Advanced Music Composition
This course focuses on 19th- through 21st-century Western music, developing students’ understanding of advanced techniques through listening, analysis, and composition.
Specific material covered depends on student interest, but may include model composition, variation technique, orchestration, choral writing, and film scoring. Throughout the year, students learn a number of compositional techniques from different repertories, such as chromatic mediant relationships, basic Riemannian functions, ostinato techniques, and minimalist procedures.
Our study of a wide diversity of musical styles serves as an incentive for student compositions in those styles, and throughout the year, students compile a portfolio of their original compositional work so that they can track their progress. Students build skills in notation so that they are able to express what they want and care about in their music, and ultimately, so that their music expresses something about them.
The course culminates with the performance of an original composition at the Spring Music Theory Assembly.