Music Composition

This course, open to students regardless of prior musical experience, focuses on developing musical imagination and the ability to realize and communicate the fruits of that imagination. The course emphasizes fundamental music skills (aural skills, basic performing skills, and music literacy) to support students’ future and ongoing musical endeavors.

This course, which requires basic music literacy skills, focuses on composing music based on the “common-practice tonal” tradition of Western art music and the contemporary traditions that have evolved from it. Students will learn the key elements of tonal theory and practice, develop aural, keyboard, and notation skills, and create a series of compositions aimed at imaginative expression in the tonal idiom.

This course is designed to serve students with some experience composing music, who want to further develop their abilities and explore new approaches to creating new music. Class meetings will consist of weekly seminars, in which various contemporary approaches to composition will be explored, followed by individual lessons, to support each student’s pursuit her/his own interests.