Department Overview
Production, performance, and critique are primary instructional vehicles of the program. In each Composition and TIMARA course, the focus is always on compositional productivity, new compositions being the primary course output, with works being performed and critiqued by both faculty and fellow students. Opportunities for performances and readings abound; performance of student works and projects over the past two years averaged thirty concerts per semester. Many student performers request works to premiere on their junior and senior recitals. When added to the six Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble concerts per year, faculty composers concerts each semester, concerts of works by visiting composers, and the frequent appearance of new music on other recitals by faculty, students, and large performing groups, Oberlin Conservatory is clearly one of the richest and most diverse new music environments in the country.
Summer Workshops:
http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/summer/composition/index.dot
Curriculum Overview
Introductory courses, divided into half semester modules covering technical matters in Composition, during the first year, provide intensive technical work in composition and principles of technology while also exposing students to the multiplicity of contemporary compositional styles. These courses have a variety of instructional components, including seminar-style classroom instruction, frequent performance/critique sessions involving performances drawn from within and from outside the class, and supplementary private lessons.
For the second, third, and fourth years for Composition majors, students receive private instruction in composition with the professor of their choice, culminating in the composition of two large-scale works by the end of the senior year, one for a large ensemble such as orchestra or wind ensemble and the second an extended and continuous piece of about 10 minutes in duration for a smaller instrumentation. The orchestral piece is either read and recorded or rehearsed, performed, and recorded publicly; the extended piece is invariably performed and recorded.
In addition to these core courses and requirements, the Composition department offers classes that give additional scope in important areas of composition and address areas of considerable significance. Two classes in orchestration provide a thorough grounding in instrumental basics through sophisticated ensemble writing and orchestral composition. The New Music Workshop, open to juniors and seniors in composition and performance provides an opportunity for exploring the outer limits of new sound possibilities in chamber music in a laboratory setting.
The Composition Seminar, open to majors in all years, provides students with a variety of activities in analysis, styles and procedures. In this course, students analyze works and other writings by composers who will be visiting the campus, attend score-reading sessions and open rehearsal-discussions of works being prepared for performance, and do readings in criticism and aesthetics.
