Goals and Objectives for Majors

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:

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.

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

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.

Music