Text-to-Music: Writing for the Voice

Catalog description

The voice has held a special place in music composition for millennia. As an instrument which emerges directly from the body, and conveying extra-musical meaning via text, the voice is unique in its ability to create drama, engender narrative, and address corporeality in sound. In this course, students will engage with the many modes in which the voice has been utilized in western classical music, from canonical forms such as opera, lieder/chansons, choral writing and narration to ancient forms such as chant and organum, as well as more recent innovations including extended techniques, electronic augmentation, and AI vocal models, all while exploring their own compositional technique for the instrument. This course will start as a seminar consisting of group analyses of vocal music, before shifting to a studio environment engaging in the critique of original work by students.