Competences developed in the course

Cross-curricular competencies:  

CT1: Organise and plan work in an efficient and motivating manner.  

CT3: Solve problems and make decisions that respond to the objectives of the work being carried out.  

CT6: Conduct self-criticism of one’s own professional and interpersonal practice.  

CT8: Reasonably and critically develop ideas and arguments.  

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

CT13: Strive for excellence and quality in one’s professional activity.  

CT15: Work autonomously and appreciate the importance of initiative and entrepreneurial spirit in professional practice.  

CT17: Contribute through one’s professional activity to raising social awareness of the importance of cultural heritage, its impact across different fields and its capacity to generate significant values. 

General competencies:  

CG1: To know the theoretical principles of music and to have adequately developed skills for recognising, understanding and memorising musical material.  

CG2: To demonstrate adequate skills in musical reading, improvisation, creation and recreation.  

CG3: Produce and interpret musical notation correctly.  

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

CG10: Argue and verbally express one’s viewpoints on various musical concepts.  

CG11: Be familiar with a broad and up-to-date repertoire, centred on one’s specialism but open to other traditions. Recognise the stylistic features that characterise this repertoire and be able to describe them clearly and comprehensively.  

CG12: Demonstrate sufficient knowledge of musical phenomena and their relationship to the evolution of aesthetic, artistic and cultural values.  

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

CG17: Be familiar with the different musical styles and practices that enable one to understand, in a broader cultural context, one’s own field of activity and enrich it.    

CG18: Communicate in writing and verbally the content and objectives of their professional activity to specialised individuals, using technical and general vocabulary appropriately.  

CG21: Create and shape their own artistic concepts, having developed the ability to express themselves through them using assimilated techniques and resources.    

CG22: Possess broad and diverse musical resources to create or adapt musical pieces and to improvise in different contexts, drawing on knowledge of various styles, formats, techniques, trends and 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 their professional life.  

CG25: Know and be able to use study and research methodologies that enable the continuous development and innovation of their musical activity over the course of their career.   

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

Specific competencies:  

CO1: To know the main repertoires of the Western tradition and other musics, and to 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, both audibly and intellectually, different types of musical and sonic structures.  

CO3: Analytically interpret the construction of musical works in all and each of the structural aspects and levels that constitute them.  

CO4: Be able to apply new technologies to the field of musical creation in a variety of contexts and formats, including collaborations with other artistic fields.  

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

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

CO8: Be familiar with the latest trends and proposals in various fields of musical creation.  

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

Learning outcomes (general objectives)

1. To contextualise the factors that motivate and enable compositional activity in its historical and social context.  
2. Evaluate 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. Acquire a broad range of production and sound organisation techniques, as well as the various approaches, applications, constraints and functionalities that underpin musical creation at aesthetic and social levels.  
4. Develop one’s own criteria to structure and develop the compositional task.  
5. Produce musical works by emphasising the initial planning and selections and their constructive, aesthetic and formal implications.  
6. Compose for musical ensembles made up of available instruments and performers in order to perform the written works and to evaluate the results obtained in relation to the piece.  
7. Explore new methods and creative, theoretical and analytical perspectives on various issues in the approach to musical phenomena, and discover themes and lines of action that can guide the final project and, potentially, postgraduate research.To know musical instruments and their technical and timbral characteristics, and to combine and timbrally balance the sounds of various instruments and different sound superimpositions.  
8. To technically and timbrally control the instruments in various ensembles (duos, trios, quartets, quintets, chamber ensembles, orchestra).  
9. Understand timbre and instrumentation as parameters for structural and formal organisation.  
10. Critically evaluate the different forms of contrapuntal imitation as techniques for organising musical material and form, and apply them in real musical contexts in direct dependence on all the musical parameters that converge and shape the formal organisation of the music.  
11. Extend knowledge of musical construction and organisation techniques, including scalar and extended harmonic structures across diverse tonal and atonal contexts.  
12. Apply the main techniques and methods of musical construction and organisation developed throughout the twentieth century to the present day. 

Contents

Realisation of works encompassing various areas of creative musical activity, for solo instruments, duos, trios, quartets, quintets, chamber ensembles, orchestra, with and without soloist, with or without text, programmatic, incidental, using electroacoustic and audiovisual media, and others.  

Acoustic, technical and idiomatic characteristics of orchestral instruments. Traditional instrumental combinations. Perceptual aspects. Instrumentation techniques according to the different historical periods and their relationship with the thought processes of composers of each stylistic period. Recent instrumentation techniques and their relationship with the thought processes and languages of contemporary composers. Timbre and instrumentation as a compositional parameter.  

Experimentation with instrumental possibilities in collaboration with performers on various instruments. Analysis of instrumental writing in works by composers from different periods and musical styles. Transcriptions and arrangements of musical passages, adapting them to the characteristics and possibilities of different instruments. Listening to and analysing the instrumentation of works produced in the various periods of music history, which are considered paradigmatic in the evolution of instrumental techniques to the present day.  

Variation as a compendium of diverse compositional techniques and as a generator of the dodecatonic method. New systems of musical organisation and their formal implications. Chromatism. Expanded harmonies. Polytonality. Polyrhythms. Atonality. Dodecatonism.   

 Use of the techniques covered as expressive and formal constructive methods. Relationship of the techniques covered with the other elements involved in the organisation of a musical work. Adaptation of the concepts and techniques developed to tonal materials and diverse musical contexts. Integration of the concepts and techniques covered into analysis and composition from a creative perspective that takes into account the other elements of musical evaluation.  

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

Teaching methodology

The teaching-learning methodology in individual classes involves reviewing the student’s compositional work and providing guidance. The methodology for group classes involves lectures (topic presentations), debate and discussion sessions, group work sessions and student presentations. Autonomous work involves compositions, analyses of works and written assignments, either individually or in groups.  

Assessment systems

The assessment system is continuous assessment, based on diagnostic evaluation and materialised in a summative assessment that leads to the final grade. Continuous assessment is carried out through various assessment records derived from specific assessment activities such as participation and classroom work, the presentation of classwork, the completion of assignments, compositions, analyses and/or readings outside of class, the submission of written work and the listening to composed works, or the taking of written or oral tests.