What Does It Feel Like to Be a Composer?
| |||||||||
What does it feel like to be a composer? We’ll build a short piece of music together.
Prep: Read Composer Rants and other supplementary material: reading list to be compiled
Priscilla Hayes Taylor is the creator, cellist, programmer, researcher, and artistic director of Decompression Chamber Music. She is a member of the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and Symphony New Hampshire. Ms. Taylor has a MM in Cello Performance from New England Conservatory, and a BA in Music Performance and Composition from Bennington College, and spent five summers at Kneisel Hall. Ms Taylor currently teaches for Upbeat New Hampshire and at UMassBoston.
Syllabus/Reading
Session 1: Melody
What is absolutely necessary to compose a piece of music? Is a good melody enough? We will build a 12-tone row, then weight it, using Bach fugue subject, and Bartok1 as examples. Then we’ll construct a short melody together.
Session 2: Adding parts
We’ll listen to Ravel’s Bolero, and to Beatles songs with attention to Paul McCartney’s bass lines
Then we’ll listen to counterpoint (Bach invention), homophony (hymns) and duets. We’ll take our melody and add a duet part and a bass line.
Sessions 3 and 4: Paul Sullivan and Jackson Lardner will talk to us about what being a composer is like from their point of view, and possibly help us edit and expand and play our
▼ Registration