Courses Offered in Fall 2025 (114AY 1S)

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.

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.