Harmony II: Techniques for Composing Contemporary Music
MUSC X 403.53
Deepen your understanding of harmony with an exploration of contemporary music starting with the French Impressionists of the 19th century and ending with current composers. In this course, you will create your own compositions informed by the lessons learned from great composers.
Cover the masters of contemporary scoring such as Stravinsky, Glass, Adams, and more
Delve into complex harmonic topics such as modality, tonal ambiguity, serialism, modern scales, and more
Work on your own compositions utilizing these concepts
Expand on your previous harmonic training to explore the deviations and complexities of modern harmony
About this course:
In this course, you learn the techniques of twentieth/twenty-first century harmony while also applying the theoretical concepts to your own compositions. You are exposed to a wide variety of modern-era harmonic practices, starting with an introduction to the French Impressionists of the late nineteenth century and then moving forward to current trends of today. Instruction consists of three stages: establishing a foundation in contemporary harmonic techniques, studying the music scores of the great masters who demonstrate these techniques, and creating your own compositions by emulating what you have learned. Harmonic concepts include: modality and tonal ambiguity of the impressionists, total chromaticism, free atonality, serialism, bitonality, modern scales, pandiatonicism, tone clusters and sound mass, minimalism, neo-romanticism and more. Scores studied include works by Debussy, Ravel, Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Ligeti, Penderecki, Reich, Adams, Glass, Part and Whitacre. Utilizing many of the concepts learned, you work on your own compositions and study scores that use many of these harmonic techniques.
Prerequisites
MUSC X 403.52 Harmony I: Crash Course in Composing for Tonal Music, or consent of the instructor.
Summer 2025 Schedule
Date & Time
Details
Format
-
Saturday 10:00AM - 1:00PM PT
Future Offering (Opens April 28, 2025 12:00:00 AM)
We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content and to store your content preferences. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies.
Read our privacy policy.