Three Generations of Teaching Music Composition

Three Generations of Teaching Music Composition

George Perle, Paul Lansky, and Virgil Moorefield discuss the chain of educational influence.

Written By

NewMusicBox Staff

PAUL LANSKY: We’ve been talking for 40 years, so…

GEORGE PERLE: As I approach my 87th birthday, I sometimes feel I’ve talked too much.

PAUL LANSKY: Well, it’s been over forty years since I showed up at your freshman harmony class. Your first day at Queens was my first day at Queens.

GEORGE PERLE: Yeah.

PAUL LANSKY: And, I thought, you looked so young at that point. You were already in your forties but I thought you were so young that you’d just gotten out of graduate school and I learned you were already a famous composer.

GEORGE PERLE: Was I?

PAUL LANSKY: Well, that’s what they told me. So, that’s 1961? For two years you were my theory and counterpoint and harmony teacher. I think that was my best composition training…

GEORGE PERLE: It was a harmony class.

PAUL LANSKY: Well, yeah, but it was still composition. You taught it as a composition course, but I remember you made us write a piece based on a Beethoven

GEORGE PERLE: Bagatelle?

PAUL LANSKY: No, not a bagatelle.

GEORGE PERLE: Sonata?

PAUL LANSKY: I don’t know. (hums)

GEORGE PERLE: Scherzo, yeah that’s probably right.

PAUL LANSKY: Yeah, the Scherzo from Opus 28. And then you always insisted on doing the exercises yourself and that was a very good composition lesson, but you never talked about your own music. There was something implicit that it was immoral to teach your own music. I think you tended to think that you weren’t a very good harmony teacher, I think that you were very good. And the thing I remember most, as I think back on it, was this incredible attention to detail. I mean, you’d spend a half hour trying to decide if G-sharp was a better note than A in a given context.

GEORGE PERLE: And there’s something else, which is that composition students come into class and show a piece, but there’s nothing there but notes. No phrase marks, there’s no dynamics, there’s no articulation markings.

PAUL LANSKY: Yeah, right, right. (laughs)

GEORGE PERLE: And I don’t understand that. That’s not the way you hear it. You can’t play that way, you can’t do anything without these other things and then I find out that they don’t know what to do.

PAUL LANSKY: Was that the case with me? I was a terrible composition student.

GEORGE PERLE: I don’t remember that you were terrible at anything. I mean you were always the best student in the class.

PAUL LANSKY: You’re just saying that!

GEORGE PERLE: Even though you didn’t have absolute pitch

PAUL LANSKY: I still don’t have absolute pitch. Do you? Have you lost it?

GEORGE PERLE: I still do, I still do.

PAUL LANSKY: But I tried to study composition. I was a very pretentious student, I remember. I thought I knew how to compose, but I really didn’t.

GEORGE PERLE: Well, what did you learn?

PAUL LANSKY: Well, your way of teaching composition was never to suggest specific things that I should do, but you used to grunt and groan a lot about what I showed you, and I kind of inferred that you were trying to make a subtle point, but I wasn’t picking it up and I remember spending a lot of time, in a way, trying to read your reactions to pieces. I think I understand what you were talking about, but they were never really about the pieces as much as they were about the approach to composition, that way of putting together a piece. You probably don’t remember anything I showed you. I probably don’t remember anything I showed you.

GEORGE PERLE: I remember you showed me a piece that was very much influenced by Webern.

PAUL LANSKY: Is that right?

GEORGE PERLE: Yeah, do you remember that?

PAUL LANSKY: No, I’ve forgotten that. What piece is that? You probably remember it better than I do! I think our most intense time was in that harmony class.

GEORGE PERLE: Were your lessons private or was it a class?

PAUL LANSKY: I would bring pieces around to you after a couple of years… I would bring pieces in just one at a time. I was always very hesitant. You were always very gentle. But, in a sense, very often, you were trying to say something that I wasn’t quite understanding. And you did suggest I write a solo flute piece at one point, because you thought that was a good solution…