Course Content and Outcome Guide for MUS 240
- Date:
- 31-AUG-2010
- Posted by:
- Sally Earll
- Course Number:
- MUS 240
- Course Title:
- Music Composition
- Credit Hours:
- 2
- Lecture hours:
- 10
- Lecture/Lab hours:
- 0
- Lab hours:
- 30
- Special Fee:
- $12
Course Description
Music Composition Introduces music composition with focus on 20th and 21st century compositional techniques and materials. Includes composition of chamber and concert works using topics and methods covered with the goal of compiling a portfolio of original works. Specific topics covered will vary by term. Course may be taken up to three times for credit. Prerequisite: MUS 111.Intended Outcomes for the course
- Utilize contemporary music composition techniques as a means of musical expression.
- Acquire a personal musical language.
- Understand the richness and diversity of contemporary concert music in order to foster creative exchange of musical ideas through skills acquired.
Course Activities and Design
- Score and part preparation and proofing
- Completing a work from conception to performance
- Improvisation as means of generating of musical ideas
- Analysis of masterworks in variety of genres and styles (esempii classici)
- Transcription and/or arranging of preexisting works
- Balancing unity, variety and form
Outcome Assessment Strategies
- Develop a portfolio of professionally prepared original scores for a variety of instrumental combinations including voice(s).
- Reading sessions of original works by peers, faculty, and semi-professional or professional performers.
- One-on-one instructor/student conferences
- Participation in written and oral peer review and evaluation
- Written quantitative/qualitative examination
Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)
Conventional and contemporary music notation practices
- Variation techniques
- Tonality, modality and atonality
- Intervallic cell-based composition and serialism as alternative means of melodic/harmonic organization
- Basic orchestration and idiomatic instrumental/vocal writing
- Melodic transformation and development technique
- Polyphony – contrapuntal and imitative procedures
- Non-tertian harmony and synthetic melodic materials
- Writing for the voice - selecting and setting text
- Indeterminancy in performance and music composition
- Graphic notation and scores
- Extended instrumental and vocal technique