Composition
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Arnold Friedman, Chair
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"I want to open up more possibilities for my students, more doors for their creativity. The first few weeks of counterpoint seems totally the opposite of that. It's very typical to hear complaints about how there are too many rules. But the result of experiencing that kind of discipline while creating music—having to be creative within a very narrow set of parameters—is that later on when you're free to do whatever you want, you still have this very disciplined method to apply to it."
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Gregory Fritze, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Students who get a composition degree learn how to write their music so that other people can perform it. Very often students have ideas and they don't know how to put them down. Sometimes they don't have the experience to connect their ideas. Or in many cases, they have too many topics. Most beginning students do overwrite. We teach the students how to develop an idea completely and how to trim away the excess. And the main thing is that the students do hear their work performed. Most of what they write can be performed right here at the college."
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Clyde Witmyer, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"As I reflect on my own educational experiences, the most important realization I came to as a student is that I am responsible for my education more so than my teachers, my school, my parents, or society. I learned that being a student is a proactive experience and that you only get out of it as much as you are willing to put in. Students who are proactive regarding their education will not only gain the respect of their teachers but their teachers will be more willing to go that 'extra mile' for them. Ultimately, your educational experience will be much more rewarding."
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Valerie Taylor, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Even if a person never conducts any kind of ensemble after this, the whole notion of getting music incorporated into the body is just so vital. It's gaining that sense of how your body conveys, and not just simply responds to, music. As a result of my vocal training, I try to get people to sing things, because that is the clearest and simplest road to incorporating the music into their own bodies. If they treat it gingerly at finger's length, their musical mojo is not going to be involved. If they sing while they conduct, they can use their body to teach their body."
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"When I was about four or five years old, growing up in the Soviet Union, I remember my parents listening to Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza in one room, and at the same time my older brother listening to Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Chicago, and the Beatles in another room. I really had this kind of double music world from the very beginning, but it was so natural to me. And I think this was a really great thing—it opened my ears to every type of music."
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Beth Denisch, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"My job as a faculty member is to teach students new skills and how to access resources that will help them find their own voices. Through exposure to new musics, and through modeling and experimentation, students experience which materials, styles, and techniques resonate within them and they then 'make it their own.' I think Berklee students have more of an opportunity to do that than students of other schools where they may be exposed to less varied styles of music."
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Arthur Welwood, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"I think composition is best taught by people who are out in the field writing music, performing it, and interacting with audiences. Berklee's composition department is made up of composers and conductors. They're bona fide professionals getting paid for what they're doing. They're not just teaching in ivory towers."
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Rick Applin, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Love of music is our common bond in all my classrooms. With the education majors, it's love of teaching as well. In my tonal harmony course for education majors, we role play in our third hour: I become a high school student with the rest of the class, and one of the class members teaches. I show my students that you can maintain a certain degree of informality that is nevertheless infused with a sense of respect for the institution, for the teacher, and for the classroom."
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"In my classes, the composer's view is there always. I insist that people think of even the most insignificant technicality in the creative sense. What is it that you can do with this specific sonority? Where can you go with that? I try to inspire in the minds of the students the creative approach, not just the approach of the performer who has to deal with a set of notes. How would they write things? What is their own interpretation of a given musical text?"
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"The main thing in teaching composition is to create an atmosphere in which the natural gifts of the students flourish. That atmosphere depends, I think, upon the ability to enter the world of students' compositions—to let go of your own style when you look at your students' compositions. Whenever any composer, no matter what the age, brings me a composition, as I start to play it, I forget about my own musical world and my own musical style. For that moment, I enter the mind of that person to such an extent as to be able to look at this composition as if it is mine."
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