Module Code - Title:
MD4046
-
IMPROVISATION AND COMPOSITION (VOICE / MUSIC / DANCE)
Year Last Offered:
2025/6
Hours Per Week:
Grading Type:
Prerequisite Modules:
Rationale and Purpose of the Module:
This module will introduce students to creative processes, using improvisational and compositional exercises. Students will investigate the use of movement, instrumental and vocal concepts as motives for creative practice.
Syllabus:
Students taking this module will engage a number of different improvisatory and compositional practices from western and 'world' music and dance traditions as well as their own genres. They will understand these practices in context but also engage them in the context of their own performance practices.
Students will develop performances that will be produced from an engagement and development of these practices in a meaningful and creative manner. Students will be provided with written feedback according to BA Irish Music and Dance policy.
Learning Outcomes:
Cognitive (Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis)
Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation.
Acquire knowledge of a selection of improvisatory and compositional practices in local and international practices
To be able to construct examples of some of these practices
To investigate appropriate developments of the artist's own improvisatory and compositional practices in light of this knowledge
Affective (Attitudes and Values)
Integrate a number of compositional and improvisational practices in performance.
To challenge practices of improvisation and composition in Irish traditional music and dance performance through the application and development of alternative multi-cultural models.
Psychomotor (Physical Skills)
To display developed motor skills to execute improvisatory practices.
How the Module will be Taught and what will be the Learning Experiences of the Students:
Research Findings Incorporated in to the Syllabus (If Relevant):
Prime Texts:
Tufnell, Miranda (1993)
Body space image: notes towards improvisation and performance
, London: Virago
Buckwalter, Melinda (2010)
Composing while dancing: an improvisers companion
, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
John A. Sloboda, ed. (2000)
Generative processes in music: the psychology of performance, improvisation and composition
, Oxford: Clarendon Press
Other Relevant Texts:
Lee Higgins and Patricia Shehan Campbell (2010)
Free to be musical : group improvisation in music
, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
Bruno Nettl with Melinda Russell, eds. (1998)
In the course of performance: studies in the world of musical improvisation
, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Gray, Nicholas Stuart (2011)
Improvisation and composition in Balinese gendér wayang: music of the moving shadows
, Farnham: Ashgate.
Programme(s) in which this Module is Offered:
Semester(s) Module is Offered:
Spring
Module Leader:
Oscar.Mascarenas@ul.ie