Courses Offered in Fall 2025 (114AY 1S)

Course Objectives

This course has the following objectives:

1. To strengthen the integrated musical and intellectual abilities of incoming students in the Institute of Music whose background in harmony and musical form may be relatively weak, so that they may better adapt to other courses in the Institute.
2. To provide an integrated introductory course for non-Institute of Music students who already possess a basic level of music theory and wish to study professional courses in music theory, music performance, or music composition in greater depth.
3. To prepare students for the realization of a fully developed musical experience—one that integrates theory, practice, and creation.

This course is divided into two parts:

The first part concerns the basic theory of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tonality, including harmony and analysis. Students will be guided to focus on voice-leading and to analyze tonal music from the perspectives of structure and prolongation. The goal is for students to stop viewing tonal music as a series of isolated chordal connections, and instead to investigate its meaning and function, understanding the whole as an organic unity.

The second part concerns style writing. It highlights and provides experience with Western art music and some of its major concepts, using these concepts as a basis for creative realization. These concepts include:

1. Ways of presenting thematic material, such as sentence, period, and others.
2. The idea as the embodiment of totality and its discourse.
3. The indispensable functional roles of structural events in sonata form, including thematic statement, development, contrast, conclusion, and others.
4. Figuration, the prolongation of a single chord, and the prolongation of structural harmonic progressions.
5. Figuration as sign, as style, and as topic.
6. The concepts and techniques of developing variation.

This graduate course introduces research methods, as well as the strategies and the “language” of writing about music to performance majors. We start with a brief review of the basics of research tools and crucial issues in and ethics of academic writing. We continue with a series of sample writings hand in hand with these principles. We will see how the authors focus on different aspects of perspectives in their discussion of music and how they develop and sharpen their arguments.

The aim of this course is to offer graduate music majors necessary tools and directions to engage in an intelligent discussion of their repertory, skills that they may apply to their term projects, thesis writing, and lecture recitals. The readings included in the syllabus will enable us to see the variety of ways that an author may use to approach a music work. We will have invited music scholars(s) coming to discuss the ways that they phrase they theories arguments.

Domestic and international scholars and experts are invited to deliver special lectures at the Institute of Music. These lectures aim to enrich students’ knowledge and perspectives in the fields of music composition, performance, research, and other related disciplines, while inspiring multifaceted exploration of music from technical, intellectual, and critical perspectives.

Throughout music history, advances in music technology have continually influenced the content and presentation of musical works. This course focuses on advanced programming in Max/MSP/Jitter for audio and visual applications, guiding students to understand various theories of digital synthesis and to develop the ability to program their own digital effects, synthesizers, and related tools.

The course aims to enable students to further apply these technologies in the creation of sound works and music, or in real-time interactive music. By integrating traditional instruments with digital technology, students will explore new artistic possibilities that combine tradition and technology.

Course Overview and Objectives

This course focuses on the development of Western music from the post-World War II period to the present. It examines composers of different periods, innovations in representative works, aesthetic positions, constructed styles, and the development of musical thought, schools, and movements. Through this course, students will gain a multifaceted understanding of the development of modern music, while also seeking and establishing their own creative directions and aesthetic perspectives.

In addition, the course will include selected short readings, excerpts from interviews with modern composers, discussions of performances and rehearsals, and related materials. These are intended to help students deepen their experience in musicological research, thesis writing, and the formation of ideas for avant-garde artistic creation.

Since World War II, the development of Western music has become increasingly interconnected, forming complex and closely related networks of influence. This course aims to help students learn analytical techniques and concepts for music after 1945, understand its developmental contexts, and study the concepts and techniques associated with different musical ideas.

The course progresses through multiple developmental contexts in music. When introducing new musical ideas, the course will connect them with previously discussed ideas, either as extensions or as contrasting reactions. The course content emphasizes two main dimensions: concepts and techniques.

In terms of concepts, in addition to lectures, students will engage with existing composer interviews, rehearsal recordings, and writings in which composers articulate their ideas. These materials will help students understand the modes of thinking of composers at the time, followed by group discussion and critical exchange.

In terms of technical practice, after a particular musical concept or technique has been introduced, students will carry out practical simulations, attempt to create short works, and share the difficulties they encounter in the creative process. Through further score reading and analysis, students will then examine how composers of the time addressed such problems.

At the end of the semester, students are required to integrate more than three musical concepts or techniques into a final work, present it, and provide an explanation, thereby achieving the goal of integrated thinking.

The purpose of this course is to cultivate students’ ability to think independently and critically, while offering multiple possible directions for music creation and performance. Through the three dimensions of contextual understanding, conceptual reflection, and technical practice, the study of major modern composers will become a source of support and momentum for students, enabling them to develop independent research abilities in areas such as innovative composition, analytical understanding, and performance interpretation.

Concert of IMU “Tunes of Bamboo” focuses primarily on the new works presented by students in the Composition and Technology Division of the Institute of Music in the “Chuyun Concert” each semester. In addition to analysis and discussion of musical composition, the course also includes experimentation and rehearsal in the practical aspects of musical performance, providing more comprehensive preparation and guidance for the semesterly music presentation.

Through a progressive introduction to contemporary music and the study of works to be presented, this course aims to provide students in the Composition and Technology Division and the Performance Division with more time to develop mutual understanding in the process of musical creation, ultimately achieving the best possible performance and interpretation of each work.

The course is provided for full time students of Institute of Music, NYCU, who major on string instrument.

1. This course primarily aims to help students establish fundamental concepts in music analysis, while integrating basic knowledge of music theory and developing analytical skills.
2. The course is designed on the basis of Western tonal music, with particular emphasis on the analysis of Western tonal music from 1700 to 1900.
3. The course has the following three objectives:
   1. To study the formal structure of musical works and the expansion and prolongation of tonal harmony from both macro- and micro-level perspectives.
   2. To create annotated scores.
   3. To understand the hierarchical concept through which the content of tonal music is expressed, and to learn how to produce formal diagrams for form structure and sketches of reduction analysis for harmonic progression.

In addition to the three learning objectives above, this course places special emphasis on the practical application of the analytical methods and techniques learned in class to the analysis of musical works.

Sonata form is one of the most important large-scale instrumental forms in the formal structures of Western music. It originated in the rounded binary form of the Baroque period, and its prototype as allegro sonata form was established by Classical-period composers such as Haydn and Mozart. Later, composers of the late Classical and Romantic periods, including Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms, introduced various structural changes and reforms. By the twentieth century, sonata form had taken on yet another distinct appearance.

“Studies in Sonata Form” begins with an understanding of the structure of sonata form, and then explores the different characteristics given to it by composers of various periods. At the same time, by analyzing composers who employed sonata-form structures in their works—especially their thematic design, tonal transitions, and the development of thematic motives across sections—the course seeks to uncover the aesthetic ideas behind their compositional practice. In doing so, students are expected to develop their own distinctive insights when performing works by masters of different historical periods.

A pre-seminar to the study of music from a cultural and comparative perspective.

This 3-credit seminar explores Beethoven from the perspective of historical and theoretical analyses, performance practice, interpretation and reception of his works as well as the image of Beethoven European culture. With a primary focus on Beethoven, we will also use the discussion of him and his works as a staring point to explore the cultural climate in Europe between late 18th- and early 20th centuries.

This is neither a software instruction course nor a course in commercial music arrangement and production.

I. Emphasis on learning by doing: digital music creation

1. Learning the applications of various non-linear digital audio techniques in digital audio workstations (DAWs), with a focus on digital signal processing (DSP) for sound cutting, editing, collage, and mixing.
2. Studying the most important computer music programming environment, Max/MSP, including techniques such as sound synthesis—Freeze, FM, granular synthesis, filtering, and RM—and spatial sound techniques, including reverb, Doppler, panning, and Spat5.
3. Experimenting with multitrack software, such as Audition, to organize, collage, and create computer music or soundscape works using environmental field recordings as source material.
4. Completing assigned short exercises, a midterm miniature work, and a final project.

II. Literature, works, and related knowledge in computer and digital music

Students will listen to and analyze classic works of computer and digital music, and read materials related to digital music technologies, aesthetics, history, and literature.

III. Course aims

Through a course design that places equal emphasis on theory, aesthetics, and practical techniques, students will develop skills in computer music composition and reflect on the interdisciplinary integration of technology and musical art as a means of expressing thought and emotion.

IV. Path to Goal

From open ears to happy new ears!

This course aims to introduce the development of Western music from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. This period will be divided into the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, with a focus on developments and changes in the following areas:

1. Musical style, including compositional techniques and tonal systems.
2. Musical aesthetics.
3. The influence of social, political, technological, and other developments on music history.

Course assessment is divided into two parts. The first consists of short listening quizzes. A repertoire list will be provided each week, and a quiz will be given at the beginning of the following class, requiring students to identify the music they hear and write down the composer and title. This is intended to increase students’ familiarity with a range of musical works.

The second part consists of written examinations. Based on the course content, two to three exams will be held during the semester. These exams will cover knowledge of music history taught in class and will include both short-answer and extended-response questions, allowing students to develop an understanding of basic concepts in music history.

The weekly course schedule will be adjusted according to the actual progress of the class.