Music 150
Composition

University of California, Irvine
Winter 2015


LINKS


This page contains hyperlinks to online documents and information relevant to the class.
More links will be added over the course of the quarter.


Syllabus
Assignments


Scores

Heaven - by Duke Ellington, a piano arrangement based on the original score.

In the In-Between, a jazz composition for trombone, piano, and bass by Christopher Dobrian.

"Louange à l'éternité de Jésus", movement V of Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) by Olivier Messiaen. Pages 1, 2, and 3.

Movements I and IV of Seven Love Songs of Saris for violin and piano by Alan Hovhaness.

Nancarrow String Quartet No. 1, pp. 8-9 - a passage demonstrating explicit use of changing meter.

Nancarrow String Quartet No. 1, pp. 26-27 - a passage demonstrating use of quintuplet quarter notes, quintuplet half notes, and quintuplet dotted half notes (i.e., 5:2, 5:4, and 5:6).

Nancarrow String Quartet No. 1, pp. 28-29 - a passage demonstrating cross-rhythms of 2:3:4:5:6 as well as 4:3 hemiola.

Nancarrow String Quartet No. 1, pp. 30-31 - a passage demonstrating cross-rhythms of 2:4:5:6 simultaneous with metric hemiola of 5:4:3:24/7.

"Prelude" to the first act of Tristan und Isolde by Ricard Wagner, full orchestral score.

Variations for piano, op. 27 by Anton Webern.

Will You Be There? - by Duke Ellington, choral arrangement for six voices (p. 3).


Recordings

Heaven by Duke Ellington, performed by the Ellington Orchestra, Duke Ellington piano, Alice Babs vocal, Johnny Hodges alto saxophone.

In the In-Between by Christopher Dobrian, performed by Michael Dessen, Kei Akagi, and Darek Oles.

"Louange à l'éternité de Jésus", movement V of Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) by Olivier Messiaen, performed by Julian Lloyd Webber, cello and John Lenehan, piano.

Seven Love Songs of Saris by Alan Hovhaness, performed by Haroutune Bedelian, violin and Lorna Griffitt, piano.


Readings

"Abstraction", pp. 8-12 excerpted from Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace - a brief discussion of abstraction and logical levels as a means of understanding.

"Cross-Domain Mapping", Chapter 2 of Conceptualizing Music by Lawrence M. Zbikowski. [You must be on the UCI network or logged onto it via VPN in order to access this book online.]

"How We Listen", chapter 2 of What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland - a transcription (unauthorized) of a well-known essay by a prominent American composer

"On Sonic Meditation", pp. 138-157 of Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-1980 by Pauline Oliveros.

Structural Hearing by Felix Salzer, pp. 10-13 on "Chord grammar - Chord significance", and "Music as directed motion - Structure and prolongation" - introducing the Schenkerian concept of structural analysis, i.e., "structural hearing".


Videos

Variations for piano, op. 27 by Anton Webern, performed by Glenn Gould.

Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky - an animated graphic score of Part I of Le sacre du printemps, animation by Stephen Malinowsky.


Other


This page was last modified January 4, 2015.
dobrian@uci.edu