Graduate Advanced Solfège and Score Reading

MU531 

Fall Semester (this course runs every other year) 
Credits: 1
Prequisites: Graduate Ear Training – proficiency exam or review course
Meeting: one 2-hour class weekly
Instructor: Dr. William Cutter

Course Objectives

This course, offered every other Fall is based primarily in the choral repertoire. It provides the opportunity to realize theoretical concepts through keyboard work and advanced harmonic and formal analysis. The literature is approached chronologically to give a firm and practical understanding of the growth of harmonic language in the following areas:

Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque
• Josquin, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Schütz, Purcell, Handel, Bach
• Clef reading (F, G and C)
• four-part choral open score reading
• realization of figured bass, improvisation over a figured bass

Classic and early Romantic
• Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert
• string quartet open score reading
• Common Practice tonal and formal analysis

Textbooks

MUSIC FOR SIGHTSINGING
Robert W. Ottman
Prentice Hall, 7th Edition, 2006
ISBN: 9780131872349

PREPARATORY EXERCISES IN SCORE READING
R.O. Morris and Howard Ferguson
Oxford University Press, 1968
ISBN: 9780193214750

ORGANIZING TIME
William Cutter
available from instructor

Grading 

Homework 40%
Midterm Project 25% 
Final Project 35%

Advanced Solfège and Score Reading 2: Vocal and Choral

MU532
Spring Semester (this course runs every other year) 
Credits: 1
Prequisite: Advanced Solfège and Score Reading 1: Vocal and Choral or permission
Meeting: one 2-hour class weekly
Instructor: Dr. William Cutter

Course Objectives

This course, offered every other Spring is based primarily in the choral repertoire. It continues the realization of theoretical concepts and harmonic and formal analysis begun in MU432 through literature from the late Romantic period to the present day:

Late Romantic and early 20th-Century
• Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner, Verdi, Faure, Debussy, Bartok, Vaughan Williams, Copland
• five to eight-line open score reading with at least one transposing instrument
• advanced tonal analysis / final expansion of the major-minor system
• new formal designs - song cycles, tone poems, opera

20th-Century to the present
• Schoenberg, Ives, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Cage, Foss, Berio, Crumb, Pärt, Harbison
• analysis of serial and atonal compositions
• score reading, music containing quartal harmony, pandiatonicism, synthetic scales
• aleatoric procedures and graphic notation
• extended and non-traditional vocal techniques

Textbooks

MUSIC FOR SIGHTSINGING
PREPARATORY EXERCISES IN SCORE READING
ORGANIZING TIME
see MU531 Advanced Solfège and Score Reading 1: Vocal and Choral

Grading 

Homework 40%
Midterm Project 25%
Final Project 35%