Module MUSI1271: Composition 1: 20th-Century Innovations

Department: Music

MUSI1271: Composition 1: 20th-Century Innovations

Prerequisites

• A-Level Music or equivalent.

Corequisites

Excluded Combination of Modules

Aims

• • This module introduces students to the fundamentals of composition through the modernist repertoire of the twentieth century, strengthening their skills as composers, performers, and analysts of this music. Students learn to draw composition techniques from set pieces and texts, and to interrogate the aesthetic questions they raise. Through critical engagement with a diverse canon, students will build their knowledge of twentieth-century art music, preparing them for further study of contemporary music and enhancing their musicological skills, such as score analysis, critical listening, and engagement with primary and secondary texts. The set material will be used to illustrate practical aspects of composition, helping students develop core skills—presentation of notation, idiomatic writing, and coherent phraseology. Seminars will include workshops and reflective discussion to encourage practical engagement with the ideas explored, building students’ skills in collaboration, experimentation, and workshopping.

Content

• The course is oriented around a chronological overview of Western art music, 1918-1991. It presents a diverse version of this canon, including music by composers marginalised due to their nationality, race and gender, or dismissed because of the perceived conservatism of their output. Lectures will include:
• ‘Expressionism & Serialism’, focusing on Schoenberg and Crawford-Seeger
• ‘Formalism & Realism’, focusing on Shostakovich and Prokofiev
• ‘Tonality, 1945–1970’, focusing on Britten and Henze
• ‘Free Improvisation’, focusing on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians
• In each lecture, students will receive a handout providing contextual information, a guide to the set reading, listening, and composing tasks, and a list of academic reading, literature, film and art for further study. The lectures will address a set of core topics, including:
• Harmony, counterpoint, and twentieth-century tonality,
• Precomposition, including serialism and chance operations,
• Noise, sound, and texture as musical material, and
• Gestural thinking, as a way of understanding musical material holistically.
• Students will be asked to compose works for each other to perform, with length and ensemble size specified. These works will be accompanied by commentaries that situate them in relation to the material covered in the lectures. This work can be submitted for preliminary feedback or group discussion in lectures before the workshops. The workshops, undertaken in seminar groups, will focus on resolving practical and notational questions that arise from the submitted works. Reflective sessions with the module leader will allow students to plan pieces, reflect more broadly on their work, and receive and interrogate feedback.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be able to:
• Demonstrate a contextual understanding of twentieth-century composition techniques, through both analytical and compositional practice.

• Students will be able to:
• Compose works using techniques developed in the twentieth century.
• Perform workshop compositions that include techniques and notations developed in the twentieth century.
• Identify and discuss compositional techniques and stylistic characteristics in twentieth-century scores and recordings.

• Students will be able to:
• Work collaboratively to produce workshop performances of new compositions.
• Engage creatively with unfamiliar music styles with curiosity and openness.
• Develop work through an iterative process of sharing and revision, learning and growing through feedback.
• Discuss aesthetic and technical questions with intellectual rigour.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Teaching will include a combination of lectures and seminars.
• Students will be assessed in two different ways: 1. A composition portfolio; 2. A discussion
• To develop the required skills, students must interrogate the knowledge that they have learnt in the lectures through practical experimentation in the workshop seminars. Refelction seminars allow students to prepare for and reflect upon these workshops and to integrate their outcomes into their practices. To assess this process, both the practical and intellectual skills are evaluated in a portfolio submission and a discussion.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Written and practical exercises, and participation in composition workshop.

■ Students who do not attend monitored activities shown under Teaching Methods and Learning Hours, or who fail to complete the summative or formative assessment(s) specified above, may be subject to the Academic Progress procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University.