Greg Conn:

>Wasn't J.S.  Bach largely self-taught and untrained though?

Not at all.  Bach came from a musical family.  His uncles and his brothers
(and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts) probably gave him the
rudiments.  As for "untrained," he did, to some extent, train himself.

>I can think of other examples also which show that, in some instances,
>such "training" is in fact not necessary to some persons who are extremely
>musically "gifted" with the ability to compose.

But not all of these folks were world-beater composers.  I like Paul
Creston's music (Creston was almost entirely self-taught), but I wouldn't
put it up there with Shostakovich's (who was formally trained).  The one
example I know of for sure (including teaching himself to read music) of
the completely self-taught composer is Ernst Toch, by me a wonderful
composer.  There's nothing magical about formal training, but there's
nothing necessarily harmful in it either.  Its presence or absence in a
particular composer certainly is no sign of quality in the work.

The one thing formal training can do for you, usually, is save you time.
Something explained to you in ten minutes can save you years if you had to
figure it out for yourself.

Steve Schwartz