Competences developed in the course

Transversal competences:

CT5: Understand and use at least one foreign language within the scope of professional development.

CT6: Carry out self-criticism regarding one’s own professional and interpersonal practice.

CT8: Develop ideas and arguments in a reasoned and critical manner.

CT11: Develop, in professional practice, an ethical approach based on appreciation and sensitivity towards aesthetic, environmental and diversity-related values.

CT12: Adapt, under competitive conditions, to cultural, social and artistic changes and to advances occurring in the professional field, and select appropriate pathways for continuing education.

CT13: Pursue excellence and quality in professional activity.

General competences:

CG1: Know the theoretical principles of music and have adequately developed abilities for the recognition, understanding and memorisation of musical material.

CG2: Demonstrate appropriate skills for musical reading, improvisation, creation and recreation.

CG3: Produce and correctly interpret the graphic notation of musical texts.

CG4: Recognise musical materials through the development of auditory skills and apply this ability to professional practice.

CG8: Apply the most appropriate working methods to overcome challenges arising in personal study and collective musical practice.

CG10: Argue and verbally express viewpoints on diverse musical concepts.

CG11: Be familiar with a broad and updated repertoire, focused on one’s speciality while open to other traditions. Recognise the stylistic features that characterise this repertoire and describe them clearly and comprehensively.

CG12: Demonstrate sufficient knowledge of musical practice and its relationship with the evolution of aesthetic, artistic and cultural values.

CG13: Know the foundations and structure of musical language and apply them in interpretative, creative, research or pedagogical practice.

CG14: Know the historical development of music in its different traditions from a critical perspective that places the development of musical art within a social and cultural context.

CG16: Know the social, cultural and economic context in which musical practice takes place, with particular attention to the immediate environment while also considering its global dimension.

CG17: Be familiar with different musical styles and practices that allow understanding, within a broader cultural context, one’s own field of activity and enriching it.

CG18: Communicate in written and verbal form the content and objectives of professional activity to specialised audiences, using appropriate technical and general vocabulary.

CG21: Create and shape one’s own artistic concepts, having developed the ability to express them through acquired techniques and resources.

CG22: Possess broad and diverse musical resources to create or adapt musical pieces, as well as improvise in different contexts based on knowledge of styles, formats, techniques, trends and diverse languages.

CG23: Value musical creation as the act of giving sound form to a rich and complex structural thought.

CG24: Develop capacities for self-directed learning throughout professional life.

CG25: Know and be able to use study and research methodologies that enable continuous development and innovation of musical activity throughout one’s career.

CG26: Be able to link one’s musical activity to other disciplines of scientific and humanistic thought, to the arts in general and to other musical disciplines in particular, enriching professional practice with a multidisciplinary dimension.

Specific competences:

CO1: Know the main repertoires of Western tradition and other musical traditions, and acquire the ability to fully appreciate the expressive, syntactic and sonic aspects of the corresponding works.

CO2: Acquire the necessary training to recognise and evaluate different types of musical and sonic structures both aurally and intellectually.

CO3: Analyse the construction of musical works in each and every structural aspect and level that shapes them.

CO5: Master the techniques and resources of the main historical and contemporary compositional styles.

CO7: Develop the interest, abilities and methodologies necessary for musical research and experimentation.

CO8: Know the most recent trends and proposals in different fields of musical creation.

CO10: Verbally communicate a well-structured theoretical, analytical, aesthetic and critical judgement beyond its application to the strictly compositional field.

CO11: Acquire a singular and flexible artistic personality that allows adaptation to multiple creative environments and challenges.

Learning outcomes (general objectives)

1. Contextualise the factors that motivate and enable compositional activity within its historical and social context.

2. Assess the different trends, methods and approaches employed by composers, relating them to the ideological, cultural and social aspects that determine each composer’s environment and perspective.

3. Develop a broad range of sound production and organisation techniques, as well as the different approaches, applications, conditions and functions that underpin musical creation from an aesthetic and social perspective.

4. Develop personal criteria that allow the structuring and development of compositional work.

5. Create musical works that emphasise previous approaches and selections, as well as their constructive, aesthetic and formal implications.

6. Compose for musical groups formed by available instruments and performers, enabling the performance of written works and the appropriate evaluation of the results obtained in relation to the work itself.

7. Explore new creative, theoretical and analytical methods and perspectives when approaching different musical issues, and discover themes and lines of action that may guide the final project and, eventually, postgraduate research.

8. Know musical instruments and their technical and timbral characteristics, and combine and balance the timbres of different instruments and their various sound combinations.

9. Technically and timbrally control instruments in different formations (duos, trios, quartets, quintets, chamber ensembles and orchestra).

10. Understand timbre and instrumentation as parameters of structural and formal organisation.

11. Critically assess different forms of contrapuntal imitation as techniques for organising musical material and form, and apply them in real musical contexts in direct relation to all musical parameters involved in and shaping the formal organisation of music.

12. Extend knowledge of musical construction and organisation techniques, including extended scalar and harmonic structures within diverse tonal and atonal contexts.

13. Apply the main techniques and methods of musical construction and organisation developed throughout the 20th century to the present day.

Contents

Creation of works encompassing different areas of creative musical activity, including solo instruments, duos, trios, quartets, quintets, chamber music, orchestra, with or without soloist, with or without text, programmatic works, incidental music, and works involving electroacoustic, audiovisual and other media.

Acoustic, technical and idiomatic characteristics of orchestral instruments. Traditional instrumental combinations. Perceptual aspects. Instrumentation techniques according to different historical periods and their relationship with the composers’ ideas and aesthetic approaches in each stylistic period. Recent instrumentation techniques and their relationship with the ideas and languages of contemporary composers. Timbre and instrumentation as compositional parameters.

Experimentation with instrumental possibilities through collaboration with performers of different instruments. Analysis of instrumental writing in works and composers from different musical periods and styles. Transcriptions and arrangements of musical passages adapted to the characteristics and possibilities of different instruments. Listening and analysis of instrumentation in works from different periods of music history considered paradigmatic in the evolution of instrumentation techniques up to the present day.

Use of contrapuntal imitation techniques as expressive and formal constructive methods. Relationship between imitation techniques and the other elements involved in the organisation of a musical work. Adaptation of imitation and fugue concepts and techniques to tonal materials and diverse musical contexts. Integration of imitation and fugue concepts and techniques into analysis and composition. Musical analysis and composition from a creative perspective that considers all other elements involved in musical evaluation.

Variation as a compendium of diverse compositional techniques and as a generator of the twelve-tone method. New systems of musical organisation and their formal implications. Chromaticism. Extended harmonies. Polytonality. Polyrhythm. Atonality. Twelve-tone technique.

Use of the techniques studied as constructive, expressive and formal methods. Relationship between these techniques and the other elements involved in the organisation of a musical work. Adaptation of developed concepts and techniques to tonal materials and diverse musical contexts. Integration of these concepts and techniques into analysis and composition from a creative perspective that considers all other elements of musical evaluation.

Use of the techniques studied as constructive, expressive and formal methods, closely related to all other elements involved in the organisation of a musical work. Adaptation of developed concepts and techniques to diverse musical contexts, integrating them into musical analysis and composition from a creative perspective. Research, experimentation and conceptualisation of new technical and aesthetic proposals in relation to new situations and the evolving needs of music.

Teaching methodology

The teaching and learning methodology in individual classes involves the review of the student’s compositional work and guidance throughout the creative process. The methodology of collective classes includes lecture sessions (presentation of topics), discussion and debate sessions, group work sessions, and student presentations. Independent work involves the creation of compositions, the study and analysis of works, and written assignments, carried out individually or in groups.

Assessment systems