Competences developed in the course

Cross-cutting competencies: 

CT1: Organize and plan work in an efficient and motivating way.   

CT3: Troubleshoot problems and make decisions that align with the objectives of the work being performed.   

CT8: Reasonably and critically develop ideas and arguments.   

CT11: In the workplace, develop a professional ethic based on aesthetic appreciation and sensitivity, environmental awareness, and respect for diversity.  

CT12: Adapt to cultural, social, and artistic changes and 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.   

General competencies:  

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

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

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

CG4: Recognize musical materials through the development of aural skills and be able to apply these skills in professional practice.  

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

CG9: Know the specific characteristics of one’s primary instrument in relation to its construction and acoustics, historical development, and mutual influences with other disciplines.  

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

CG11: Be familiar with a broad, up-to-date repertoire centered on one’s specialty but open to other traditions. Recognize the stylistic features that characterize 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: To understand the foundations and structure of musical language and be able to apply them in interpretive, creative, research, or pedagogical practice.   

CG14: To understand the historical development of music in its various traditions from a critical perspective that situates the development of musical art in a social and cultural context.   

CG15: Have a broad knowledge of the most representative works in the historical and analytical literature of music.   

CG16: Use the means and resources at their disposal responsibly toward cultural and environmental heritage.  

CG17: Be familiar with the different musical styles and practices that allow them to understand, within a broader cultural context, their own field of activity and enrich it.   

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

CG19: Know the pedagogical and educational implications of music at different levels.  

CG20: Know the classification, acoustic, historical, and anthropological characteristics of musical instruments.    

CG21: Create and shape one’s own artistic concepts after having developed the ability to express oneself through them using assimilated techniques and resources.   

CG22: Have broad and diverse musical resources to create or adapt musical pieces as well as improvise in different contexts based 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 the ability for self-directed learning throughout one’s professional life.   

CG25: Know and be able to use study and research methodologies that enable continuous development and innovation of one’s 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 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 recognize and evaluate, both auditorily and intellectually, different types of musical and sound structures.  

CO3: Analytically interpret the construction of musical works in each and every aspect and structural level that constitutes them.   

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

CO6: Know the fundamentals of musical acoustics, the acoustic characteristics of instruments, their technical, sonic, and expressive possibilities, as well as their possible combinations.  

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

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

DI2: Know the musical structure of works from the various repertoires of the Western tradition and other musics, with the ability to evaluate their syntactic and sonic aspects.   

DI3: Develop aural skills that enable one to recognize, memorize, and reproduce a wide variety of musical materials.  

DI4: Analytically understand the creation, notation, and interpretation of musical works from a holistic perspective.  

DI5: Master basic composition techniques.  

DI6: Know technological applications in musical notation, recording, editing, and performance.    

DI7: Know the fundamentals of musical acoustics, the acoustic characteristics of instruments, their technical, sonic, and expressive possibilities, as well as their possible combinations.   

DI8: To understand the most recent trends in musical creation, with the ability to evaluate them by delving into their notations and interpretive implications.   

DI9: To develop the ability to communicate and understand with other musicians, based on the special responsibility and leadership inherent in the conducting profession.   

DI10: Verbally convey well-structured, concrete, and holistic musical thoughts of a theoretical, analytical, aesthetic, and critical nature.   

DI11: Acquire a unique and flexible artistic personality that allows adaptation to multiple musical environments and challenges. 

Learning outcomes (general objectives)

1. Contextualize 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. Equip oneself with a broad range of sound production and organization techniques, as well as the various approaches, applications, constraints, and functionalities that underpin musical creation on aesthetic and social levels. 
4. Develop one’s own criteria to structure and develop the compositional task.  
5. Create musical works by emphasizing preliminary approaches and selections and their constructive, aesthetic, and formal implications. 
6. Composing for musical ensembles made up of available instruments and performers in order to be able to perform the written works and to make an appropriate assessment of the results obtained with respect to the work.  
7. Explore new methods and creative, theoretical, and analytical perspectives on various issues in approaching musical phenomena, and discover themes and lines of action that can guide the final project and, potentially, postgraduate research. 
8. Know musical instruments and their technical and timbral characteristics, and combine and timbrally balance the sounds of various instruments and different sound superimpositions.  
9. Technically and timbrally control the instruments in various ensembles (duos, trios, quartets, quintets, chamber ensembles, orchestra). 
10. Understand timbre and instrumentation as parameters for structural and formal organization.  
11. Critically evaluate the different forms of contrapuntal imitation as techniques for organizing 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 organization of music. 
12. Expand knowledge of musical construction and organization techniques, including extended scalar and harmonic structures across various tonal and atonal contexts.  
13. Apply the main techniques and methods of musical construction and organization developed throughout the 20th century to the present. 

Contents

Creation of works encompassing various areas of musical creativity, for solo instruments, duos, trios, quartets, quintets, chamber ensembles, orchestra, with or without a soloist, with or without text, programmatic or incidental, using electroacoustic, audiovisual, and other media.   

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

Experimentation with instrumental possibilities in collaboration with performers on various instruments. Analysis of instrumental notation in works by composers from different periods and musical styles. Transcriptions and arrangements of musical passages adapted to the characteristics and capabilities of different instruments. Listening to and analyzing the instrumentation of works produced in various periods of music history that are considered paradigmatic in the evolution of instrumentation techniques to the present day. 

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

Variation as a compendium of diverse compositional techniques and as a generator of the dodecatonic method. New systems of musical organization 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 to the other elements involved in the organization 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 in 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 organization of a musical work. Adapt concepts and techniques developed to diverse musical contexts, integrating them into musical analysis and composition work from a creative perspective. Research, experimentation, and conceptualization of new technical and aesthetic proposals in relation to new situations and the evolving 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 includes lectures (topic presentations), debate and discussion sessions, group work sessions, and student-led topic presentations. Independent work includes 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 materialized 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 in-class work, the presentation of in-class work, the completion of assignments, compositions, analyses and/or out-of-class readings, the submission of written work and the listening to composed works, or the taking of written or oral tests.