Course Code: MEL 3074
Academic Year: 2025-2026
This course focuses on exploring significant works of 20th century music. Through listening and analysis, students will become familiar with important works along with the compositional techniques employed by composers such as Bela Bartok, Igor Stravinsky, Oliver Messiaen, Arnold Schoenberg and many others. Classes will alternate between lectures, which will involve analysis, listening, and studying score samples, and presentations of student composition exercises, which will be performed in class. Students will also hand in a short paper describing techniques and showing analysis on a composer of their choosing. In the second semester, the focus shifts to how these techniques impacted contemporary jazz and popular music, and students create a major work of their own as their end of the year project.