Composition
 |
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."
Read More |
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."
Read More |
"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."
Read More |
"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?"
Read More |
Donald McDonnell, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"I tend to like to compose at the piano. The computer I use at the final stage for engraving, once I've made all the decisions. I encourage my students to do that, as well. Depending on the style of music that you do, the process is crucially important to producing a certain product. I know a lot of film music people who will compose at a MIDI keyboard and play right into the computer. But I think for the sort of music that I do, and that my students do , it actually doesn't work out that well. It can be quite limiting. Sometimes students will play something on the computer and it'll go by so quickly that it won't register on their ear—they can't hear the wrong notes."
Read More |
"These courses are really all about learning how to account for everything you write. I think it's important for students to take the strict rules we give them and refine their music in that way during class, so that when they approach the music they want to write outside of class, they're going to have just as much control over it. When I compose music, I don't think about all the rules I was taught in my classes, but with every single note I have some awareness of why I chose that particular pitch and that particular rhythm."
Read More |
Apostolos Paraskevas, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Most of my courses are in composition: traditional tonal harmony, counterpoint techniques of Johann Sebastian Bach, and contemporary techniques for composers, including guitar composers. Many people think we're just theorists in the composition department, but I'm an active performer. So if I'm talking to students about Bach's style of writing music, I'll start playing Bach on the guitar. And their eyes open wide because some of them have never heard guitar that sounds like this."
Read More |
"In Conducting 211 and 212, I aim to show students what it takes to prepare a score for performance and give an overview of what conducting is all about. A production engineering student, for example, gets to see what it takes to conduct an orchestra or an ensemble in a recording session. Somebody's first job might be teaching general music in high school, and as part of their obligation they have to conduct a musical. You just never know which way your career is going to go. So it is one more tool we give our students."
Read More |
"I think a lot of times people think about theory as random rules on how notes have to go together. I'm trying to stress that nothing is random, that everything makes sense from point A to point Z, and that everything at point A is the same as everything at point Z, just on a smaller scale. If you look at one phrase of music, everything that happens in that phrase is similar to what happens over the course of the entire piece. And everything that goes into each chord within the phrase is related to the shape of the entire phrase. I think a lot of times, especially in theory classes, you just look at the details endlessly and you lose track of what the whole piece is about. I try to keep a balance as much as possible."
Read More |
Yakov Gubanov, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Composition Department"Because Berklee is a very international institution, about one half of my directed studies students are international ones, and I'm always trying to encourage a student to maintain his national tradition. It's a big temptation when a student comes to the United States to try to develop this kind of international idiom which will sound American. I never push, but if you have this feeling of your own tradition, I suggest, just stay with your own tradition. In my opinion the 21st century will be the time when the national tradition of art will be restored. It seems to me the future of music is in the return of each individual to his or her national roots."
Read More