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21M.505

Music Composition

3-0-9 units · Graduate

Directed composition of original writing involving voices and/or instruments. Includes a weekly seminar in composition for the presentation and discussion of work in progress. Students are expected to produce at least one substantive work that will be performed in public by the end of the term. Contemporary compositions and major works from 20th-century music literature are studied. Students taking the graduate version complete different assignments.

Fall 2008

This course features directed composition of larger forms of original writing involving voices and/or instruments. It includes a weekly seminar in composition for the presentation and discussion of work in progress. Students are expected to produce at least one substantive work, performed in public, by the end of the term. Contemporary compositions and major works from 20th-century music literature are studied.

Readings

  • We will refer to chapters that deal with twentieth-century compositional technique in two books:
    Listed reading
  • Benjamin, Thomas, Michael Horvit, and Robert Nelson. Techniques and Materials of Music . 7th ed. New York, NY: Schirmer, 2007. ISBN: 9780495189770.
    Listed reading
  • Chapter 30, “Modes, Scales and Sets.”
    Listed reading
  • Chapter 33, “Ordered Segments and Serialism.”
    Listed reading
  • Chapter 35, “New Ways to Organize Rhythm, Meter, and Duration.”
    Listed reading
  • Clendinning, Jane Piper, and Elizabeth West Marvin. The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis . New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2004. ISBN: 9780393976526.
    Listed reading
  • You may own one of these texts from your previous music studies at MIT. The relevant chapters will also be provided in class; if you are new to post-tonal compositional technique you will find these chapters particularly helpful.
    Listed reading

Prerequisites & course information

Subject meets with 21M.351 Prereq: 21M.304 , 21M.310 , or permission of instructor G (Spring) 3-0-9 units Can be repeated for credit.

Sources