Composition and Theory

It teaches you Andreas F. Staffel. Read more about the concept and design of his lessons here.

The course is aimed at amateur composers, classical musicians, jazz or pop musicians, church musicians, prospective music students or instrumentalists.

In my composition lessons, apart from the compositional technique and notation, it is important to discover the individual composer's personality. Experience has shown that this takes some time. In my lessons I try to help develop the students' ideas and put them into a form. We work together on the development of our own handwriting (under consideration of modern notation programs such as Sibelius, of course). At the beginning we work on unified melody formation with different scales. During the course, two-part small pieces in the octave space are added. We then learn the classical forms such as canon, fugue, sonata or song form. At the same time, important works of classical literature are analyzed. We compose songs and instrumental pieces to texts and pictures. It is also essential to learn the respective instrumental techniques and their possibilties. A visit to the theatre or an art exhibition can also be part of our composition lessons. I have successfully prepared many students for the entrance examination at music academies. Some of them have won prizes in composition competitions such as "Jugend komponiert" (Youth composes).

Further information on the literature can be found here