Mar 29, 2024  
College Catalog 2021-2022 
    
College Catalog 2021-2022 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

KSMUS 222 — Advanced Keyboard Skills

2 credits
Spring
Faculty

Prerequisite:

  

The final phase of the keyboard skills sequence, advanced keyboard skills courses are offered in the following specialized categories:

 

Creative Improvisation
This course introduces students to diverse improvisation frameworks for the keyboard, exploring models from Baroque to contemporary music (Bach, Schubert, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Ligeti) as well as ideas and models from the World-Music and Free-Jazz traditions (including modal improvisation, rhythmic textures, and speech melodies). Students will develop a wide vocabulary of improvised material, gaining the ability to quickly react to musical decisions while developing confidence, naturalness, and aesthetic insight.

 

Classical-Era Ornamentation and Improvisation
This course develops fluidity and comfort with stylistic ornamentation and improvisation. Students will explore Classical-Era patterns of figuration, ornamentation, harmonic progressions, and compositional techniques, as a means to create and improvise small forms, such as preludes, fantasies and cadenzas in the style of C P E Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. The use of harpsichord and fortepiano will be included, per availability. As a final project, students will create a cadenza for a Mozart piano concerto.

 

Techniques in Vocal Collaboration
In this Advanced Keyboard Skills elective course, students will explore the art song repertoire and develop techniques for working with singers, including an understanding of vocal technique as it relates to breathing; sensitivity and communication during performance; rehearsal techniques; basic diction; and poetic interpretation of vocal texts. Students will work regularly with singers in class and learn how to both sight-read songs and prepare them for performance. Works studied will be primarily drawn from the art song repertoire (Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Fauré, Debussy, and others) but will also include an introduction to the operatic repertoire.

 

Contemporary Piano Music: Strategies and Techniques 
This Advanced Keyboard Skills elective course explores facets of learning, practicing, and performing contemporary piano repertoire. Topics include rhythm, texture, score study and practice strategies, interpretation, sound production, and composer collaboration. Music for the course spans the early 20th century to the newly written and includes complete and excerpted work by Luigi Dallapiccola, George Crumb, Unsuk Chin, Elliott Carter, Salvatore Sciarrino, Felipe Lara, Julia Wolfe, Eric Wubbels, among others. All class sessions will include student participation in the form of discussion and performance, and, while the course focuses on modern repertoire, the skills discussed will enrich students’ approach to music of any era.