Learning Outcomes

Music Department Educational Objectives

The study of music enables consumers (listeners), re-creators (performers), and creators (composers) to increase their understanding of both the sounded and written aspects of musical language.

Musical Materials Courses

These courses concern the sound materials that are used to construct musical works, their organization into systems, and their interrelationships, which give rise to musical significance. Students are expected to recognize and reproduce the basic elements both in sound and in notation, both in isolation and in complete musical contexts.

Musical Styles Courses

These are courses that concern musical style; its historic progression through different times, places, and cultures; and specific composers and works that contributed to that progression.  Students are expected to recognize by sound and sight the ways in which musical elements are combined as compositional conventions:  within a particular work, within the output of a composer, and by different composers in a particular time or place.

Music Performance Courses

The courses focus on performance, the actual production of music in sound.  Students are expected to apply the physical requirements of playing different instruments to the elements of the score and to interpretative decisions, as the potential of notation becomes the reality of sounded music.  Students learn repertoire for soloists individually in applied lessons and repertoire for groups of performers in ensembles.

Music Department Learning Outcomes

Students are expected to:

  • Understand tools and methods used in musical research and be able to analyze sources accurately and critically; present their research in a clear and coherent manner both orally and in writing
  • Demonstrate a broad understanding of musical materials and styles both as categories of musical significance and with regard to specific works and composers,
  • Demonstrate competence as a performer on the chosen instrument both in solo andensemble repertoire.