Module overview
This module focuses on composition that endeavours to innovate within and extend beyond musical conventions through actively exploring new possibilities, taking risks and experimentation. We’ll delve into a wide range of compositional approaches and techniques that developed during the second-half of the twentieth century and twenty-first centuries. We’ll look at composers who created new musical ‘languages’ (e.g. systematic composition); sounds (e.g. extended instrumental techniques); forms of music notation (e.g. graphic scores); and relationships between composers and performers (e.g. structured improvisation). Reflecting the plethora of approaches available to the twenty-first century composer, we’ll explore music across a range of styles, and in your compositions you can incorporate the approaches we explore into the musical idiom of your choice. - your piece can be Classical, Heavy Metal, Country or in any other idiom, so long as it is notated and adventurous! Where possible, your second assignment composition will be workshopped and recorded by professional guest musicians.
Aims and Objectives
Learning Outcomes
Subject Specific Practical Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- use standard and non-standard music notation effectively
- compose short works
- implement key technical devices and formal procedures in your own composition
Knowledge and Understanding
Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- key aesthetic issues relating to music composition.
- key technical devices and formal procedures that have developed during the second half of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- good-practice within conventional musical notion; good-practice within un-conventional musical notion; and a greater understanding of how to communicate your ideas in musical notation.
Syllabus
A series of topics will be presented over the semester with each topic exploring compositional approaches. Examples of topics that may be explored include:
- Isorhythm and serialism
- Collage and intertextuality
- Micro-macro form
- Aleatoric and graphic scoring techniques
- Open-instrumentation and text based scores
- Repetition
- Extended tonal and modal approaches, including polytonality
- Writing for solo instrument and chamber ensemble
- Notation software skills
Examples of pieces that may be considered and analysed include:
- Joanna Bailie, Artificial Environments 1-5
- John Coltrane, Naima
- Clipping, Song 2
- Bernhard Lang, DW16
- Anna Meredith, Hands Free
- Darius Milhaud, Botafogo
- Cassandra Miller, Duet for Cello and Orchestra
- Meredith Monk, Ellis Island
- Conlon Nancarrow, Study No. 11 for Player Piano
- Arvo Part, Collage on B-A-C-H
- Phronesis, Abraham’s New Gift
- Terry Riley, In C
- James Saunders, Everybody do this
- Rebecca Saunders, Skin
- Ruth Crawford Seeger, String Quartet
- Jennifer Walshe, Becher
Learning and Teaching
Teaching and learning methods
Teaching methods include:
- Lectures
- Individual tutorials
- Workshops
Learning activities include:
- Individual study
- Library-based research
- On-line based research
| Type | Hours |
|---|---|
| Wider reading or practice | 42 |
| Preparation for scheduled sessions | 42 |
| Practical classes and workshops | 2 |
| Tutorial | 8 |
| Lecture | 14 |
| Completion of assessment task | 42 |
| Total study time | 150 |
Resources & Reading list
Textbooks
David Cope (1977). New Music Composition. New York: Schirmer.
Arnold Whittall (1999). Musical composition in the twentieth century: Music since the First World War. New York: Oxford University Press.
Larry Austin (1989). Learning to compose: modes, materials and models of musical invention. Dubuque: Wm. Brown.
Oliver Messiaen (1956). The Technique of my musical language. Leduc.
Arnold Schoenberg (1967). Fundamentals of musical composition. Faber.
Assessment
Assessment strategy
For 3rd level students taking this unit, expectations will be higher than those for 2nd level students, and the assessment criteria will be accordingly stricter. In particular:
- Assignments should demonstrate a broader degree of focus and detail; control over material; formal sophistication; and reflect a more mature response to the set compositional task.
- For score based work, optimal standards are required in terms of the physical appearance of work and following the standards of good-practice musical notation.
- For written work, optimal standards of presentation are required in terms of spelling, punctuation, and grammar; sophistication of vocabulary; provision of footnotes; inclusion of full bibliographic and related details; physical appearance of work, etc.
In short, 3rd level students should aspire at all times to the highest possible levels of undergraduate work.
Summative
Summative assessment description
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Composition | 50% |
| Composition | 50% |
Referral
Referral assessment description
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Resubmit assessments | 100% |
Repeat
Repeat assessment description
| Method | Percentage contribution |
|---|---|
| Repeat of module | 100% |
Repeat Information
Repeat type: Internal & External