Shenandoah Conservatory Study Guide for the Graduate Comprehensive Exam in Music Theory (last updated, 4/15)

The purpose of this exam is to gauge the depth and scope of students’ abilities to apprehend structural and formal relationships in music from a variety of repertoires. For this reason, the exam will most often involve score analysis. Some comprehensive exams require essay responses (usually in addition to some score analysis). Essay topics are broad, and assess knowledge of genres, compositional techniques, forms, across a suitably broad timespan. In such essays, students are required to cite specific examples to support their arguments.

Students who typically do well in music theory courses should expect to spend a minimum of six months in preparation for the comprehensive exam in music theory. Those who tend to struggle should begin preparing at least a year in advance.

Tonal Analysis: Students should be fluent (i.e., above undergraduate fluency) in all aspects diatonic and chromatic harmony, conventions of harmonic function, and sequences. Students are often expected to provide standard Roman numeral analyses that account for chord qualities, and standard figured bass symbols that account for inversions, suspensions, and other significant contrapuntal elaborations. In addition, students must understand techniques of modulation.

Recommended texts for study: Aldwell, Edward and Carl Schachter Harmony and Voice Leading; Benjamin, Thomas, Michael Horvitt, and Robert Nelson Techniques and Materials of Music; Laitz, Steven and Christopher Bartlette Graduate Review of Tonal Theory; Laitz, Steven The Complete Musician.

Music. ���Forte, Alan. Tonal Harmony in Concept and Practice. Gauldin, Robert. Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music. Kostka, Stefan and Dorothy Payne. Tonal Harmony. Spencer, Peter. The Practice of Harmony.

Formal Analysis: Students must know the conventional thematic, harmonic, and key relationships in the following standard forms of tonal music:

Standard binary and ternary forms, Baroque contrapuntal forms (e.g., fugue, invention) Sonata form(s) Rondo form(s) Classical concerto first-movement form

Recommended texts for study Benjamin, Thomas The Craft of Tonal Counterpoint (for contrapuntal forms); Berry, Wallace Form in Music; Caplin, William Classical Form; Green, Douglass Form in Tonal Music; Santa, Matthew Hearing Form: Musical Analysis With or Without the Score; Spencer, Peter and Peter M. Temko, A Practical Approach to the Study of Form in Music.

Post-Tonal Analysis: Students should understand major trends in compositional technique during the twentieth century (listed below). They should also be able to read through the score of a post-tonal work well enough to understand its organization in

terms of pitch, rhythm, and form, as well as any developmental processes (e.g., motivic, conceptual).

Consider the following techniques and materials

Pandiatonicism, Modality (including modes of the diatonic collection, as well as the acoustic collection*), Polytonality, Polyharmony, Referential Collections (e.g., whole tone, octatonic, hexatonic), Centricity and Symmetry, Set Theory (including Tn and TnI relationships); 12-tone music and Total (a.k.a. ‘Integral’), Serialism, Minimalism

Recommended texts for study Kostka, Stefan. Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music. Lester, Joel. Analytical Approaches to Twentieth-Century Music. Roig-Francoli, Miguel A. Understanding Post-Tonal Music. Straus, Joseph N. Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory.

 

                                                                                                               *  The  acoustic  collection  is  an  increasingly  common  term  that—in  its  ‘pure’  un-­‐rotated  form—refers  to  the  fourth  mode  of  the  ascending  melodic  minor  scale  (think  “Lydian  with  a  lowered  ^7).  Composers  of  Eastern  Europe  (Bartók,  Janáček,  Martinů)  frequently  used  modes  from  this  collection.