Composition Portfolio

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• important aesthetic issues relating to music composition.
• good-practice within conventional musical notion
• advanced technical devices and formal procedures that have developed during the second half of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

Learning Outcomes

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• use music notation effectively and communicatively
• implement key technical devices and formal procedures in your own composition
• compose middle-length works (i.e. 5-12 minutes)

Over the 24 teaching weeks of the module, approximately 8 classes are dedicated to lectures where compositional approaches and techniques are presented. Examples of topics that may be explored include:

 Musical textures

 Orchestral composition

 Theatrical music

 Advanced systems based composition

 Conceptual music

 Collage

 New Complexity

 Modular form

Examples of specific pieces will be considered and analysed include:

 Luciano Berio, Sinfonia

 Henry Purcell, Fantasia in three parts

 Richard Ayres, Trumpet Noncerto

 Joanna Bailie, Artificial Environments 1-5

 Johannes Kriedler, Fremdarbeit

 Karheinz Stockhausen, Kreuzspiel

 Igor Stravinsky, Symphonies of Wind Instruments

 Arnold Schoenberg, Farben

In addition, you will write at least one work (and usually two) that will be performed and recorded by professional musicians.

Teaching methods include:

 Lectures

 Group and individual tutorials

 Workshops with professional musicians

Learning activities include:

 Individual study

 Library-based research

 On-line based research

 Analysis/listening to contemporary scores

 Close critical reading of texts

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.