MusM Music (Musicology)

This course unit provides a comprehensive training in the practice of orchestration and its relationship to the other parameters of musical composition. It involves close collaboration with the professional orchestras based in Manchester. Weekly seminars are supplemented by attendance at BBC Philharmonic and/or Hallé Orchestra rehearsals. Course content is tailored to complement the current concert season. 

Student would normally hold a first degree in Music

• To provide students with an advanced understanding of instruments and the principles underlying late 19^th century to contemporary approaches to orchestration.

• To acquaint students with techniques of orchestration through both theoretical study and analysis, and practical engagement through attendance at BBC Philharmonic and/or Hallé Orchestra rehearsals.

• To provide an understanding as to how the practice of orchestration relates to the other parameters of musical composition.

By the end of the course-unit students should have:

• Studied a variety of 20th/21st-century musical scores.
• Developed a comprehensive understanding of 20th century to contemporary practice in orchestration and its relationship to the other parameters of musical composition.
• Developed skills in problem solving, analysis, aesthetics, and judgment.
• Made a detailed study of the orchestration of a selected composer and put this knowledge into practice in their own orchestration of a piano piece (or work for voice or solo instrument with piano) by the same composer.
• Developed acute aural awareness in the balancing and combination of instruments, in terms of timbre, dynamics and density.
• Learned to make appropriate aesthetic judgments.
• Developed creative decision-making.
• Developed skills in orchestral layout of scores and preparation of parts, which involves professionalism, proof-reading, organizational skills and attention to detail.

Adler, Samuel - The Study of Orchestration (Norton, 1989)

Blatter, Alfred - Instrumentation and Orchestration (Schirmer, 1997)

Piston, Walter - Orchestration (Gollancz, 1955)

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay - Principles of Orchestration (Dover, 1964)