Overarching Goal:

The ability to think in music and to think about music.

Objectives:

• To gain familiarity with a range of different musical practices and traditions, including selected Western classical, American popular, and non-Western practices.
• To learn to create (perform and compose), and analyze music.
• To learn to think about cultural, historical, and cognitive dimensions of music.
• To develop the ability for sustained thinking in or about music.

Means for meeting objectives:

Successful completion of:

• MUS 210 (Classical Music in Western Culture), and a cultural musicology course in the field of music of the Americas.

• A four-semester music theory sequence.
• MUS 212 (Introduction to Ethnomusicology)
• A music thesis project, in either composition, performance, or cultural musicology.

Track-specific objectives, requiring further development of the above general goals and objectives:

Composition Track

Objectives:

• Successful completion of a portfolio of original compositions demonstrating familiarity with vocal, instrumental, and electroacoustic genres, and with computer notation software.
• Demonstrated skill in writing about music.

Means for meeting objectives:

• Successful completion of MUS 235 (Music Composition)
• Successful completion of MUS 237 (Computers, Music, and the Arts)
• Successful completion of two other courses in composition or orchestration
• A thesis that involves a performed composition in the general range of 10’ for chamber orchestra, 15’ for chamber ensembles, or 20’ for solos with accompaniment or synthesized sound; and includes a 15-20 page written component comprised of an analysis of the music and a survey of its historical context.

Performance Track

Objectives:

• Direct experience with a variety of music performance styles and media.
• Demonstrated skill in music performance at a level appropriate for a public recital.
• Demonstrated skill in writing about music.

Means for meeting objectives:

• Successful completion of MUS 220 or s26 (Performance in Western Classical Music)
• Successful completion of MUS 222 (Jazz Performance Workshop)
• Successful completion of four semesters of Applied Music
• Successful completion of four semester of faculty-led ensemble appropriate to the student’s applied music study
• Successful completion of two semesters in a different faculty-led ensemble (different instrumental or vocal medium)
• Faculty approved, 30-minute juried recital prior to end of junior year
• Thesis: full length recital in senior year with significant written component

Cultural Musicology Track

Objectives:

• The development of critical, analytical, and articulatory skills required for scholarship in music.
• An understanding of the embeddedness of music in sociocultural processes, and of music as the performance of culture.

Means for meeting objectives:

• Successful completion of a Junior-Senior seminar
• Successful completion of three other music courses (one of which may be a course pertinent to their interests offered in another department or program)
• A senior thesis that successfully demonstrates the development of skills required for scholarship in music.