# 2.

 

Remarkably, none of the core members of Henry Cow had much formal musical education, which didn't stop Fred Frith (BA and MA in English Literature from Cambridge) from becoming a professor of composition. The same applied to most of the RIO bands, although I think Gerard Hourbette of Art Zoyd may have graduated from a conservatory.

 

Greag Lake can't read a note of music.

Ian Anderson picked up the flute because it looked cool and he had never seen one before.

 

Allegedly.

 

But Czukay and Schmidt did study under Stockhausen.

 

Both Can and Kraftwerk have illustrious backgrounds, Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter first met as classical music students at the Dusseldorf Conservatory, according to VH1.

 

Also Irmin Schmidt was a trained conducter, who won competitions and awards in conducting b4 creating Can, from the musicians I've read about he is the most accomplished musician  I've come across so far.

 

Regarding Henry Cow, Chris Cutler rejects the use of musical notation (and so by extention much of music theory) as he believes it is responsible for the rift between composer and performer.  After all, Cow was largely into improv, or "spontaneous composition," rather than note-for-note composition.  This raises an interesting question: do they resist note-for-note replication due to a resistance to music notation, or do they resist music notation due to a resistance of note-for-note replication?

 

Even more suprisingly, one of the biggest reasons for the addition of Lindsay Cooper to the band was her rigorous classical training. 

 

Two years ago, he went to Weimar University in the music class, and he participated on a project called "the Weimar Project" with the music students. He had to read the notes because it was for most part, classical music. So, don't ever say that he can not read music notes at all, or sheets music. It is not true.

 

How can he learned to play classical music and transformed it to prog.music without any knowledge of reading music sheets? That's impossible because many of ELP's music is so complicated. 

 

 

 

     

 

    

 

richard harvey graduated from Royal College of Music

 

john adams (shaker loops principles) was trained as a composer at Harvard, massachusetts

 

 

 

That's a bit of an over simplification - Henry Cow included totally composed pieces, free improvisation and various points between. The Henry Cow book includes part of Tim Hodgkinson's score for Amygdala, and Fred Frith commented on working with musicians who couldn't read music when making Gravity and Speechless. Cutler doesn't reject notation completely, but he does question total dependence on the score.

 

Regarding Henry Cow:

 

Most things were through-composed by somebody: Fred Tim, Lindsay or John. However, once a composition had been given to the group it was effectively in the public domain; once we started to rehearse it, everybody had a say and could propose changes, criticise. It was a healthy process, I think. And we improvised a lot - so things discovered in improvisation found their way into compositions and things learned in the process of making compositions work found their way into improvisation. - Chris Cutler, 1999.

 

Among other post Henry Cow projects, Cutler collaborated with Stevan Tickmayer in Science Group, for which Tickmayer wrote very detailed compositions and Cutler the texts.

 

 

He's the one that springs to my mind when seeng this thread.

 

I believe that Ant Phillips (Genesis) couldn't read music when he was in Genesis, but later got a degree.

 

Genesis started when Banks, Gabriel, Phillips and Rutherford were still at Charterhouse school. Don't know the english school system but it's not college degree. (or higher)

They got themselves a classical music education there if I'm not wrong.

 

After Egg Mont Campbell went to the Royal College of Music (where he composed the wind quartets on Egg's last album), but at the time of Egg/Arzachel/Uriel Campbell and Stewart were only in their late teens, though they'd had music lessons while at school.

 

I appreciate Prog more by those who weren't properly trained. I expect more from those who were.

 

I can go either way with this. The author of the music knows the true meaning of the material, thus when performed can exhibit the song's true integrity. The trained musician can mimic the song.

 

This may not be the best example, but only Gilmour can play the solo to "Comfortably Numb" with the emotion intended.

 

But to further my original point, the music created my those trained, I expect to be of higher quality. This is not usually the case.

 

It depends on what they were trained in. A Music degrees cover Performance, Composition, Theory and History. Anyone doing performance will be taught composition and theory, but it does not follow that they will be good at it. Similarily anyone studying composition will have to be able to play an instrument, but they might not be able to turn in a virtuoso performance.

 

Many orchestra musicians have trouble improvising, let alone composing. I think it is fair to say however, that many prog musicians have an understanding of music theory (triads, modal scales, modulation etc.) with or without any formal training since they have progressed beyond 12 &16-bar blues and pentatonic soloing.