78212 - Theories and Techniques of Musical Composition (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the students will have learned some strategies of musical analysis useful to grasp the relationships between a compositional practice of the modern repertory (from 18^th to 20^th century) and their implicit or explicit underlying theories. They will find out some aspects, concerning one or more parameters, of the generative grammar of a musical repertory, and therefore will improve their attitude in recognizing and criticizing its compositinal outcomes. They will increase their knowledge of the history and the systematic of the musical styles.

Course contents

Sound and structure in contemporary musical forms

The course is an introduction to the question of how new sound configurations - experimented since the years of the post-war avantgarde - affect our perception of musical time, space and causality, and our representation of syntax and form. Are these traditional categories to be abandoned facing this new kind of music? Or, could analytical approaches based on categories such as proportion, symmetry and the like, prove themselves still correct to describe it? The emergence of analytical methodological lines will come along a historical survey on some of the principal compositional techniques of the second half of the twentieth century, including an exploration of the main tools for the synthetic generation of sounds.

Readings/Bibliography

(1) Chapters 3-5 (pages 34-114) of: A. Gentilucci, Introduzione alla musica elettronica, Feltrinelli, Milano 1972 (1975);

or: Chapters 9-11 (pages 155-222) of: P. Griffiths, Modern Music. The avantgarde since 1945, Demt, London 1981 (1986).

(2) Part I (pages 19-151) of: P. Griffiths, Modern Music. The avantgarde since 1945, Demt, London 1981 (1986).

(3) D. Osmond-Smith, Suonare le parole. Guida all'ascolto di "Sinfonia" di Luciano Berio, Einaudi, Torino 1994.

(4) Some parts (not more than 100 pages or less) to be specified [see later versions], from: 

A.S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis. The perceptual Orfanization of Sound, The MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. 190 , and/or: S. Emmerson, L. Leigh (eds), Expanding the Horizon of Eectoacoustic Music Analysis,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2016.

- These texts could, at any moment, be replaced by others.

Assessment methods

Oral part

(a) Discussion of the texts of the Bibliography;

(b) Discussion of the analysis relative to the written part of the exam.

Written part

Analysis of a (electronic/elelctoacustic/concrète) brief piece, assigned by the teacher the same day of the exam. The analysis,realized in class by the student, consists, firstly, in a graphic elaboration of her/his representational data of the piece - considered as perceptually relevant - by means of criteria illustrated at lesson. Secondly, of a consideration of the piece's qualities in terms of its syntactical-formal aspects (totally peculiar, or anyhow akin to those detectable in the tradition of musical forms).

The students who don’t regularly attend to the lessons, nust keep contact with the teacher for an alternative program.

The knowledge about the classic theories of f musical form is a prerequisite. For the ones not acquainted with the topic, good readings could be: W. Berry, Forn in Music, Prentice Gall, Englewood Cliffs 1986,and C. Dahlhaus, Frase e periodo. Per una teoria della sintassi musicale, "Musica/Realtà", CIX/1,2o16, pp. 8o-99, and/or all the items concerning the same topic (strarting fron "Binary and ternary form") in the Harvard Dictionary of Music (ed. since 1974 onwards).

Alternative procedure. For students who regularly attended the course, it is possible to replace the analysis of the written part  by an original composition. This piece must be based on a 12-tone row and be strictly atonal.

The score, written in traditional notation (inclusive of every detail in each parameter) for a keyboard or a small organic (up to 3-4 melodic instruments), cannot be over 20-30 bars; the piece can simulate any of the atonal historical styles. The method of composition must apply the principles contained in the pages 92-1o9 and 23o-237 of M. Mastropasqua, L'evoluzione della tonalità nel XX secolo. L'atonalità in Schönberg,  CLUEB, Bologna 2004, and in: ID., Suoni in opposizione. Su una ‘forma tipica' dell'atonalità, «Il Saggiatore Musicale», IX/2, 2002, pages 81-113. Useful could be too, by the same author: Set and Syntax in the "Menuet" of Schoenberg's "Suite", Op. 25, in M. Privitera et al. (eds), Con-scientia musica. Contrappunti per Rossana Dalmonte e Mario Baroni, LIM, Lucca 2010, pp. 497 - 5o6.

The score, to be submitted to the teacher in paper copy, must be accompanied by a e-mail to mauro.mastropasqua@unibo.it containing:

1. an audio file (mp3, mp4 or a FINALE file - this last in a version up to 2007);

2. a concise  (max two pages) “protocol”, i.e. the analysis made by the student of her/his own composition: a description of its stylistic goals (who is the composer, which is the piece considered as a model) and of its atonal qualities (which elements – harmonic, contrapuntal and so on - are intended to give this effect).

Deadline for the alternative procedure: the score, the audio fle and the “protocol” must be submitted at least 20 days before the date of the exam.

 

Office hours

See the website of Mauro Mastropasqua