General considerations of the social situation of contemporary experimental composers allows a positive view of the necessity of teaching. Comparison of the concert and the classroom as foruns for the dissemination of the composer’s ideas shows that the respondent in both situations wields more power than is usually recognized. If the composer’s activity is seen as including not only writing pieces but also everything a composer does to give those pieces an intended social context, including speaking, discussing, and writing prose, then teaching can be seen as a compositional activity. This entails (1) examination of the role of discourse in determining the fate of any statement (referred to in this paper as ‘the power of the respondent’; (2) questioning traditional images of teacher and composer and the accompanying arguments; (3) looking at teaching as a performance that can be composed; (4) relating the content of teaching to eliciting compositional activity; (5) examining the circumstances under which one might learn from a composition.
Thesis – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1995)
Colloquium: Contemporary Brazilian Music and Thought 