What is Musical Literacy?

Literacy in the world of letters implies that you can both read and write sentences. In the world of music, however, a person is considered literate if they can read music and (maybe) understand some of the theory of music (the equivalent of sentence diagramming); the writing of music never enters the equation. Isn't that odd? I think it's more than odd actually. I think it points to a great hole in the world of musical education.

I will not argue that by teaching every child the basics of writing music that they will all choose to extend that knowledge to writing large or sophisticated works. How many people use their skills with letters to write a novel? Still, I really can't imagine that a person's musical education is complete if they cannot write a simple 16-measure melody, well-chorded or counterpointed.

In the renaissance, a person was considered a cantor (a singer, a parrot) if they could read and perform music proficiently. A person was not a musician until they could apply their understanding of music to writing it.

I was born into a musical family; both of my parents were instrumentalists. However, in my musical education I literally had to teach myself to write music through trial and error. This is not my experience alone, but the experience of many composers. Why do English teachers give assignments to write sonnets and haiku, but music teachers neglect to ask for little sonatinas? I'd really like to know.

Is it fear? Is writing music that mystical? There is an aura about great music that provokes awe, but isn't the same true of the many of Shakespeare's greatest monologues and sonnets.

As you might have guessed from the tone of this opinion piece, I feel our musical establishment needs to wake up and start giving the music students of this country a complete music education: that includes teaching reading and performing skills, but must also include music writing skills. Why continue to offer only half of a music education just because that's the way it has been done in the past?