What schools should we consider?

SpiritManager
Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:31:54 +0000

@mom2winds - I would recommend, if your son is serious about wanting to study classical music composition that he start looking at the music departments of schools which may interest him for other reasons - state school or private school, large or small, in the right location, appropriate level of academics/test scores, maybe a good film dept or computer tech or major in music tech, or appealing architecture, or his friends all go there - whatever reasons at all appeal to him - then have him go to the music department’s website and read about their philosophy, then the composition department’s page, or, barring an entire page, the pages of the composition faculty - and then start exploring the musical influences and interests of the composers who teach in these programs. He can do that by reading their biographies, seeing who they studied under, listening to links of their music - either directly on the site or on their linked websites, or even by googling or on itunes. He may very well find that the aesthetic of the faculty of Oberlin is quite different than at Penn State (or maybe not - I don’t know a thing about Penn State.) (As for Oberlin - if he looks at the application requirements for composers it will tell him quite a bit about their expectations and interests - more so than most of the applications.)

Then when he finds colleges of interest to him, and composition professors of interest to him, he should look more closely at the curriculum - for a music degree either as a BA, a BM, a double degree etc. (I’m assuming you’ve both read the Peabody site about the different degrees - if not, put that at the top of your list.)

I’ve posted before that there are interesting composition departments all over - composers are thrilled to get teaching jobs and they end up in the darnedest places. A small program for composition may be just fine for your son - or, on the other hand, maybe he wants to be in a huge program surrounded by musicians and other composition students. These are all questions he’s going to have to explore. He needs to get a clear sense of what he’s looking for and what’s important to him. Once he does, I promise you it’s out there for him, whatever it may be.

I also recommend, if he is not already, having him study privately with a composer, or in a composition program if there is one in your area. And also consider having him go to a summer program for composition. There are some that still have openings and the deadlines haven’t passed.