the composer's ear?

this week i was interested in reading marc grant's newmusicbox article titled, How Good is Your Ear (part 1). grant uses as a starting point out gunther schuller's seven skills necessary of a conductor's ear:

1) harmony; 2) pitch and intonation; 3) dynamics; 4) timbre; 5) rhythm and articulation; 6) balance and orchestrational aspects; 7) line and continuity. (For composers, I would add memory as attribute 8.)

It was interesting to me that the article and the following discussion organized around a composers (and conductors) ability to hear mistakes in his/her work. obviously error detection is a primary skill that any musician (and composer) needs in their toolkit, but i think the study of harmony (along with counterpoint and form) is still the most easily misunderstood skills in composition.

i would suggest that a great starting point for a composer to develop their ear is to transcribe their 10 favorite pieces. for me i stumbled upon this quite by accident. many of my favorite pieces are not easily available (mostly because they are rentals like philip glass's einstein on the beach), and the process of transcribing them by ear, i not only understood their harmonies, but got a deeper understanding what makes them tick. (here are just a few.... how is the form and phrasing developed? what role does the orchestration play, and how does the counterpoint affect the harmony? how is the form related to the harmony)

after a while you develop a muscle memory for the aesthetics of a piece, then you develop a deep understanding of why certain choices were made, not just an understanding of what chords and harmonies were used. then by studying a variety of works by a certain composer (or style), you can live in the logic of that musical universe that they have created and start to make distinctions between common practice and the interesting twists and techniques that great composers employ.

besides composing and performing, transcription is what has brought me a deeper understanding and enjoyment of the music that i love. the act of writing it down is much more than the "study" of a piece and i feel that the process of transcribing music is more like having a conversation with the original composer. the point when you really know a composer's work is when you feel like you finish their pieces for them, but the best part is when you find something that you never thought of and you can't put it out of your mind.