Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.


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Composer Blogs@ Sequenza21.com

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Happy Solstice
Alex Shapiro

A Gnarly Composer Speaks to His Audience
Evan Johnson

Making Music for Games
Lanier Sammons

The Poietic Fallacy Fallacy
Rodney Lister

Applying Myself
Galen H. Brown

Deciding How Long a Piece Should Be
Jerry Bowles

What You Don't Know and Who You Don't Know
Frank J. Oteri

New Music in Granville, OH
David Salvage

Marketing Our Music
Cary Boyce

Do you do organic?
David Salvage


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Friday, December 23, 2005
Teaching the Twentieth Century at Brooklyn College

So I get to teach the fourth (and final) semester next Spring of Brooklyn College’s undergraduate theory sequence: Music 7.4, Twentieth Century Music. Now, good heavens, there are so many different kinds of music in the twentieth century – and so many fantastic composers – that a semester simply isn’t enough to make sense of it all, and worthy subjects will inevitably be skipped. But here’s my plan.

I don’t want to breeze blithely over every little thing; I’d rather cover a few things in depth. So I’m centering all my lectures around the following pieces, all of which I’m comfortable with and all of which are important and/or exemplary in some way. (Note that, in order to pick up some necessary slack from Music 7.3, I’m starting in the nineteenth century. But, honestly, I can’t wait to lecture on Tristan.)

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde
Debussy, Trois Nocturnes
Schoenberg, Five Pieces for Orchestra
Webern, Variations Op. 27
Stravinsky, Symphony in C
Lutoslawski, Symphony No.3
Reich, Music for Eighteen Musicians
Prof. Salvage’s Favorite Pop Music – a TBA swirl of Beatles, Billy Joel, and others

To fill in the gaps, I’ve selected twenty (the approximate number of students in the class) topics each of which will be the subject for a twenty minute oral presentation by a student. These topics run the gamut from Ives’s Unanswered Question, to Cage, to Charlie Parker, to Richard Rogers. The term paper, 10-15 pages on a topic of their choice, must be on music that is not considered classical. Finally, there are four composition assignments (I’m supposed to assign a lot of formal composition) each requiring students to use some of the techniques I’ve illustrated in the lectures on the above pieces.

 



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