| COMPOSITION (D.M.A.): Requirements for the Degree | ||||||||||||
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1. Special Committee. A doctoral composition student's program is supervised by an individual Special Committee of three or four faculty members chosen by the student. Three of the committee members represent three different subjects (as formally defined by the Graduate School): Composition (always represented by the chair) plus two minor subjects (Musicology, Music Theory, Musical Performance, or a subject from outside the Field of Music). 2. Residence. Normally eight semesters of full-time study, but no fewer than six. (Technically the residence requirement can be reduced to four semesters for a student who has earned a master's degree elsewhere before matriculating at Cornell, but in practice this is exceedingly rare.) 3. Language. Reading proficiency in one foreign language. This requirement must be fulfilled before the Admission-to-Candidacy Examination may be attempted. The choice of language must be approved by the Special Committee, and it must be carefully chosen to be germane to the student's course work and dissertation research. Formerly, it was assumed that German or sometimes French were the most useful for general purposes, but this is no longer so clear across the board. Some students have found Spanish necessary to their work, or Italian, or even Indonesian or Japanese or Polish. (Since studying a language is extremely time-consuming, students who have not already learned a suitable language would be well advised to begin this work during the summer before they matriculate.) 4. Coursework. Such courses and independent work as the Special Committee may require (see Curriculum, below). 5. Admission-to-candidacy examination. This is actually a series of general examinations--two written exams, one oral--that must be attempted not later than the beginning of the seventh semester of full-time study. Many composition students take them at the end of the fifth or sixth semester. (For those earning the M.F.A., the oral examination doubles as the final examination for that degree, for which the candidate presents a master's thesis consisting of a work of chamber music of at least 15 minutes' duration.) The exams usually cover the dissertation proposal, twentieth-century music history and theory, a repertory of short pieces from several centuries to be performed and analyzed, and written problems in composition, harmony, orchestration, or the like. Sometimes they also include formal questions from the candidate's minor subjects. 6. D.M.A. recital. A public program comprising at least 30 minutes' music composed during the candidate's study at Cornell, and demonstrating mastery of a variety of instrumental and vocal media. 7. D.M.A. Dissertation.The dissertation is in two parts: (1) a composition or compositions totalling at least 20 minutes' duration (if one long composition, it must be for large forces; if a portfolio of several compositions, at least one work must be for large forces); and (2) a long essay on some aspect of music (analytical, theoretical, critical, or historical). 8. Dissertation defense. This must be passed within seven calendar years of the date of matriculation unless an exception is granted by the Graduate School. Candidates need not be in residence as full-time students when the examination is taken.
As it is for graduate students in most fields at Cornell, the course of study for composers is flexible. Each student's program is developed individually, in consultation with his or her Special Committee. Many students remain active as performers and conductors throughout their programs, and some combine their study of music with study in another field. Substantial portions of the work at Cornell take place outside the framework of formal seminars, sometimes in tutorials with individual faculty members, sometimes fully on one's own. While there is flexibility in the curriculum, the Special Committees of all D.M.A. candidates usually require at least a little formal work in music theory, in historical musicology, and in ethnomusicology. Most students take the following courses unless they have already done equivalent work elsewhere:
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