Teaching Composition to someone who has no musical knowledge.

In my experience teaching the hardest cases are often those where I need to start from absolute scratch with everything. I mean besides covering history (and therefore theory) composition, it's really hard to simply ask "ok listen to all this music." I find that the most gradual part is literature, but it's one of the most important.

So what are your experiences, OR, what would you do if you had the task to teach someone composition yet they don't even know what a cadence or a canon is. Where would you start? How do you plan the overall study curriculum?

I'd take them to a High Anglican or traditional Catholic church service and ask them simply this: What is the difference you between the congregational hymns and the chants sung by the cantor. Then I'd slowly introduce notation and have as much sung as possible byt taking the hymn tunes, the bass or syllabic and neumatic chants (later).

If their religious aversion or convictions are so strong, I'd start with popular music. The first being the most formulaic ones and ask them to listen to the bassline, listen to the melody and hum it back to me.

If all of this does not work, John Cage composed Living Room Music. You could spend a few weeks introducing specific rhythmic patterns and basics of notation (using a simplified of the modern plainchant notation and then moving to more traditional notation. Neat thing about the Cage piece is it invites non-musicians to improvise with found objects. With a knowledgeable firm teacher could be effective (note this is done at Queens College CUNY Aaron Copland School of Music - you may want to look up some of the teachers).

Finally, another option is just have the aspiring composer learn an instrument but incorporate opportunities to improvise on concepts and compose as time goes on.

Alas, one must keep in mind Billing's comment -

Nature is the best Dictator, for all the hard dry studied Rules that ever was prescribed, will not enable any Person to form an Air any more than the bare Knowledge of the four and twenty Letters, and strict Grammatical Rules will qualify a Scholar for composing a Piece of Poetry, or properly adjusting a Tragedy, without a Genius. It must be Nature, Nature must lay the Foundation, Nature must inspire the Thought.

I think that there is no better way to get good at composing than to get good on an instrument. Preferably piano. And I think that learning an instrument is far more intuitive than learning dry theory.

If someone says they want to learn how to write music and have no music background, I think my initial reaction would be, "Why?" Once they've come up with a solid answer that makes sense (favorite tune/style of music, interest in the sound of one or more instruments, etc.) I'd point them in the direction of independent study.

For example, a good friend of mine had less than two years of performance in percussion. He went on to computer engineering. But he told me he has tremendous interest in how to write music because Industrial Techno evokes a kind of expression he relates to. So, I suggested he find a program to write his ideas down. He purchased the basic version of Reason.

He found much of the information he needed for basic techno writing on a website with a lessons system. He sends me files to listen to and comment on, and I do what I can to fill in the holes and offer direction to him on how to proceed from there. Now he's begun creating his own electronic instruments and is considering enrolling in electronic music courses at Berklee to further explore electronic sound production and composition. He regularly emails me with music he's writing, just sent an updated track to me today to comment on.

All he needed was a little direction, and he found his own path from there. Had his interest been in writing orchestral music, I probably would have been more involved in teaching the orchestration/theory/history of music. But it's really cool to hear his ideas coming together like they are... some of his tracks sound incredibly advanced to me musically. He's isolating rhythmic figures that absolutely stand apart from the typical 4-bar dance-club style and are so incredibly creative that it's more common for me to say nothing more about it than, "Wow, that's REALLY COOL!"

I've been trying to get him to post his work here because it rivals a lot of the submissions I've heard on YC (no offense to present company, I haven't heard many industrial techno works here anyway). He's very self-conscious about his work and doesn't feel he could speak intelligently enough about it to post it for the public... he's afraid of being criticized and not knowing enough about music to be able to adequately defend his work. But holy crap, it's good work that I'd proudly stand by if I wrote it. I wish he'd post it here.

Regardless, I think a "curriculum" in music composition should be malleable enough to accommodate anyone's musical interest, whatever it may be. If my friend forms a mastery of the style that interests him, once he's discovered how the most influential music in his life works, it's much less of a stretch for him to incorporate others. That's a curriculum I advocate because education is, in its own rite, a process of self-discovery. I had several composition professors in my experience who never seemed to "get" that... and I'll admit, it severely jaded me.

When I plan all my seminars, usually my last seminar is the topic I want to speak about.

For example, if I want to talk about ricci flows or something like that, I look at the ricci flow and start to explain it. Then I look at what i'm explaining and see what a person needs to know in order to understand what I'm saying. Then I look at the topics needed to be understood and see what needs to be understood before that. So I keep doing that until I feel that I'm at a solid base. From there I fill in the pre-req needed for the seminar.

I imagine if I had to teach math to a person who knew nothing, my approach would be the same. I would start with Topology and work my way down until I find out that the person needs to figure out what 1+1 is. But that's me i'm super linear in my thinking.

*Edit

I'm also a big fan of individual study. I like to lecture and talk about one thing. Make the person read a book about something else and then be open for questions about what they read. So that way I can teach two different things at once. Then the magical moment when the concepts collide the "Oh wow" look is priceless.

I would say a big part of it would be dependent on the person. I would approach the teaching of someone who listens to a lot of classical music differently to a person that listens to rock and roll.

My opinion as a first step would be establish what kind of music they listen to on a regular basis. If then, for example, they say they listen to a lot of music featured in games - i.e themes from Final Fantasy then I would think that starting off with looking at examples of sheet music from Final Fantasy would be a good place to start. It might not be the best music out there but its would be starting the person off with music they like and help put what they are learning into context with something they know a little about already because they already listen to it.

This would need to be supplemented with study in other areas but using music they like as a starting block would engage the student more in what they are learning.