MUSC 3550 - Twentieth-Century Techniques

This course covers diverse topics in music theory relevant to the study of 20th-century concert music. Topics may include Modernism, Neo-Classicism, Post-Modernism, chromatic and atonal voice leading, harmonic function based on symmetrical divisions of the octave, music at the limits of tonality, pitch-class set theory (with the emphasis on transpositional equivalence and inversional symmetry), pitch-centricity, and twelve-tone/serial procedures. The course may also cover musical practices prevalent since 1950, including minimalism, aleatoric procedures, and other techniques.