A creative crossroads

Learning music usually begins after we have chosen an instrument that we’d like to play. But does that choice have more of a profound impact on our life-long relationship with music than we might think? For instance, why do organists and pianists generally find harmony and counterpoint more straightforward than, say, singers or violinists?

In his book Music at Hand Jonathan de Souza brings together a great deal of neuroscientific research that might hold some of the answers to these perennial questions. He argues that ‘for performers, music is not only a sonic phenomenon; music involves both sound and action. Instrumental practice develops particular, two-way connections between auditory and motor domains.’ It is these links between the ears and hands that shape musicians’ experience and learning, he argues. He goes on to cite studies which show learned patterns of auditory-motor coactivation in instrumentalists’ brains. ‘When listening to music for one’s instrument, there is activity in motor areas (even if the player stays still); when making performative gestures, there is activity in auditory areas (even when no music can be heard). These neural connections, produced by extensive training, help to explain how instrumentalists come to hear movements and feel sounds.

Professor of neurology Gottfried Schlaug has given a detailed demonstration of the differences between string players’ brains and pianists’ brains. He suggests that through brain plasticity, our capacity to develop theoretical and aural skills is closely linked to the instrument we play. This crucial connection is made in musical pedagogical traditions where sound and physicality form the basis of aural and theoretical training. Examples might include South Indian classical music, jazz improvisation, and most styles of popular music.

For many classical musicians, this link with the instrument has been broken. Harmony, counterpoint and ear training are often taught through a keyboard model – you even see students drawing a small keyboard in the corner of their harmony worksheets. This is fine if you’re a keyboard player and your brain has been wired that way, but what happens if you’re a guitarist, flautist or singer? Sometimes, musicians are expected to complete harmony and counterpoint exercises without access to any musical instrument, as if somehow the notation would be enough to fire up a vivid musical image of the piece in one’s brain. While this ability certainly exists in the brains of some highly trained musicians, it takes many years to develop. Without the connection to sound and performance, harmony and counterpoint exercises become abstract, sitting outside the rest of the student’s musical experience, like intellectual puzzles – sudoku or wordle.

Goss calls for the teaching of topics like harmony, counterpoint and ear training to bear more relevance to the student's chosen instrument, rather than requiring all students to learn through the traditional 'keyboard model' (Image Courtesy of Stephen Goss)

There have been some attempts to integrate the physicality of playing with ear training and harmony, a rare, but excellent example is Stanley Shumway’s book Harmony and Ear Training at the Keyboard. The musician is led through various exercises at the keyboard with an emphasis on practical realisation rather than notational abstraction. 

My own instrument is the guitar, which inevitably dominates my musical thinking. However, like many, I was taught aural, harmony and counterpoint through the piano. It wasn’t until I started making harmonic reductions of the pieces I was learning on the guitar and then improvising over these reductions that I was able to move my abstract theoretical knowledge of ‘keyboard harmony’ to a more visceral home as ‘fretboard harmony’. In guitar pedagogy, there is a gradual move towards teaching musicianship skills through the instrument – a welcome development.

But what about musicianship training for singers and single-line instrumentalists? Perhaps the answer can be found in Nicholas Baragwanath’s book The Italian Traditions and Puccini? He tells us that in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, solfeggio, counterpoint, and composition were commonly taught in Italy by masters of singing. The disciplines were not regarded as separate as they are today; the students were able to internalise the exercises by singing them alone and together.

How does the instrument you play affect your approach to composing? Surely composing for orchestra, or for instruments the composer doesn’t play has little to do with the instrument they first learned? Let’s consider two guitarist composers, Hector Berlioz, and Leo Brouwer. Berlioz was one of very few 19^th century orchestral composers who didn’t play the piano. Can we detect traces of the guitar’s idiom in his orchestral music? There are various passages in his Symphonie Fantastique where we can identify idiosyncratic ‘guitarisms’. For example, there are passages of first inversion chords descending by semitone step. These can be easily executed on the top three strings of the guitar, whereas they would be awkward on the keyboard.

De Souza tells us that even when Leo Brouwer composes on paper, he draws on lifelong experience with the guitar. ‘On some level, he still thinks like a guitarist. This doesn’t mean that Brouwer’s creative work is determined by the instrument. Not at all! Rather, it suggests that composition is relational. His compositions reflect his embodied relationship with and knowledge of the instru­ment’.

Musical instruments can be seen as creative prostheses – embodied tools that shape our musical thinking. Our musical identities and understanding are inextricably linked with the instruments we play.

Stephen Goss is a composer and guitarist. He is professor of composition at the University of Surrey, and professor of guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Landscape and Memory, a triple album of his music for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments, is released on the Deux-Elles label on 18 October (DXL1202 ©2024).