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.