Why I have “musiphobia:” The casualties of a conservatory education
What is “musiphobia?” Kenny Werner, in his amazing book Effortless Mastery, coined the term and its definition is fear of music. While reading this book, his description of this condition seemed to resonate with my experience, but I couldn't say why specifically. Shortly after finishing this book, I experienced a revelation that my unnamed experience was indeed a crippling musiphobia. I haven’t composed much since graduating from Peabody exactly five years ago and have made every excuse: I’m too busy, I’ve moved on to other areas of music, I just need some quiet time. However, these surface excuses didn't delve into the deeper problem that I have just come to discover.I used to compose during every free moment I had. I wrote things that I had never heard before and have not heard since. I had an intimate connection with my music and the time spent creating it was sacred to me. I felt like I was truly myself. I had begun to write when I was 12 or 13 (with one or two pieces written when I was younger) and did so without resistance until my first lesson at Peabody.
I will give an account of what I encountered while studying composition at Peabody. Out of respect, I won’t name the people I criticize specifically. I studied with my first teacher for two years. Here are some of his most damaging criticisms and how they contributed to my musiphobia. He said to “never change the number of voices in an instrument part.” I felt that this made sense in a purely technical way but it happened to invalidate a lot of the unique solo guitar ideas that I had conceived. He also implied that my harmony, which was mostly triadic, was boring and I needed to spice it up with 4, 5, 6, 7, and more note chords. These harmonies certainly would have expanded my musical vocabulary but, once again, his criticism had invalidated a majority of music I had already written. It was as if he ignored the fact that both figures in popular music (a category in which I include some jazz and progressive rock) and modern composers have found ways to use triadic harmonies in striking and original ways.
With a vast majority of my pieces, I suffered through the frequent criticism that “this section of the piece doesn’t make sense, it’s making the piece too long.” Rather than hearing my music on its own terms, he was trying to force my music to conform to popular trends or his own musical preferences. Finally, his instruction on idiomatic writing was completely unsound. For instance, I wrote a piece for guitar and harp - the harpists that looked at the piece told me that the harp part was unplayable. My teacher had let it pass. I had learned nothing about writing appropriately for the instrument. All in all, his advice confused, overwhelmed, and angered me. At the time, I took his advice to heart, simply because I didn't know any better. As a result of him imposing his arbitrary musical views on me, I began a transformation. I started to hate almost everything I heard and, in my insecurity, I developed incredibly elitist views.
My next teacher spent a lot of time making sure my quarter notes were tied to eighth notes followed by eighth rests. He had zero understanding of “popular” music and wanted no part of it. He fell asleep during my lessons. He gave me a "B" the semester I studied with him. When I asked how I could have done better, he said "it is a fine grade, nothing to worry about." How was I supposed to improve if I didn't even understand his standards for grading? May he rest in peace.
Finally, the most destructive of all of my teachers claimed that he avoided repetition like it was the plague. No sequencing was allowed. Serial and through-composition were the only ways to compose. Wrestling with his narrow-minded view may have led to my complete creative shutdown.
You may ask, why didn’t I ignore or disagree with my teachers at the time? Well, being young and trusting, I thought that since I was paying so much money, everything that my teachers said to me was something I should take to heart. I felt that I was lucky to be hearing it. To disagree would be to either disrespect my family’s decision to have me study here or to disrespect what amounted to a god of music! I wanted to do neither. Of course, I know now that no one is infallible, but I only recently realized that maintaining these types of teachings as law is absolutely poisonous to the growth of an artist. No matter how harmless or purely technical one's advice may seem, if it is not tempered with a desire to understand the student it is, at best, unhelpful and, at worst, psychologically destructive. Truly superior to imposing ideas on a student is to respect each students' independent voice.
Flannery O’Connor said, “Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” The quote is intended partially to be humorous, but I couldn’t disagree more with the sentiment. Students are being creatively stifled and it’s a serious, serious problem.
Frank Zappa also makes note of this phenomenon in his keynote speech at the 1984 ASUC convention (http://otg.brainiac.com/fzfull.htm). He attests that the conservatory mindset champions one set of completely arbitrary rules over another, the choice of which is based not upon objective aesthetic merit but the preferences of kings, dictators, and, now, corporations. In the conservatory, pop music is derided but in the world of popular music the same rules seem to apply. Thus arises two opposing, yet still arbitrary, musical establishments. The casualties from this war are the students and their artistic development. With this iron-clad set of rules, these students inherit the prejudices of the establishment and their latent talents become further buried. While I personally don't discredit every "classical" or "pop" work ever written simply based on its genre, I do agree with the sentiment that completely artificial constructs are passed down as greatness and is questioned all too rarely.
On David Rakowski's site he has posted a lighthearted view of his psychological hangups. He calls them "buttstix," figurative "sticks in his butt" about what constitutes a "superior" musical idea. After he identifies them, they lose their superiority and seem much more ludicrous. At this point, he can finally begin to deal with them and accept ideas that are not part of the system he inherited.
What is absolutely abhorrent to me is the mindset of “you’re doing it wrong” that permeates what I, and many others, dealt with in studying composition. To quote Kenny Werner again,
"Nachmanovich makes a great statement: 'to educe means to draw out or evoke that which is latent: education then means drawing out the person's latent capabilities for understanding and living, not stuffing a passive person full of preconceived knowledge.' Therein lies the reason why so many are overwhelmed... They're very likely to be stuffed with preconceived knowledge rather than having had their latent capabilities drawn out.
This is an important point. It is common practice to give weekly assignments rather than support the student in understanding the material. I firmly believe that educators should rethink this approach. Burying the student in assignments will often sink him. Sometimes it is necessary to just discontinue lessons until the student regains his bearings. But since many were taught this way, as a result, they teach this way. Fear and anxiety are passed on from generation to generation. Also there are those who occupy positions of authority, but are incompetent and that too causes fear."
Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, I should not have been seeking “improvement” of my music, but I should have been seeking the best ways to get my music on the page, and onto performers’ stands. I should’ve known that finding my voice was priority one over learning senseless rules. However, I feel that expecting young musicians to have this level of clarity is setting the bar impossibly high. Teachers are the ones that should be aware of this and must be if they are to help a musician find his or her true voice. My conservatory experience made me feel that my voice had been squashed and thrown away and, as a result, it has been that much more difficult to find it again.
I have some ideas for solutions:
1. Don't tell your students to stop what they are doing. Try to understand what they’re doing. Recommend that they listen to similar sounding composers. Ask the student what they’re trying to achieve in specific spots. Start being nicer.
2. Make mandatory counseling meetings that focus on whether the students feel as if what they are learning is aiding them in finding their voice. Whether performer or composer, most of the people I know that are attending conservatories or have graduated have serious issues with practicing, writing, whatever. It’s sad. We should be artistic powerhouses as a result of a long, rigorous music education.
3. Understandably, it seems that conservatories don’t hire professors based on their teaching expertise but rather, their credentials (degrees or notoriety in their field.) The fact of the matter is a lot of those who are good at what they do are miserable teachers. Hire only those who are expert teachers, as well as experts at what they teach. It sounds too simple, I know.
Not all of my teachers had a negative impact on my musical development. Shafer Mahoney, Libby Larsen, and Kevin Puts were outstanding. I also love their music. There were many others, not in the composition field, that made a very positive impact on me. I won't forget that!
