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Not to analyze it. Not to label chords in someone else’s symphony. Not to pass a theory exam. To write. To sit with an empty page and fill it with music that did not exist before you put it there. That is what composition is. That is what this school teaches.
Every child carries a sound. They hum it before they have a name for it — in a lullaby, in the ring of a church bell, in two notes struck on a piano. It moves something in them. And nearly every child who loves music eventually wants to make their own — to write something that did not exist before they sat down at the keyboard. Most lessons never give them the chance. Gradus does, from the very first lesson.
Most music programs teach children to talk about music — to name a chord, label a sonata form, identify a Neapolitan sixth. But naming a thing and making it are two entirely different skills. A child can label every chord in a Beethoven symphony and still have no idea how to write eight bars of their own. Gradus exists to close that gap: from the first lesson, children don't just study music — they write it.
In 1725, Johann Joseph Fux published a book called Gradus ad Parnassum — Steps to the Summit. It did not teach students to analyze. It taught them to write. From the very first page, students composed. They wrote melodies against melodies, tested their ears against what sounded right, and learned by doing — not by labeling. It was the path that trained Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Brahms. Not a theory textbook. A composition school. A course where each step is a piece of music you write yourself.
That path was abandoned. Modern institutions replaced it with analysis and examinations. The steps were still there — carved into the rock by centuries of composers who walked them — but no one was walking them anymore. Gradus rebuilds the path, restores the practice, and brings the conservatory tradition into a system any serious student can use today.
Sources for the lineage. Mozart studied Fux as a child and later taught composition from Gradus ad Parnassum; the surviving record is the Mozart-Attwood notebooks (1785–86), in which Mozart corrected Thomas Attwood’s Fux exercises in his own hand. Beethoven worked species counterpoint with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger in 1794–95, drilling the same five species on the same cantus firmi students still use today. Brahms returned to the Fux method throughout his career, and Nadia Boulanger taught from it at Fontainebleau through most of the twentieth century.
This path was not invented. It was rediscovered — born from a frustration many young musicians know: having the theory in their head but never in their hands. Gradus goes back to Fux, back to the beginning. Children start writing from day one. This program is the record of that journey — the steps, the pieces written at each stage — offered to anyone willing to walk the same road.
Here, your child writes music from day one. In the very first lesson, they compose with two notes. By the end of Stage I, they write melodies across a complete scale. By Stage II, they write counterpoint — two independent voices that sound beautiful together. By Stage III, harmony. And it keeps going — through fugue, through form, through orchestration — always writing, always composing, always learning by creating.
This is not a method that avoids discipline. It is a method that understands what discipline is for. The teachers who shaped Fux’s tradition knew that discipline is not restriction — it is formation. The constraints shape the composer, not just the composition. Every exercise here exists because it trains something in the ear, in the hands, in the musical judgment that cannot be learned any other way.
Music is a story of pulls and resolutions. Every note your child writes either rests at home or leans toward it — some gently, some urgently. That leaning is what we hear as music moving, and composing is the art of shaping it.
Students never memorize this idea. They absorb it by writing — melody by melody, lesson by lesson — until they can hear where the music wants to go before anyone tells them. See the idea as a picture →
Gradus was founded in 2025 to bring the conservatory composition tradition — Fux, Albrechtsberger, Boulanger — into a daily online practice system. The work draws on primary historical sources, including the Mozart-Attwood notebooks, Marpurg’s Treatise on Fugue, Boulanger’s harmony method, and the Bach-Schiorring chorales.
Gradus was built for individual learners, but it was also designed to serve as a complete composition curriculum for teachers and schools. If you teach music — privately, at a school, or at a university — you can use Gradus as the backbone of your composition program.
Here’s how it works:
When you create an account, choose the Teacher role. You’ll receive a unique class code that your students use to join your class when they sign up. Once they’re connected, your Teacher Dashboard gives you:
Student Progress Tracking — See exactly where each student is in the full curriculum, which lessons they’ve completed, and how they’re progressing.
Assignments — Create and assign specific exercises or steps to individual students or your whole class, with due dates.
Built-In Messaging — Communicate directly with your students inside Gradus. Answer questions, give feedback on compositions, and guide their work.
The curriculum itself is already complete — twelve stages of study, from first interval to full orchestra and an original capstone. Every lesson includes explanations, interactive exercises, listening assignments, and composition prompts.
To get started, click Sign In above, create an account with the Teacher role, and you’ll have your dashboard ready in seconds.