Rules for music composition?

Question:are there any rules for choral music composition? what about the piano compliment?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: are there any rules for choral music composition? what about the piano compliment?

Yes. Lots in fact. The most basic of which is you have to write in the correct vocal ranges. Not all the rules can be broken, even if you're a famous composer like Mozart, Bach, etc. It's useless if you write something nice but is not singable. Like you can't write a C one octave lower than middle C and expect the sopranos to be able to sing that. And yes you'll usually need to write a piano accompaniment, unless you desire your piece to sound like acapella hymns - though the art of writing a good accompaniment is another issue altogether. There's too much information to study for me to list them all out here - you need to study music theory, scores, how to write lyrics, etc. Best is if you go to a music library and look up choral composition + piano accompaniment. At the very least you'll know what is generally acceptable and what's not.

yeah there are tons of rules. Trust me. I have a Bachelor's and Master's degree. However, the first rule is to make it sound good. If you can make it sound good and break all the rules, they'll call you a genius. :)

Yes, tons and tons of rules....unless your a Mozart , Bach, or Beethoven, or have what they call perfect pitch... go to the library and look at all the books that they have on music composition. It takes four years to get a degree in this subject...so that should give you a hint on all that there is to learn about this subject !!!!!!!

uhm...well there isn't necessarily any rules per say...
but there are things that are usually done.
-piano accompaniment needs to be made for an intermediate player unless you are writing for someone
-watch the age group you write for. decide if you're writing for youth or adults first
-make sure your stuff is sing-able, i would test it a few times first

Simply "going to the library and looking it up," isn't going to really be of much help. You can write a piece without knowing what you're doing, sure, but it probably won't be fantastic. There are rules of chord progression and voice-leading that you need to know before you can break them and still be assured that your song will sound good and be singable. And yes, there are rules for the piano accompaniment, too!

My suggestions are these: start writing now if you want to, but take some music theory courses at your local university. You will start learning the rules of music and composition in music theory, and from there you can move into more focused composition courses. Also, study scores! If you study other choral pieces (and piano pieces, etc.), you might start to understand how complex even the simplest pieces can be.