Student Handbook

Second Examination

Composition: sample

Day 1 Analysis  Write an essay analyzing the accompanying piece. Include diagrams, examples, charts or other visual aids as you see fit.
 
 Day 2 Essays  In your answers to the following essay questions do not feel that you have to be comprehensive. It is better to discuss 3-4 composers in some detail than to attempt to cover the entire range of issues and repertoire raised by the question.
 
     Repertoire—2 hours (choose one):
 
          What are the key ways in which composers have defined and elaborated the relationship between soloist and ensemble in the pieces we call concertos? What consequences does the nature of that relationship have for form? You might want to think about these issues from the point of view of what decisions a composer has to make when he writes a concerto.
 
          Discuss various formal and constructive methods in 18th and 19th-century
 opera, citing contrasting dramaturgical procedures, and using specific examples
 from the repertory.
 
    20th Century Techniques—3 hours (choose one):
 
 As part of your answer you many, if you wish, compose short passages to illustrate points.
 
     Write an essay about the use of collage by composers in the 20th Century. How do composers deal with the issue of coherence—if they do?
 
     One of the distinguishing features of twentieth-century music was the increased exploration of timbre as a compositional resource. Discuss this phenomenon and the changing concepts of instrumentation, orchestration and performance practice it entailed. Focus your discussion on acoustic music, although if you wish you may certainly discuss the influence of electronic music on instrumental writing.