Edward Kliszus' teaching philosophy emphasizes composition and performance to give students a full understanding of music. He believes students should write and perform their own music to help study various musical elements and techniques. Kliszus also stresses studying music in the context of other art forms and cultures to understand it as a vital art form that has evolved over time. Examining elements of different composers' styles helps students analyze works in different ways. His goal is to provide cognitive skills for lifelong learning about music.

1. Teaching Philosophy
Edward A. Kliszus, Ph.D.
As an educator, my central precept is to facilitate using all possible means the success of
students in their chosen field of music, concomitant to instilling and nurturing a love and appreciation
for this vital and arguably most abstract form of artistic expression. Here are some of the areas that
inform my pedagogy for inspiring, teaching, and sharing music with my students.
An emphasis on composition and performance is critical in attaining a full understanding and
appreciation of music, regardless of whether one’s major course of study is composition, theory, music
education, musical theatre, conducting, history, performance or musicology. Musicians should both
perform their own music and write for varied ensembles or soloists that will perform their music. This
practice in turn motivates and facilitates the study and application of music technology, orchestration,
arranging, harmony, voicing, voice leading, counterpoint, and performance practice. Success in this
venture also expands the student’s working knowledge of instrument practical and extended ranges,
alternate sounds, and vocal tessitura. In addition, the composer will learn to ascertain what musical
elements (melody, rhythm, timbre, texture, form, or dynamics) predominate the work’s structure to
express its import. Emphasizing performance makes sense since music is an aural art form that to be
experienced needs to be heard and understood by performers and audience alike. Chamber music
experience in particular provides a powerful venue for musical development.
Studying music in the context of other forms of human expression, culture, and history informs
the student’s understanding of music as a vital art form. In addition to developing a thorough working
knowledge of evolving musical constructs including past, present and future developments in music
and other forms of artistic expression, collaboration between students of all music, visual art, literature,
dance and drama is to be facilitated and encouraged. That includes examination of the earliest music
through the various atonal genre and the current trends in electronic music production developed with
software tools like Sonar, Pro Tools, and Sound Forge and multi-media performances that use music
(live and recorded), drama, film, and dance to convey meaning.

2. In addition to developing an understanding of the evolution and application of musical
elements through the centuries, the student of music benefits by uncovering and examining what
elements comprise a composer’s sound signature. That is, to ascertain the critical elements of works
that distinguish composers from their contemporaries who when using the same musical instruments
and harmonic and melodic materials achieve recognizably different sounds and musical meaning (a
tenet of Nadia Boulanger’s work). Aside of discovering more obvious elements like harmonic motion,
chord voicing or orchestration, discourse in this area can reveal how in the Andantino from Mozart’s
Concerto for Harp, Flute and Orchestra, K.299, the composer achieves musical pathos, a harbinger of
music to be written decades later. Or in Richard Wagner’s works, discourse leading to revealing the
elements of his sound signature can expose his masterful manipulation of time, his synthesis of poetic,
visual, musical and dramatic elements (Gesamtkunstwerk) or more specifically in Tristan and Isolde,
how he seeks varied means of resolving augmented sixth chords presented in such frequency that one
might argue that they comprise the critical elements of the work.
Examining compositional elements leads also to a philosophical and technical analysis of a
contemporary like Elliott Carter who develops his own set of chord structures that serve his
compositional processes to explicate at least three concerns: discourse, time and texture (Stone &
Stone, 1977, p. 185-191). How then shall the student analyze the works of Carter vs. Beethoven…
Schenkerian analysis or Allen Forte? What special meaning does Carter imbue upon the tritone? One
would argue that Carter’s manifestation of musical discourse and time concerns become progressively
textural with a strong sense of dramatic trajectory…he creates significant meaning from a seemingly
sterile set of chord structures just as dodecaphonic structures are used by Alban Berg to achieve
powerful expressionism.
Guiding students to examine music aesthetically and philosophically in the context of other art
forms provides an intellectual rigor that can enrich one’s understanding of music while informing
quality pedagogy. Suzanne Langer examined music, dance, and visual art in such a fashion that one
can gain powerful conceptual tools and complex metaphors for describing sound. For example, she
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3. describes music’s primary meaning or import as the illusion or manipulation of time. Sounds that
evoke the listener to imagine movement are described as “echoes” of other art forms...movement from
dance, or colors from visual art. Poetry she describes as “life in the mode of the present tense” (Langer
1953, p. 50).
Involvement in enriched artistic experiences outside the classroom helps students to grow
musically in many ways. Music theory and composition when presented in a broad sense enriches the
aesthetics, musicality and understanding of music students. During the 1990’s I had the opportunity of
participating in the International New Music Consortium on multiple occasions both in New York and
abroad, (www.inmc.org), where faculty and undergraduate and graduate theory & composition
students wrote new works for varied chamber ensembles and soloists and perform and record their
music throughout Europe. This rich venue provided students with inspiration, an international
perspective of the arts, a greater appreciation and understanding of other art forms, and benefits of a
vital musical sharing experience with accomplished multi-national musicians and composers. In
addition, many of my former college students accompanied me to concerts throughout the metropolitan
area in order to experience first hand musical works heretofore examined only in a classroom setting.
Finally, a major goal of the processes and matters aforementioned is to provide students with
the cognitive means and skills sets to develop musically and to apply technical, analytical, and research
skills that enable lifelong learning and the ability to evolve as musical scholars, practitioners, and
informed participants in the musical arts.
Works Cited
Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Stone, E., & Stone, K. (Eds.). (1977). The Writings of Elliott Carter. Bloomington & London: Indiana
University Press.
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