MUSIC 7120

Orchestration: Approaches to Large Ensemble Music in the 20th and 21st centuries

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2022-2023.

Orchestration is a seminar intended to immerse graduate-level musicians, particularly composers, in the histories, ideas, innovations, aesthetics, and logistical complexities of large ensemble and orchestral music in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will examine large scale ideas including shifting conceptions of orchestral scale, time, space, and color, memory and musical fragmentation, the reimagining of orchestral forms, as well as the influence and inclusion of different technological innovations. The seminar will also spend considerable time looking at orchestrational techniques, methods of execution, and compositional strategies relevant to the students' own creative work. The seminar will ask students to critically engage with a wide range of repertoire and readings surrounding this genre of music, while offering practice-based, workshop opportunities for students to develop and refine their musical ideas.

When Offered Spring.

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