The Best Textbook and the Best Teacher

Throughout my experience as a student and as a self-taught musician in various areas of music, one thing has become very clear to me.

There are two types of educators, of teachers: those who theorize endlessly (and have never composed anything) and those who are actual composers.

I don’t mean to say that just because someone is a composer, they’ll automatically be a good teacher.

This year, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a teacher of orchestration. He’s also a composer by profession. And he doesn’t follow or directly recommend any book, treatise, or anything of the sort....

He says—and he’s right—that the real learning comes from the scores themselves.

The most valuable thing I’m learning is how to find solutions to the things I want to orchestrate, rather than formulas for instrument combinations, etc.

And I want to give an example that has caught my attention recently.

I was listening to Otello by G. Verdi. And I noticed that, no matter what’s happening in the score—which is a lot and quite complex—there’s a pedal in the low register of the organ with three notes in a cluster: C, C-sharp, and D.

This pedal lasts six and a half minutes!! And you can hear it in the background, especially with headphones and, I imagine, in a live performance.

Why did Verdi write this? Why doesn’t it clash horribly with the rest of the music? These are the questions I’ve learned to answer.

What do you think of this musical device?