Timbre and Form

Undergraduate

An exploration of instrumentation and principles of musical form in Western music. Through weekly analysis and scoring exercises, students learn to read scores, understand musical structure, and write for combinations of instruments with attention to timbre, range, performance techniques, and orchestral idioms. Assignments include arrangements, for small and large ensemble, and formal analyses of several musical works whose aim is to show how composers shape melody, harmony and timbre to create large-scale musical structures.