‘There is a very peculiar attitude to composition’, composer Alasdair Nicolson muses, ‘People back off from it because they imagine if they are not naturally equipped with the skills, there is no way they can learn composition through education – which is not true.’
Nicolson has worked extensively composing scores for West End theatre productions, conducting for orchestras such as the London Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony and Scottish Chamber Orchestras, but also as an educator: teaching composition at the University of London, and in association with the London Sinfonia’s education programme. He observes that there is still a prevailing attitude that composing sits on one of the highest rungs of a perceived musical hierarchy – a notion a project created by the spnm, (Society for the Promotion of New Music) ‘Sound Inventors’, is challenging.
Nicolson is the Creative Consultant to the Sound Inventors project – a Youth Music initiative which was devised by the spnm with partnership funds from the PRS Foundation – which holds week-long composition workshops for young people aged eight to eighteen throughout England. A lead composer, two assistants and professional musicians lead the participants through basic ‘getting-started’ techniques, to composing their own piece, which is then polished through further ‘surgery’ workshops before being performed by the musicians in a showcase event.
According to Nicolson, the project is unique because of its intensity and the fact young people have the opportunity to hear their work performed by professional musicians from a range of disciplines.
‘Often, musical education takes place every week or every fortnight, which means a lot of time can be spent on recapping from previous weeks. I think it works much better to get focus and concentration over a period and, indeed, have access to playing musicians.’
The musicians taking part range from players of orchestral instruments, to vocalists and even DJs and rappers. The point Sound Inventors is trying to make, Nicolson explains, is that once composition techniques have been learnt they can be applied to any instrument or musical genre.
‘The main stimulus for every week is how you get your basic ideas together,’ he says. ‘I worry a lot of the time people are very devisive about different styles of music. There are hierarchies and political correctness and I think… Hang on, music works on a lower level than this.’
‘Forget the style, forget the ethnic origin of the music, forget the genre – it’s actually about very basic things like harmony, pitch, melody and rhythm.’
The visual and physical appeal for picking up an instrument and playing it is not so hard to understand – but how, I wonder, does one go about engaging young people in actually wanting to learn to write it?
Initially, the young people are excited by the idea that any work they produce will in fact be played by professional musicians, Nicolson explains, but the methods used to teach them composition are tried and true techniques that get down to the ‘nuts and bolts’ of how music is put together. The project begins with exercises relating letters of the young peoples’ names, or pet names, to Morse Code, and then working out what correpsonding short and long notes could be used to create a rhythm.
‘It’s not a question of saying, “Here’s the blank page, now write something,” Nicolson says, adding: ‘That’s the horrific bit I encounter when I get up every morning and look at my desk – and I’m getting paid for it! We teach them little methods to get small bits of information, so they end up with a sketch pad of chords, words, pictures, rhythms, all driven by games, but only games composers have played legitimately through the years.’
However, Sound Inventors does not just cater for young people – another component is a training workshop for adults who lead or support music education for young people.
Over the past week, a number of issues have been raised in the national press with regard to art and education. Prominent musicians, including cellist Julian Lloyd Weber, flautist Sir James Galway and percussionist Evelyn Glennie penned a letter to Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and Education Secretary Charles Clarke, urging the government to ensure music education is a vital component of the national curriculum. Both Lloyd Weber and Galway cited the broader implications music education offers for developing young people’s life skills.
Meanwhile, a Guardian article questioned the degree of emphasis being placed on outreach in education – and whether it was at the expense of art itself – as organisations such as the Royal Opera House, the Tate and the London Symphony Orchestra become increasingly involved in collaborations in schools.
‘I think what has happened in this country, is that the finance for some of the education aspects within art subjects has been siphoned through the arts, rather than funding from education bodies, to ‘mop up’ the curriculum, to some extent,’ Nicolson comments.
‘I don’t disagree with the idea that there should be arts outreach from the Royal Opera House, I think it’s a good thing, but I believe it should be the icing on the cake,’ he continues.
‘You want good art and artists and lots of it happening, but, equally, it doesn’t harm for people who are younger or of less experience or aspirational, to encounter professionals.’
However, Nicolson also recognises when it comes to an area like composition, which he says is still regarded as ‘a little bit different and a bit special,’ in the education system, it often falls to class music teachers who feel ill-equipped with the skills to teach it. Therefore, his workshop attempts to equip music educators with composition skills.
One of the most promising young participants taking part in one of the workshops wrote a piece Nicolson believed was above average not only for the child’s age, but generally across the project. But he found himself confronted with a fragile situation when the child’s school music teacher commented the piece would be unsuitable for examination.
‘Especially when you are younger, it doesn’t take too many knockbacks for somebody never to try something again,’ Nicolson worries.
‘Sound Inventors’ workshops take place throughout the ten Regional Arts Board regions of England. The next showcases from the Bradford and Leeds workshops will take at Leeds College of Music on December 15.
For further information on the showcases or workshops taking place in 2003, contact Maria Turley, Sound Inventors Administrator, on tel 020 7357 7993 or email soundinventors@spnm.org.uk
