 

Being self taught is something harder since you have to find everything out your own self, with no guidelines.

Just like how when they were, first starting the language of notation. (At first they had no idea how to notate music. Then came up with a language.)

So in the end music is a language. You cannot learn it only by your own experiments. You must learn from previous or current master.

:O that was longer than i thought.


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