Teaching composition
Standing out while fitting in
My approach to teaching (and doing) composition is one of "standing out while fitting in".
"Standing out" in this context refers to developing the student's unique personal voice, and this is my primary focus in teaching composition. Just like with the anatomical voice, it already exists inside the student and has many personal characteristics. My primary approach is to discover with the student what these strengths and unique characteristics are, and how to use their compositional voice in an expressive, virtuosic and healthy way.
In other words: I mostly don't tell my students how they "should" compose, but try and find out how they already do, and what their own vision of doing it "better" could be. I'm not interested primarily in creating clones of myself, even though of course I may have more to discuss with people that share my interests. On the contrary, I am very interested in learning other systems and aesthetics from my students that differ from my own. Who's who in the picture next to this text?
The secondary focus is fitting this unique voice into the existing musical world, so that it can be used to communicate, and yes, earn a living. I'm not a fan of the idea that compositional voices exist in a vacuum, on an island or come from a far away planet, nor that the university education should be "purely" about the art and not about the business. If you want your voice to be heard, it needs to be at least partially understood by others.
"Fitting in" can be a useful artistic pursuit, since it allows you to connect with others, learn from them and grow together as an artistic community. Also, it can be very useful in building a career and receiving (first) commissions, since artistic directors can much more easily see the "worth" of a piece if uses at least some existing compositional techniques, even if true success and artistic innovation generally come when you "stand out".
In any case, developing technique is a focus of teaching and learning, be it either your own technique (innovation: "standing out") and/or the mastering of existing compositional techniques ("fitting in"). Since I don't believe that I can teach someone their voice, it is perhaps the main focus of my lessons, aside from career advice and help with the psychological side of things.
So teaching and learning composition may involve asking the same question a thousand times: "How does it work?"
The synergy of individual personality and networked connectedness is what I aim for in my own music and what I try to foster in my students.
Vienna, 18.04.2025
Bellaviti, S. (2015). Standing Out While Fitting In: Genre, Style, and Critical Differentiation among Panamanian Conjunto Musicians. Ethnomusicology, 59(3), 450-474.
"How does it work?" as the primary question of compositional teaching and learning via musical analysis comes from: Cook, N. (1994). A Guide To Musical Analysis. Oxford University Press.
Photograph:
"Die Schneekönigin", Mainz State Opera: 2025. Fotograph*in unbekannt.
But how do I compose?
I love to mix genres, I love the in-between, the hybrid that is neither one nor the other: like being in the breaking waves of a beach, not knowing if I'm standing or swimming. Mostly, I love to mix contemporary music, classical music and pop-cultural music (rock, techno, musical etc.)
Some contemporary music ensembles like Ensemble Nickel or Decoder Ensemble do this too, with their feet firmly planted in aesthetics of Neue Musik that arose from the Nachkriegszeit. I think I'm sort of the other way around, even though I come from a contemporary-classical background and am schooled in Stockhausen-and-friends, I need "emotional affect", "grove", "whistle-able melodies" and the like, even if my music experiments on every page and wouldn't survive in the free-market.