Conceptual music has for decades posed intractable analytic issues for musicians and music theorists, forming a category defined by strangeness and esotericism with seemingly nothing paradigmatic uniting works as diverse as John Cage’s famous 4’33’’ or Johannes Kreidler’s Minus Bolero. What concept music seems only to have in common is some form of disruption or provocation, with most forms of analysis unavailable to these works. What these works do share however is a rejection of fundamental axioms, a rejection that manifests as a peculiar form of musical grammar. The grammar of concept music is non-syntactical, unable to be iterated and standardized the way all other musical grammar is. As a result, concept music retains a historic formal and social potency. Through a denial of syntax and the logic of the broader canon, works like 4’33’' bring social conflict into the material of the works themselves. This embodiment of social conflict through negation and contradiction work to create a peculiar form of structure of concept music, built not on constitutive elements but out of tension amidst competing forces.

Learning to compose might, at first, seem like drinking an entire ocean. There are anoverwhelming number of things to consider when sitting down to composing a piece of music: what instruments are going to be involved, what notes should I use, do I want to focus on notes or sounds, or maybe gestures, who’s going to play this piece, what do I want to say? This especially affects young composers who might have even more philosophical questions about composing. Even after years, staring down a blank page can continue to intimidate more experienced composers. Wrapped up in thoughts about what pieces could become, students need a person whose role consists of unraveling that sticky web of thoughts. This person should further focus the student’s attention on specific ideas in the student’s music or in their approach to their music so that they begin to understand how to navigate these questions on their own. There are as many ways to compose as there are composers, and likewise with composition teachers, there are several different roads which teachers can set students down. This dissertation attempts to map several different paths which newer, younger, or differently experienced teachers might use as trail headings in their own teaching. This study looks for those landmarks that many teachers can use to choose a particular goal or destination that either the teacher or the student has chosen and guide the student to it. And by drawing on literature from the fields of music education and composition, through this dissertation I seek to contribute to conversation regarding these two fields and the ways in which they might benefit one another