Bachelor of Music - Composition

Program Description

The Bachelor of Music degree in composition is comprised of a comprehensive range of courses including analysis, orchestration, counterpoint, compositional procedures and contemporary musical styles.​ Throughout their studies, students work with a faculty of distinguished composers and participate in master classes with well-known guest composers. Student compositions may be performed at quarterly Composers Forums, and seniors may have a composition read through and recorded by Ensemble 20+, the School's student new music ensemble.​​​​​​​​​

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to:

• Perform solo and ensemble works with appropriate techniques and musicality.
• Identify and analyze the elements of music in a given piece, including an understanding of its compositional processes, aesthetic properties, and artistic, social, and historical contexts for works in the Western music tradition, Contemporary periods, Jazz, and World Music Cultures.
• Demonstrate an appropriate level of aural, keyboard, and conducting skills.
• Compose consistently, developing a compositional voice that reflects awareness of prevalent musical styles of the 20th and 21st centuries and that shows a fundamental knowledge of instrumentation.
• Analyze appropriately music of the common practice period as well as the 20th and 21st centuries.
• Identify and demonstrate essential techniques of creating electro-acoustic music.
• Effectively employ contrapuntal composition techniques of previous centuries.