Music Theory

First-semester music majors begin formal musicianship studies. Students perform basic melodies and rhythms at sight, and notate dictations of basic rhythms, melodies and harmonic progressions. Students also analyze and compose Western tonal music employing the rubrics of rhythm and meter, pitch, intervals, scales, tertian chords, inversions, harmonic progression, and SATB voice leading. Does not count toward B.A. music major or any B.M. music major.  Offered annually in the fall semester.
Prerequisite: concurrent registration in piano class (MUSIC 161) is strongly encouraged.

First-semester music majors begin formal musicianship studies. Students perform rhythms and melodies at sight. Students also analyze and compose Western tonal music that employs non-dominant seventh chords, applied chords, sequences, modulations, and small forms. These topics are closely integrated into melodic and harmonic dictations. Class meets four times weekly.  Offered annually.
Prerequisite:  MUSIC 112 or placement through Music Theory Examination or scoring a 5 on AP Theory exam. Concurrent registration in MUSIC 162 strongly encouraged.

Second-semester music majors continue formal musicianship studies. Students perform advanced rhythms and increasingly chromatic melodies at sight. Students analyze and compose Western tonal music that employs modal mixture, Neapolitan chords, augmented-sixth chords, and remote modulations, all of which are closely integrated into melodic and harmonic dictations. Students analyze the principle movement-length forms. Class meets four times weekly.  Offered annually in the fall semester.
Prerequisite: MUSIC 114.

Music majors continue formal musicianship studies. Students analyze and compose Western art music in styles from 1875 to the present, including late-nineteenth-century chromaticism, serialism and set theory, impressionism and neoclassicism, and blues and jazz styles. Performance and dictation studies follow these topics closely, including an introduction to jazz improvisation. Class meets four times weekly. Offered annually.
Prerequisite: MUSIC 114.

To deepen awareness and understanding of performance music, and to gain tools to produce textural interest in composition, students study the contrapuntal techniques of composers from the Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern periods including Palestrina, Bach, and Barber.  Offered alternate years.
Prerequisite: MUSIC 214.

Analysis is a course of discovery, using advanced tools of music theory to examine the ways in which great works of music are put together. Students examine principles of form and style and, using a range of analytical techniques, come to a deeper understanding of tonal music. The course focuses on Classical and Romantic literature, with some work in 20th-century tonality. Offered alternate years.
Prerequisite: MUSIC 214.

An analytical study of the wide range of musical styles found in the 20th- and 21st-centuries, this course provides an opportunity to study important modern works and to come to a deeper understanding of their structure and meaning. Students study atonal music theory in depth and examine some of the new approaches to tonality in our time. Offered spring semester 2019-20 and alternate years.
Prerequisite: MUSIC 214.