Beethoven had this to say about learning the creative side of music:

“In order to become a capable composer one must have already learned harmony and counterpoint at the age of from seven to eleven years, so that when the fancy and emotions awake one shall know what to do according to the rules.”

There is something important here. It is the age at which to learn these things the grammar rules of music. Dorothy Sayers has still said it best, in her outline of the older method of education: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. The grammar rules of any subject are to be taught first. The student learns how to use the rules, and finally, the student learns how to defend the rules in creative activity.

Most music students today never get to learn counterpoint until they go to college. They may learn harmony, and a little about melodic composition. But are never drilled in the many facets of counterpoint.

Under the older view of learning, students learn the grammar rules of their subjects, music, language, math, etc. They now had the tools of learning to continue their own education.

When music students are given the tools of learning at a young age, by the time their minds starting racing with ideas, they have the ability to act on these ideas.

This is why I wrote “Ian Hodge’s Read, Write & Play Music.” It turns the clock back and adopts an older methodology with a better outcome for all.

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