Music Department

Learning Goals & Objectives

The Department of Music offers a 64-credit major in music leading to the B.S. degree. The undergraduate program in music offers a general program of study with emphasis on theory, musicianship, history, and performance within a liberal arts college curriculum. Graduates of the program will be prepared for further study in music education and allied disciplines such as arts management or journalism.

Learning Goal I (Musicianship and Performance): Develop understanding, hearing, and performance of music of different styles

Learning Objectives:

• Demonstrate proficiency with primary instrument or voice, in solo performance and in large ensembles such as concert band, chorus, and jazz ensemble, and in small chamber groups
• Correlate internal hearing with singing and pitch identification
• Identify and perform various rhythmic patterns of increasing complexity
• Sing a piece of music at sight based on the tonal, modal, chromatic, and atonal systems
• Notate a piece of music in different musical styles

Learning Goal II (History): Understand the central musical styles and genres of Western music in relation to the key social, political, economic, philosophical, and aesthetic forces that helped shape them

Learning Objectives:

• Identify central genres of the major historical periods of Western music
• Identify central stylistic and aesthetic hallmarks of the major historical periods of Western music
• Be able to identify aurally these genres and styles
• Write effectively about music using precise analytical vocabulary
• Conduct research and evaluate research material on music and its performance
• Communicate research findings in coherent prose with precise citations following the Chicago Manual of Style

Learning Goal III (Theory and Composition): Demonstrate a functional knowledge of music’s grammar and formal structures.

Learning Objectives:

• Be able to analyze music of the Western classical tradition from the 18^th-21^st centuries
• Write brief exercises using musical materials and concepts from the periods
• Compose appropriately for instruments of the standard orchestra for small and large ensembles

Last modified: Sep 18, 2012