Graduate Course Descriptions

Performance of contemporary music. Different sections represent active performance ensembles. A core requirement for graduate degree students as outlined in the curriculum. The number of units is based on work performed by agreement with instructor.
Additional Description: "Kallisti Chamber Opera" Project. Three performances of chamber opera repertoire, TBD. Enrollment by permission of instructor.

Instructor: Susan Narucki

Performance of contemporary music. Different sections represent active performance ensembles. A core requirement for graduate degree students as outlined in the curriculum. The number of units is based on work performed by agreement with instructor. See instructors for additional information.
Additional Description:

Instructor: Mark Dresser

Performance of contemporary music. Different sections represent active performance ensembles. A core requirement for graduate degree students as outlined in the curriculum. The number of units is based on work performed by agreement with instructor. See instructors for additional information.

Additional Description: This performance-based course introduces Butch Morris Conduction idiom. Defined by Morris as an improvised duet for ensemble and conductor, Conduction developed as a language for composing musical structure in real time through experimentation of form, social logic and expression. We will also evaluate Anthony Braxtons conducted compositional system Language Music in tandem with his other composed works for small ensemble. Instrumentalists from all areas of the music department (including computer music) are welcome.

Instructor: Stephanie Richards

Performance of contemporary music. Different sections represent active performance ensembles. A core requirement for graduate degree students as outlined in the curriculum. The number of units is based on work performed by agreement with instructor. See instructors for additional information. New students should attend graduate auditions during Welcome Week.
Additional Description: Percussion Ensemble red fish blue fish.

Instructor: Steven Schick

Performance of contemporary music. Different sections represent active performance ensembles. A core requirement for graduate degree students as outlined in the curriculum. The number of units is based on work performed by agreement with instructor. See instructors for additional information. New students should attend graduate auditions during Welcome Week.
Additional Description: First year Collaborative Projects for Performers and Composers. Only first year performance students can enroll in this course.

Instructor: Steven Schick

Advanced performance of new music with members of the performance faculty (SONOR). Students taking this course do not need to take Music 201 that quarter. Enrollment by consent of instructor/director of SONOR.
Additional Description: Students must submit a course proposal form to the Graduate Coordinator. Faculty Sponsor signature is required. May be taken in lieu of MUS 201.

Meetings and laboratory sessions devoted to the study of composition in small groups. Consent of instructor required.
Additional Description: The composition seminar, required of all entering graduate composers, is taught on a rotating basis by the Music Department composition faculty and has several purposes: to intensify the collegiality of student composers both with regard to ideas and techniques and to become better acquainted with each other's outlooks and needs in order to achieve the most congenial and productive match-ups between faculty and students for subsequent individual study. Seminars typically include group meetings and individual attention as appropriate. Composition Juries - At the end of the first Fall quarter in residence (in January), and again following Spring quarter (in October), all new graduate composition students are reviewed in juries by the composition faculty. Following the performance and discussions of the day, the composition faculty meets to assess the students' work. Details about the jury process are provided during Welcome Week and throughout the quarter.

Instructor: Rand Steiger (Fall), Faculty (Winter), Michelle Lou (Spring)

The purpose of this seminar is to bring in the entire population of the graduate composition program (all students and faculty) for in-depth discussion of critical issues in music theory and composition. Each meeting will feature a formal presentation by either a student, faculty member, or visitor, followed by lively and challenging debate on relevant issues.
Additional Description: Seminar meets throughout the year on a biweekly basis in the evening. Participation is required of all enrolled graduate composition students every quarter in residence. Other students are welcome to participate. Each session begins with a one-hour talk (including recordings) by the featured composer, followed by at least one hour of discussion. Lively and challenging debate on relevant issues is encouraged.

Meets on a biweekly basis to facilitate presentations by advanced students and invited guests and to encourage in-depth discussion between students, faculty, and visitors about theoretical and artistic issues of interest. Participation is required of all enrolled IS students until advanced to candidacy. Others are welcome to participate.
Additional Description: Instructors: Sarah Hankins (Fall), Anthony Davis (Winter), and Nancy Guy (Spring)

Seminars growing out of current faculty interests. The approach tends to be speculative and includes individual projects or papers as well as assigned readings. In the past, such areas as new instrumental and vocal resources, mixed media, and compositional linguistics have been offered.

Additional Description: This seminar will focus on the study of notation strategies and tools related to improvisation in experimental music contexts. In this edition the emphasis of the seminar will be both theoretical and practical. Participants will be able to engage in creative and collaborative projects, several readings and various assignments will be required, and students are expected to participate in class discussions (synchronously or asynchronously). For their final project, participants will have two options to choose from: A) Writing a paper on a class related topic; B) Developing a creative project using tools studied in class (or developing original ones)

Instructor: Wilifrido Terrazas

Additional Description: The Practice and Poetry of Memory seeks to merge the two great streams of how we understand memory: as an ethical system in the service of organizing and maintaining social order and as a set of skills surrounding the voluntary recall of information or tasks, particularly by musicians. To probe the former we will read excerpts from Frances Yates seminal: The Art of Memory. Excerpted sections from another text, Louis Hydes: A Primer of Forgetting, will address the corollary practical and ethical concerns of forgetting. Participants will be asked to assemble Memory Bibliographies of their own, which will also serve as a basis for discussion. Our discussions of the practical side of memory will deal with the personal memory projects of class participants and will include regular assignments designed to test strategies of memory and forgetting. Likewise, we will look at the performers twinned concerns of remembering and being remembered.

Instructor: Steven Schick Finally, we will examine pieces of music that highlight issues of memory, ranging from memory strategies in early tonal forms to memory as a structural element in the late music of Morton Feldman to new works currently in their planning stages, (Sarah Hennies, Chaya Czernowin among others) in which remembering and forgetting are key aesthetic or practical components.

Seminars on subject areas relating to the established dimensions of music and in which theoreticians have produced a substantial body of work. These include studies in analysis, timbre, rhythm, notation, and psychoacoustics. Offerings vary depending on faculty availability and interest. Analytical paper required.

The analysis of complex music. The course will assume that the student has a background in traditional musical analysis. The goal of the course is to investigate and develop analytical procedures that yield significant information about specific works of music, old and new. Reading, projects, and analytical papers.
Additional Description: Core course. May be offered in alternate years.

Instructor: Chinary Ung

Seminar discussions and individual meetings devoted to the interdisciplinary study of music, sound, and society. Students are introduced to key ideas, important thinkers, and influential practitioners in an array of related fields, and are invited to explore the intersecting roles of culture, cognition and creativity, and how musical behaviors and phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, race, and gender.

Seminar discussions and individual meetings devoted to the interdisciplinary study of music, sound, and society. Students are introduced to key ideas, important thinkers, and influential practitioners in an array of related fields, and are invited to explore the intersecting roles of culture, cognition and creativity, and how musical behaviors and phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, race, and gender.

Seminar discussions and individual meetings devoted to the interdisciplinary study of music, sound, and society. Students are introduced to key ideas, important thinkers, and influential practitioners in an array of related fields, and are invited to explore the intersecting roles of culture, cognition and creativity, and how musical behaviors and phenomena relate to matters of ideology, nationality, ethnicity, social class, race, and gender.

Meetings on a group basis with integrative studies faculty in support of individual student research projects.

This course will give practical experience in conducting a variety of works from various eras of instrumental and/or vocal music. Students will study problems of instrumental or vocal techniques, formal and expressive analysis of the music, and manners of rehearsal. Required of all graduate students.
Prerequisite: consent of instructor. (Offered in selected years.)
Additional Description: Core requirement for all graduate students. May be offered in alternate years.

Instructor: Steven Schick

A seminar to give practical experience in orchestration. Students will study works from various eras ofinstrumental music and will demonstrate their knowledgeby orchestrating works in the styles of these various eras, learning the capabilities, timbre, and articulation of all the instruments in the orchestra.
Prerequisite: graduate standing. (Offered in selected years.).
Additional Description:

Instructor: Chinary Ung

Individual or master class instruction in advanced instrumental/vocal performance.
Prerequisite: consent of instructor through audition.
Additional Description: Taken every quarter by students with an emphasis in Performance. Instructors: Performance faculty

Repertoire is drawn from the classic symphonic literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries with a strong emphasis on recently composed and new music. Distinguished soloists, as well as The La Jolla Symphony Chorus, frequently appear with the orchestra. The La Jolla Symphony Orchestra performs two full-length programs each quarter, each program being performed twice. May be repeated six times for credit. Prerequisites: audition and department stamp required. Contact orchestra@ljsc.org.

The purpose of this seminar is to bring together performance students, faculty, and guests for discussion, presentation of student and faculty projects, performances by guest artists, and master classes with different members of the performance faculty. (S/U grade option only)
Additional Description:

Advanced topics in music technology and its application to composition and/or performance. Offerings vary according to faculty availability and interest. Maybe repeated for credit. Prerequisites: Music 173
Additional Description:

Instructor: Tom Erbe

Digital techniques for analysis, synthesis, and processing of musical sounds. Sampling theory. Software synthesis techniques. Digital filter design. The short-time Fourier transform. Numerical accuracy considerations.
Prerequisite: consent of instructor.
Additional Description: Part of the three-course sequence 270ABC for first year Computer Music students. Digital techniques for analysis, synthesis, and processing of musical sounds. Sampling theory. Software synthesis techniques. Digital filter design. The short-time Fourier transform. Numerical accuracy considerations. Tamara Smyth

Theoretical bases for analyzing musical sound.Approaches to perception and cognition, including psychoacoustics and information processing, bothecological and computational. Models of audition including Helmholtz's consonance/dissonance theory and Bregman's streaming model. Musical cognition theories of Lerdahl and Narmour. Neural network models of music perception and cognition. Models of rhythm. The problem of timbre and timbre perception.
Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Transformations in musical composition; series and intervalic structures; serial approaches to rhythm and dynamic. The stochastic music of Xenakis and Cage. Hiller's automatic composition. Improvisational models. Computer analysis of musical style. Neurally inspired and other quasiparallel algorithms.
Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

Meetings on group basis with computer music faculty in support of individual student research projects. Prerequisites: consent of instructor and completion of Music 270A-B-C.
Additional Description: Taken by Computer Music emphasis MA students every quarter of the second year, and PhD students every quarter in residence, after completion of the 270ABC sequence.

A hands-on encounter with several important works from the classic electronic repertory, showing a representative subset of the electronic techniques available to musicians. Intended primarily for students in areas other than computer music.
Prerequisite: none.
Additional Description: Composition emphasis students may petition through the Graduate Advisor to substitute Music 271 for the Music 291 core requirement.

Consideration and development of research methods appropriate to graduate-level scholarship and practice-based research.
Additional Description: Composition emphasis students may petition through the Graduate Advisor to substitute Music 271 for the Music 291 core requirement. May be offered in alternate years.

Individual research. (S/U grades permitted.) May be repeated for credit. Enrollment by consent of instructor only.
Additional Description: Research with selected faculty on individual basis, with units per agreement between student and faculty. Six unit minimum required specifically for preparation of PhD/DMA qualifying exams, normally taken with each of the Music committee members for S/U grade.

Individual research projects relevant to the student's selected area of graduate interest conducted in continuing relationship with a faculty adviser in preparation for the master's thesis or doctoral dissertation.(S/Ugrades permitted.)
Additional Description: Six unit minimum required in preparation of MA thesis. Twelve units quarterly required after PhD/DMA qualifying exams, to prepare for doctoral dissertation; normally taken with music committee chair and/or members for S/U grade.

Participation in the undergraduate teaching program is required of all graduate students at the equivalentof 25 percent time for three quarters (six units is required for all graduate students).
Additional Description: All TAs must simultaneously enroll in Music 500 with the course instructor each quarter in which they are a TA. Participation in the undergraduate teaching program is required of all graduate students at the equivalent of 25% time for three quarters, or 33% for two quarters (6 units of Music 500). Units correspond to hours of work per week. Enroll as follows: 2 units = 10 hours (equivalent to 25% TA), 3 units = 13.5 hours (equivalent to 33% TA), and 4 units = 20 hours (equivalent to 50% TA.). It is the student's responsibility to seek out teaching experiences to acquire 6 units of Music 500 if no TA is assigned. NOTE: New TAs also enroll in FALL quarter for 1 unit of MUS 501 with the department Faculty TA Advisor for New TA Training.

Consideration and development of pedagogical methods appropriate to undergraduate teaching.
Additional Description: TAs with appointments in a non-Music department or college (e.g. 6th College) with a MUSIC department instructor enroll in Music 501, instead of 500, as follows: 2 units = 10 hours (equivalent to 25% TA), 3 units = 13.5 hours (equivalent to 33% TA), and 4 units = 20 hours (equivalent to 50% TA.). TA's must enroll in MUS 501 in FALL quarter for New TA Training.

Instructor: Sarah Hankins