MUSI

The composition seminar is a weekly session designed for graduate students in composition. It is an open forum for composers to listen to recent music, including their own, and to discuss issues connected with trends, esthetics, and compositional techniques. The entire composition faculty takes part in these sessions. The composition seminar often hosts well-known visiting composers whose works are performed in the city by various groups or ensembles, as well as performers specializing in new music and contemporary techniques.

The seminar will introduce students to issues and trends in the study of music since 1900. We will explore how scholars have in the last several years have studied musical practices of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as how they have determined salient repertoires, concepts, and themes for their research. Genres explored include German modernism, gospel, EDM, South African Kwaito, noise, and Tejano/Latinx pop (among others). Concepts encountered include migration-diaspora, sound recording, community formation, experimentation, nationhood, diva worship, improvisation, and mourning. We will also reflect on the ways in which scholars have blurred boundaries between musicological subfields and variously combined historiography, ethnography, performance studies, and music analysis.

This course introduces fundamental tools of tonal analysis, applied to music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, accomplished through a focus on Heinrich Schenker's influential theory of linear analysis. A portion of the course will be given over to exploring the historical and cultural context of Schenker's theory, its critical reception, and the ways it has been applied. This will be complemented by an introduction to Schenkerian techniques and the analytical resources they offer. Note: Music 31100 is conceived as a preparation and foundation for Music 31200, which will build directly upon the analytic models and repertoire introduced in Music 31100.

This course is intended for students who wish to pursue specialized readings in music or to do advanced work in composition.

MUSI 27200 addresses topics in music from 1600 to 1800, including opera, sacred music, the emergence of instrumental genres, the codification of tonality, and the Viennese classicism of Haydn and Mozart.

This class explores sixteenth century counterpoint through the lens of species counterpoint training as codified in the eighteenth century. Students will produce compositions and exercises for two and three voices, with a brief excursion into four voice counterpoint. The class will develop a critical ear and a mind towards good counterpoint with in-class critique and discussion. Each class will also be devoted to discussing counterpoint in repertoire from medieval to present, focusing on sixteenth century masterworks, in tandem with assignments in which students complete brief lines of missing voices in existing repertoire, comparing their own solutions with the original. We also compare and discuss famous examples of student counterpoint from Mozart, Beethoven, and others.

This course explores practical applications of external sensing hardware in live and interactive electronic music and interdisciplinary art creation. We will explore topics such as motion detection, gesture mapping, and machine listening in depth though readings, in-class activities, and assigned projects.

This course presents an open environment for creativity and expression through composition in the electronic music studio. The course provides students with a background in the fundamentals of sound and acoustics, covers the theory and practice of digital signal processing for audio, and introduces the recording studio as a powerful compositional tool. The course culminates in a concert of original student works presented in multi-channel surround sound. Enrollment gives students access to the Electronic Music Studio in the Department of Music. No prior knowledge of electronic music is necessary.