Counterpoint and harmony, taught from the music.
Counterpoint and harmony are far more closely connected than most teaching admits — too often they are taught as if they were two separate subjects. They are not. The finest harmonisations can frequently be heard, and explained, as lines; and the finest lines usually carry a harmony of their own.
Why together
Two crafts, one understanding.
Of course the two must be practised separately. You learn to write a clean line, and you learn about harmonisation, and at first these feel like different crafts. But the good teacher does not leave them apart. The work I care about is the joining: showing how a harmonic decision is already a linear one, and how a line already implies its own harmony.
When a student first understands how the two are bound together, something opens. For me it was decisive — the moment my own understanding of music changed and deepened. It is one of the things I most love to teach.
Work can begin from species counterpoint, four-part writing, modal or chromatic practice, or directly from a passage in the student’s own piece. The format depends on the level, the goal and the kind of music involved.
I have had private composition lessons with Daniel Fladmose for a good six months now, and it has been a wonderful experience. In that short time I have gotten an enormous amount out of the teaching.
Gustav R. · Google review Read on Google
Other ways to work together.
Composition lessons
The main access page — composition lessons, score feedback and portfolio preparation. Begin with a score, sketch, recording or question.
OpenOnline composition lessons
How online lessons work in practice — Zoom, shared scores, annotated PDFs, and detailed discussion across time zones.
OpenComposition feedback
A serious response to one piece, sketch, recording or portfolio. Written, annotated, online session, or a combination.
OpenPortfolio preparation
For applicants to music academies, conservatories or talent-development programmes. Diagnostic review, revision priorities, deadline planning.
OpenComposition lessons for adults
For adult and returning composers — informal first contact, flexible frequency, music that has already begun to take shape.
OpenMusic theory for composers
Theory not as rule-knowledge, but as a way of training the ear to understand what music is actually doing.
OpenOrchestration lessons
Texture, balance, register, doubling, colour — instrumentation studied against the actual sounding result.
OpenWorkshops and institutional teaching
For institutions, festivals and talent-development programmes — group sessions, masterclasses, lectures or short residencies.
OpenTell me what you are working on and where you are stuck.
A short example — even a few bars — is usually enough to begin. We can decide together whether to work systematically through counterpoint or harmony, or to approach it from inside a piece you are writing.
Ask about counterpoint or harmony