Advanced Aural Skills:
Chromatic Harmony

Course Description

Advanced techniques of music listening developed through sight-singing, dictation, and aural analysis. Students develop skills for critically listening to, analyzing, and notating four-part chromatic harmony, chromatic melodies, advanced rhythm and meter, and instrumentation in common-practice 18th and 19th century classical repertoire. Course activities are correlated with topics presented in the co-requisite course, Advanced Theory & Practice: Chromatic Harmony & Form.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Sight-read, transcribe, and improvise with rhythms in simple, compound, asymmetrical, and changing meters that incorporate complex rhythmic patterns, small subdivisions, and polyrhythms.

• Aurally identify and diagram formal structures, including binary, ternary, strophic, sonata, rondo, theme and variation, and fugue.

• Analyze and annotate musical excerpts using audio annotation tools, identifying formal sections, phrase structure, cadences, key areas, and modulations without the use of a score.

• Sight-sing and improvise melodies that incorporate advanced chromatic harmonies, including mode mixture, Neapolitan sixths, augmented sixths, CTº7 chords, chromatic modulation, enharmonic reinterpretation, altered and extended chords, and chromatic mediants.

• Transcribe and notate chord progressions, melodies, and outer voices in examples from the repertoire that feature advanced chromatic harmonies and complex rhythms.

Sample Syllabus

This is a template for the MPATC-UE 1341 syllabus. The content of the syllabus may vary by semester and instructor. Please see the syllabus for the semester and section you are registered for.