Going to School for Composition?

I am going to be a senior in high school this fall. I really love to compose. I want to grow as a composer and musician, and study under someone. However there's a slight problem with this idea. I've been looking at colleges around where I live and well known music colleges in the northeastern united states. One of my music teachers suggested to me to look at the faculty and staff for composition. And surprisingly, not many of the teachers wrote music that wasn't serialism or atonal or weird computer modified stuff. Is this all that the teachers do? Because that isn't what I want to do. I want to write music that is really for larger ensembles on the high school to professional level. Symphonies and works for band and everything inbetween. but it seems that no one teaches music that is consonant. it's all weird and not pleasing to the ear. Anyway, I digress.

What I'm really look for is suggestions on how to get into a school for composition.

I'm a trumpet player ( 9 years of playing). I'm a Bass 2, I play cello (Poorly- just started) I play the piano.

I have taken AP music theory 

I've written works for winds,strings, and voice

But i just don't know what I need to do to further progress. 

Do I take private lessons? 

and if so, for trumpet? for Composition? 

Will I have to go from trumpet performance and then go to graduate school for composition?

Any Ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

~Thanks

I am laughing because what you say is so true. Academia is what it is. See if you can get the names and phone numbers of the composition - and theory -  professors and then arrange for informal interviews where you can ask questions about the faculty and its musical philosophy. Check out their youtube videos (they will have them), and be sure to bring a sample of your work on CD to the interview.

Also, a good teacher is a good teacher, regardless of the instrument. I play several instruments, but piano is something you should learn at your age that will help you enormously if you want to compose. This way you can find good theory teachers, for example, and while sitting together at the piano, will help you to compose just by teaching you theory.  You will not regret it. Sitting next to a Berg wannabe is not likely to help you.

If you can use these teachers and accredited colleges that will allow you to study un-metriculated, privately, you can save these credits for down the road if and when you learn of a better school or teacher.

Good luck to you and feel free to contact me directly.

8 hours ago, Ken320 said:

I am laughing because what you say is so true. Academia is what it is.

It most certainly is - a philosophy that cultivates discipline and integrity in the search of knowledge. It can be deadly if taken too seriously, but you must not let a few misguided individuals dissuade you. Confucius has a good quote on this: 

• To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.

Otherwise, the concert hall and study room are not as intricately linked now as they were in the postwar years. The musical elite of course doesn't have much patience for blind imitation of obsolete styles, which is a condition that the masters people usually imitate were also required to meet. It's self-explanatory - diluted music is like diluted wine. Doesn't really matter how good it was beforehand, there is some truth that has gone.

8 hours ago, Ken320 said:

This way you can find good theory teachers, for example, and while sitting together at the piano, will help you to compose just by teaching you theory.  You will not regret it. Sitting next to a Berg wannabe is not likely to help you.

Some food for thought:

Have you considered why pianists spend so much time in their formative years practicing pure technique - playing scales and arpeggios in all keys, developing the finger strength and dexterity necessary to play at any dynamic level in any tempo, perfecting the fine details of articulation in many different situations, and so on? It is because the keyboard is counter-intuitive and in order to make the instrument do exactly what you want it to (within reason), you have to put in a lot of hours. What happens when you improvise without the necessary technical foundation is that the fingers and eyes gravitate towards patterns that are logical or familiar. If you are afraid of your artistic freedom being compromised by academia, why are you not deathly afraid of it being compromised by the pragmatism of your own biology? Besides that, theory teachers are a little like paleontologists in that they provide a descriptive analysis of the music of the past. There are loads of reasons to study music theory, but no good teacher would pass off theoretical studies as a prescriptive method of musical composition. 

The best compositions teachers are those that will take you out of your comfort zone and actually let you see things through multiple perspectives.  The more varied the stuff you compose and listen to, the more you'll have to draw from when you write for yourself, no matter the style.

I think it's a mistake (and a common one too) to underestimate professors based on the music they write.  If you're really serious about studying, you should talk to them in person and find out what they're really like.  For me, usually incompetent professors are the ones which have classes in which all students sound similar.  This often happens with "famous" composers, as everyone wants to get some of that recognition, but also with professors that push for X or Y aesthetic too intensely.  It can also be a coincidence, but it's kind of unlikely.

5 hours ago, Gylfi said:

*** It most certainly is - a philosophy that cultivates discipline and integrity in the search of knowledge. It can be deadly if taken too seriously, but you must not let a few misguided individuals dissuade you. Confucius has a good quote on this: 

I am not misguided at all. I had a typical modern music education.

I think you insult the intelligence of this young man, who from his own experience, has a healthy cynicism of academia. He knows more than I did when I started out. I gave him some basic suggestions and straight talk. But you threw so many straw men into your arguments, that he's probably scratching his head, going What the …? And the stuff that was coherent was just plain wrong or missed the point completely. Paleontologists.

 

@Ken320Forgive me for using slightly ambiguous language, but that sentence was not directed at anybody in particular nor was it about you. What I meant to communicate was that one must not let a few (or many, be it as it may) "non-thinking learners" make one lose faith in the fundamental values of academia. I know that it's rarely well implemented systematically, but that doesn't mean you should throw everything to the wind and abandon disciplined study altogether. I have more than a healthy cynicism of the way academia is normally practiced, I would say I even have outright contempt for it, but I respect its values. 

Your intelligence is of no concern to me. I only found your post to contain advice that I do not agree with - it's not my business how the words came together.

P.S.: Your refutation of my arguments is not impressive. Even if I were the poorest debater in the world, you would be poorer still if the only thing you saw fit to do was vaguely describe how I was wrong. The only real piece of criticism you gave was a mocking repetition of a word I used, "paleontologists". It's clear you disagree with the comparison - why?

Sorry, you quoted me in several places. I naturally assumed that you were referring to my comments. Things are sometimes unclear in cyber-space.