Music 413, Composition Seminar IV:
Music 413 provides experience in original and creative musical composition, either acoustic or technological, or in combination. All seminarians will convene during the semester both together as an extended group with the graduate composers of the School of Music, and separately as the undergraduate composers group. Guest composers will include professional composers of a wide variety of aesthetic views, style and stature, as well as faculty composers of the Department of Music and the School of Music.
Requirements:
Those students in Music 413b must complete module assignments as prescribed, composition lessons with their assigned composition instructor AND between 5-8 minutes of an originally designed composition project requisite to an individual’s level of experience.
MIDI Realizations Using the Vienna Symphonic Library:
Module Assignment #1: Readings, as assigned; Beat Kaufmann’s ‘How To Use VSL’ Tutorial; Logic Projects, excerpts from Debussy’s ‘Syrinx’ and Copland’s ‘Fanfare For A Common Man.’
Module Assignment #2: Readings, as assigned; Logic Projects,excerpts from Kardies’ ‘Decision Day’ and ‘Hanibal’s Elephants’ and MIDI scoring assignments.
Module Assignment #3: Readings, as assigned; Logic Projects,excerpts from excerpts from Ravel’s ‘Bolero,’ and MIDI scoring assignments.
Module Assignment #4:Readings, as assigned; Logic Projects, excerpts from Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’ and MIDI scoring assignments.
Resources:
The reading material for Music 413b is available at the Comp Seminar classesv2 site. Go there, find the Resources Folder, then click on it to find the Music 413b – Spring 2016 Folder.
All listening materials for Music 413b are available on the workstation in Rm. 403 and some at the Vienna Symphonic Library website:
Vienna Symphonic Library website:
Instrumentology – https://vsl.co.at/en/Instrumentology
Musical Works – https://vsl.co.at/en/Music
In Addition:
Additionally, students must take a total of ten or more weekly lessons per semester, scheduled on a regular basis. Lessons will be as assigned. Every student must present their work at one class each semester.
Students are required to attend the Yale College Composers Concerts and encouraged to attend the New Music New Haven concerts, as well as any other concerts on which they and their peers present their works.
Grading for Each Semester:
Class and concert attendance/participation/attitude — 5%
—(Note: three or more combined absences from classes and/or concerts may forfeit this 5%)
Lesson preparation/attendance/attitude — 10%
—(Note: three or more combined absences from lessons may forfeit this 10%)
Module Assignments — 40%
Original Composition Project — 45%
—(Note: Original Composition Project is comprised of 35% weekly lesson progress, 10% final evaluation)
Grading Criteria:
Students are expected to show advancement in their compositional skills to earn the following grades:
A = Exceptional improvement in development of compositional techniques, syntax, and form
B = Demonstrable improvement in development of compositional techniques, syntax, and form
C = No change in use of compositional techniques, syntax, and form
D = Regression in use of compositional techniques, syntax, and form
Preparation and attendance/participation for course work classes and lessons, the class presentation, and individual composition work – are the responsibility of the student. The professors and teaching assistant are NOT obligated to make-up classes and lessons students miss.
Texts on Reserve:
Adler, Samuel The Study of Orchestration, 3rd edition. (W. W. Norton & Company) ISBN: 0-393-97572-X
Blatter. Alfred Instrumentation and Orchestration, 2nd edition. (Schirmer) ISBN: 0-534-25187-0
Persichetti, Vincent Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice, 1st edition. (W. W. Norton & Company) ISBN: 0-393-09539-8
Potter, John The Cambridge companion to singing, 1st edition. (Cambridge University Press) ISBN: 0521622255
Read, Gardner Music Notation, 2nd edition. (Taplinger Publishing Company) ISBN: 0-800-85453-5
Solomon, Samuel How to Write for Percussion, 1st edition. (SZSolomon) ISBN: 0-9744721-0-7
Stone, Kurt Music Notation in the Twentieth Century: A Practical Guidebook, 1st edition. (W. W. Norton & Company) ISBN: 0-393-95053-0