Greg Conn wrote:

>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.

Perhaps one reason there is discussion over this is that "teacher" means
many things.  It's not natural to learn in a vacuum.  If Bach learned much
from copying scores, all those composers were his teachers as well.  Having
played the role of teacher myself for many years, I can say that at times
I think my function reduced to error correction.  A good student can spark
a good teacher as much as the other way around.  For the motivated,
observant and creative student, a teacher is almost superfluous--almost.
I think in those cases, the teacher's approval is what the student needs
in order to feel what he or she is doing is worthwhile.  Who can assess
the spinoff of the word "gut" written by Albrechtsberger at a place in one
of Beethoven's counterpoint exercises? I like to think that somewhere a tiny
bit of Albrechtsberger's teaching is present in Beethoven's later music, if
only in homeopathic concentrations.

So much of musical learning is the result of assimilating a musical
language so well that one thinks naturally in it.  That way ones ideas
have authenticity and convince the listener even if there are occasional
"crudities." Who's to say that part of the work's power isn't at least
partly the result of these crudities? Schubert was beginning to learn
counterpoint when he died.  Where that would have led him one can
only speculate.  Mussorgsky has come into his own when people began to
realize what Rimsky and others did (with perhaps honest intent) to his
music--removed his individual voice to large extent.  In America, where
the autodidact is king, we can point to William Billings and the other
"tunesmiths" of his day, who were basically amateurs that created a unique
genre partly out of ignorance, partly out of chutzpah, and the rest out of
sincere devotion.  One does not go to these works to experience miracles of
counterpoint.  And think of Ives, who had plenty of classical training at
Yale, but learned more about how music lived within his own New England
heritage from his dad.

Back in Europe, who ever thinks much about any teachers Wagner and Berlioz
might have had? In some respects Wagner could be considered the greatest
autodidact of all time.  Grout, in his History of Opera, had a comment to
the effect that even in Wagner's greatest works there is something of the
mark of the amateur, but on such a colossal scale as to give completely
new meaning to the term.  (I'd give you the exact quote if I had time.)
Schoenberg was self-taught until he met Zemlinsky, and I'm not sure what
he learned from him.  Probably not the 12-tone technique.

I guess I'd like to think that true genius can develop either with or
without a teacher, but the genius will take what the teacher has to give
along with everything else, and produce something entirely unique and
profound.  So in the end it's genius that matters.  The untutored genius
will produce flawed masterworks perhaps, but the highly tutored patzer
will produce perfect mediocrity.

Chris Bonds