Programs in music composition and theory teach people the principles of creating and arranging music. Students learn the principles of sound manipulation including melody, harmony, and rhythm. They learn to listen critically. They also study different musical styles and develop methods of writing parts for the various instruments and voices.
The French writer Jean Cocteau once commented that "a poet always has too many words in his vocabulary, a painter too many colors on his palette, [and] a musician too many notes on his keyboard." Have you ever seen those magnetic poetry kits? You start with a bunch of individual words scattered across your refrigerator. One by one, you choose words to create a poem. Usually, there are many left over, and there are some words that you may never use.
Imagine if you did the same thing with music. There may be a limited number of notes in a musical scale, but the possibilities for combining them are endless. How do you make sure that "every note [is] in its right place," as the classical composer Brahms said was necessary?
It's true that composing music, like any art form, involves creative instincts or impulses. But you also need structure and analysis. Studying music composition and theory helps to give you this sense of order in your understanding of music. And this ordered understanding helps develop your individual creative voice.
As a composer, you may find your art to be solitary. After all, it's just you that writes your pieces, right? But if you think about the musicians, composers, and other people who have influenced your work, you can begin to understand how you belong to a larger community. For this reason, you often study the different musical styles of different composers when you're in a music composition and theory program.
Just as a writer should read a lot to help his craft, you should listen to a lot of music. And in order to listen, you need to learn how to listen carefully. Courses in aural theory teach you to do this. You might learn to identify musical forms such as fugues, suites, and partitas. You also study the history and development of music composition and theory. This helps you to understand where your own compositions fit in the spectrum.
Many colleges and universities offer degree programs in music composition and theory. You can typically earn a bachelor's, a master's, or a doctoral degree. In general, a bachelor's degree takes about four years of full-time study and a master's degree about two years after that. A doctoral degree usually takes three to five years on top of a master's degree.
Some programs offer you the choice of focusing on studying and writing concert music or scoring music for films and other media.