Music 420, Composition Seminar III:
Music 420 provides experience in original and creative musical composition, either acoustic or technological or in combination. All seminarians will convene throughout the year 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.
Required Individual Projects: Fall 2019
Those students in Music 420 must complete various assignments and exercises for class work AND complete one or more originally designed composition project/s requisite to an individual’s level of experience.
Students must take a total of 10 or more weekly lessons per semester, scheduled on a regular basis. Lessons will be with either Prof. Kathryn Alexander or Konrad Kaczmarek or one of the YSM graduate composers, as assigned. Every student must present their work in one class each semester.
Students are required to attend the Beinecke Library 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.
Required Seminar Assignments and Exercises: Fall 2019
Detailed information and specific assignments will be posted at the Canvas site.
Weekly Lesson Submission Guidelines:
In addition to class assignments and exercises, students will be graded on the work from their weekly lessons. From those meetings, students must make a minimum of 5 submissions over the following dates:
#1. Monday, 9/23
#2. Monday, 10/14
Fall Break
#3. Monday, 11/11
#4. Monday, 12/2
#5. Friday, 12/13
Submission must be made on the specified dates, and ALL SUBMISSIONS MUST reflect work on the semester-long composition project. All submissions are time-stamped when they are uploaded to Canvas, and late submissions will be penalized one letter grade.
Grading for Each Semester:
Class participation — 10%
—(Note: three or more combined absences from classes and/or concerts may forfeit this 7% in total)
Lesson participation — 10%
—(Note: three or more combined absences from lessons may forfeit this 8% in total)
Assignments & Exercises — 45%
Composition Submissions — 30%
Midterm Meeting w/ Dr. A or Prof. K — 2.5%
Final Meeting w/ Dr. A or Prof. K — 2.5%
Grading Criteria:
Students are expected to show advancement in their compositional skills to earn the following grades:
A = Exceptional improvement in the development of compositional techniques, syntax, and form
B = Demonstrable improvement in the 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 coursework 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 Canvas:
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