This course is designed to introduce the student to contemporary practices of creating and presenting electroacoustic music from the practical perspectives of analyzing works and understanding current technologies and aesthetic paradigms. In addition to musicological issues, composition will be placed in the wider context of contemporary art and New Media practices. This is a composition class that uses a music appreciation format to teach music creation today.Practical compositional lectures by Michal Rataj will focus on the analysis of a few key works, each dealing with specific aspects of music and technology and individual compositional approaches. Eric Rosenzveig will present theoretical classes providing an overview, background and competing theories from the varied perspectives of the artist, philosopher, technologist, musician and composer. We will try and look at the question “why” in addition to “how” to make a new work. We'll listen to many shorter works in class, to provide context to our discussions.
