A Basic Course in Music Composition. (Book Reviews: Diverse Topics).(Book Review)

A Basic Course in Music Composition.

By Ralph Shapey. King of Prussia, Pa.: Theodore Presser, 2001. [31 p. ISBN 0-417-41035. $10.] Music examples.

Ralph Shapey (1921-2002) is probably best known to the world as an iconoclastic composer--one whose frustration with the musical establishment led him to withdraw his entire catalog from 1969 to 1976, and whose unique contributions to the repertory earned him a MacArthur ("Genius") Prize in 1982 (p. i). To his students (and, increasingly, students of his students), however, Shapey is celebrated first as a teacher of rare gifts. In a pedagogical career spanning fifty years (most of them on the faculty of the University of Chicago), Shapey developed his own "Basic Course"--a set of lessons and exercises that he required of all his students--encapsulated in this brief text. Shapey's own musings and pedagogical observations are interspersed throughout, mostly in the form of idealized dialogues between himself and his students.

Each of the eight lessons contains a specific pitch-based exercise. These exercises are strongly interconnected (both compositionally and pedagogically), building sequentially through explorations of harmony, melodic design, melodic development, and counterpoint. Each exercise is narrowly construed, so as not to lose pedagogical focus, but also permits a wide variety of responses and approaches. The learning curve is rather steep, requiring mastery of each lesson's techniques before advancing. (Indeed, teaching the course as Shapey did, with one lesson per week, demands considerable time and energy from the students.)

Running parallel to the pitch exercises is a series of rhythmic challenges of quite different purpose. While the pitch exercises develop compositional facility, the rhythmic material is geared toward performance skill. Shapey's goal is for students to be able to perform complex rhythms readily, motivated by a warning issued in the sixth lesson: "Don't ever write a rhythm that you cannot sing yourself!!!" (p. 20). Despite the obvious relevance that rhythm has for the pitch-based exercises (especially those on melodic development and counterpoint), there is no discussion of its role in these matters (although some consideration can be gleaned from the variations that occasionally appear in the examples). Shapey indicates that he would assign a paper on "Function of Rhythm" for students to write while working through the "Course" (and for discussion in the final week), but this is also, frustratingly, kept separate from the other activities (pp. 6, 30).

Having taken the "Basic Course" with Shapey's University of Chicago colleague Shulamit Ran, I would add my voice to the chorus of laudatory quotations found on the volume's back cover, but with one caveat. Although the exercises ...