The Doctorate of Musical Arts

The Doctorate of Musical Arts Degree (DMA) in Music Composition has tracks in computer-assisted composition and world music composition. The track in computer-assisted composition includes algorithmic techniques for the generation of musical materials and structures to be realized in the creation of instrumental, vocal, and digitally synthesized music. The track in world music composition addresses a variety of compositional approaches influenced by indigenous non-Western musics, with a focus upon those musics taught by faculty composers, ethnomusicologists, and applied instructors. The DMA program seeks to develop accomplished, active, and articulate composers with a broad awareness of the diverse styles, cultural influences, media, venues, and technical means available to them in the 21st century.

Degree Requirements
Upon entering the program at the beginning of fall quarter, students will take a diagnostic exam testing historical, theoretical, and analytical skills. Based on assessment of this exam, some students may be required to correct deficiencies by completing undergraduate or master's-level music courses.

For students entering with the bachelor's degree, a minimum of 102 credits in course work at UCSC will be required. Students must be in residence for a minimum of nine quarters and must enroll in a minimum of 12 credits each quarter until they advance to candidacy. After advancing to candidacy, students remaining in residence must take a minimum of two five-credit courses per quarter.

For students entering with a master's degree from another institution, a minimum of 72 credits in course work at UCSC will be required. Students must be in residence for a minimum of six quarters and must enroll in a minimum of 12 credits each quarter until they advance to candidacy. After advancing to candidacy, students remaining in residence must take a minimum of two five-credit courses per quarter.

Music 200, 201, and 202 are required. (Students entering the DMA with a master's degree from another institution may petition to be exempted from one or more of these three course requirements by submitting work that demonstrates the relevant skills.) Enrollment in Music 252~Current Issues Colloquium (2 credits) each quarterin residence is also required.

Music 203H and 206A are required of all students in the world music composition track, as well as either Music 203G or another course from the 206 series. Music 206B and a seminar from the Music 203 series are required of all students in the computer assisted composition track, as well as either Music 223 or another course from the Music 206 series.

Current knowledge of a relevant foreign language must be demonstrated by either passing level 3 of a UCSC language placement examination, satisfactory completion of level 3 of the language at UCSC, preferably during the first year of enrollment, or submission of an official transcript documenting successful completion of one year of university-level foreign language. Students fluent in a language other than English may satisfy this requirement by submitting a written statement to that effect from a UCSC language instructor. With approval of the primary adviser, students whose emphasis is algorithmic composition may complete three quarters (one year) of university-level instruction in computer programming in lieu of fulfillment of the foreign-language requirement. Knowledge of languages not offered at UCSC must be demonstrated as determined by the Music Graduate Committee.

The remainder of the course requirements for the DMA are specifically in the field of composition. Course 219 introduces the discipline to first-year graduate students. Music 220 provides greater leeway to develop individual compositional styles and techniques. Independent study courses in composition are taken in preparation for the completion of the Qualifying Recital (which is required of students entering with a bachelor's degree) and in preparation for the dissertation.Enrollment in Music 299~Thesis Research for a minimum of five quarters is required.

Pre-qualifying reviews: half recital and portfolio
Before the end of the first year of study, all DMA students must present a half recital of their compositions from that year, and submit the scores and recital recording as a portfolio, which composition faculty will use to assess their progress in the program. Typically, the half recital is satisfied by a combination of (1) participation in a concert of graduate-student compositions sponsored each April by Porter College and the Music Department, and (2) participation in a public reading of graduate-student final projects from Music 220 at the end of spring quarter.

The Qualifying Recital
All students admitted to the DMA program must present a full recital of their work at the end of their second year of study. The DMA Qualifying Recital will be evaluated by the student's primary adviser and by a second faculty member(generally a second composer) selected by the student in consultation with the primary adviser.

Dissertation Prospectus
The dissertation prospectus must be submitted to the Qualifying Examination Committee by the beginning of spring term one year before the scheduled Qualifying Examination. The prospectus must include a proposal describing the scope and nature of the dissertation composition and the accompanying essay. In addition to defining the parameters of the dissertation itself, the dissertation prospectus will suggest to the student's Qualifying Examination Committee those areas of study that should be emphasized in the student's Qualifying Examination.

Qualifying Examination

Advancement to candidacy is contingent upon the passing of a written examination and an oral examination normally administered at the end of year three for students entering with a bachelor's degree, and year one or two for students entering with a master's degree from another institution. You must be a registered graduate student the quarter you take your qualifying examination. The four members of the Qualifying Exam Committee will be nominated by the student’s primary (dissertation) adviser in consultation with all composition faculty in residence. A “Committee Nomination of Ph.D. Qualifying Examination” form must be submitted to the Graduate Dean at least one month before the examination.

The oral examination is administered by the student's Qualifying Examination Committee and may concern any aspect of the assigned topics with an emphasis on those issues addressed in the written portion of the examination. For the written portion of the examination, the Qualifying Examination Committee provides questions on the three topics assigned as areas of emphasis.

Dissertation
DMA students must complete a dissertation consisting of a substantial musical composition, accompanied by an essay. The composition must attain the highest professional standard inasmuch as it constitutes the primary research and creative work represented in the dissertation as a whole. The essay is understood to be a supplemental document that may address theoretical, technical, aesthetic, or cultural issues pertinent to the composition. One to two years of work beyond the qualifying examinations should be sufficient for the completion of the dissertation, except in cases where extended fieldwork is required.

Final examination
The final examination will be a public oral defense of the dissertation. After an oral presentation by the candidate, the candidate will be questioned by the Dissertation Committee.

Application and Admission

Students entering the DMA program in composition will be expected to have completed the equivalent of a BA in music, a bachelor of music degree, or an MA in music.

Applications are limited to programs of study beginning in fall quarter. The deadline for receipt of applications and other required materials is January 15. The application is accessible at the web site https://apply.embark.com/Grad/UCSantaCruz/78/.

Admission to the program is based on assessment of the application and the following required materials:

1. Three composition scores with recordings (if available) on CD, DVD, VHS, etc. If your work involves improvisation, digital audio, or other approaches that are not well served by scores, one of your three compositions may be submitted in the form of a recording with brief notes on the media and/or performance conditions; in this case, two works with scores are still required. Please include your name and social security number at the bottom of each page.

2. A writing sample (e.g., term paper, thesis, essay). Please include your name and social security number at the bottom of each page.

3. Scores for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General Test.

4. Three letters of recommendation.

5. Statement of Purpose:
   a. If you are interested in the computer-assisted composition track, please explain your interest in computer-assisted composition, and include either an example of a computer program you have written (a source code for the program plus documentation describing its use) OR other evidence of technical competence with computers.
   b. If you are interested in the world music composition track, please explain your interest in a particular musical culture or tradition other than Western classical music.

Applicants whose primary language is not English must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and attain a minimum score of 550 on the paper test, or 220 on the computer test, or 83 on the on-line test.

Videotapes, audiocassettes, CDs, DVDs, scores, and other application materials are nonreturnable.

Material(s) should be submitted to the following address:

UC Santa Cruz
Music Department
Graduate Adviser
Music Center
1156 High St.
Santa Cruz CA 95064

Please contact Yalenda Listmann at yalenda@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-3199 for additional information about the program.

Faculty of the DMA in Music Composition

David Evan Jones [ email | website ]
I have come increasingly to the appreciation of the nonrational elements of composing, performing, and listening. There is often a vast difference between what I find interesting and what I find -- for reasons known and unknown to me -- to be important. As a composer I place my years of conscious training and practice in service of goals and means intuitively formed. As an instructor I aim to assist students in focusing, developing, and realizing approaches that they find personally important (as well as interesting). Because my own work has, at times, involved influences from sources as diverse as bebop and Balkan music (as well as Britten, Ligeti, Messiaen and many others), it is natural for me to encourage students to digest and integrate their own deeply felt stylistic affinities. My CD Neo-Balkan Jazz and Concert Music was released earlier this year. I am currently writing a series of chamber operas, each of which constitutes an experiment with a different aspect of the genre. My first opera, Bardos, is written for two characters (an on-stage pianist and a mezzo) with Butoh dancers; a chamber choir, organ, and percussion accompany from the pit. Bardos was staged in Seoul in 2004. In contrast, my newly completed second chamber opera, The Rehearsal (currently for baritone, tenor, mezzo and piano), places the intense and rapid-fire interactions characteristic of emotional conversation into a social context that is explicitly multi-textual on a musical level -- a rehearsal.

Hi Kyung Kim [ email | website ]
As a composer who has studied in Korea, the United States, and France (Paris, 1988-90), I have developed my musical language in a primarily western style. However, one can hear definite elements of Asian culture in my music. As an educator it is also important to me to guide students who have come from different traditions and backgrounds. The synthesis of the best elements of different cultures into a meaningful whole is very important to me, both as a composer and an educator. In my recent pieces, the trilogy "Rituel" I, II, III (2001-2004), I have explored collaboration between traditional Korean musicians and Western musicians. A new element in my work that is featured in these pieces is the inclusion of improvisational sections between the musicians of these two different cultures. I have also used elements of theater, dance, and multi-media visual art in these pieces. In other works I have also explored the combination of Eastern and Western cultural aesthetics in the format of more traditional Western instrumental musical genres. I strive to combine these different aesthetics and musical traditions in a way that does more than simply exploit superficial elements of each.

Paul Nauert [ email | website ]
My activities as composer and theorist are very much intertwined. Sometimes I'll face a practical problem in composition, and then I'll see a way to generalize the solution. That's the origin of my progression-vector calculations, which allow me to compute various indices for similarity of chord progressions. Other times things flow in the opposite direction, and I'll incorporate in my compositions some of the resources that I've come to understand in a more abstract, theoretical context. My saxophone and piano duo, Chapter & Verse, which I discuss in an essay to appear soon in Perspectives of New Music, is a case in point. It's built on a recurring cycle of twenty-nine chords, and the paths from chord to chord are modeled on the pattern of a dominant-seventh resolving to a tonic, even though the chords in my progression are less triadic than those of the model. I've grown comfortable with this balance of the theoretical and the practical, and I encourage my composition students to explore different regions along the same continuum.

David Cope [ email | website ]
I consider myself an algorithmic composer, as distinguished from a composer who uses algorithms. This means that generally my compositions are created whole-cloth from an algorithm rather than having algorithms produce this or that part of my music. The differences between these two approaches revolves around the need for algorithmic composers to face structural (background) as well as textual and contextual (foreground) problems. I find it very satisfying to formalize as many of my compositional processes as possible, whether these processes produce music following historical models of music or music in my own style. The importance of these formalizations for me is not so much to predict outcomes, but to better understand what it is that I do when I compose.

Ben Carson [ email | website ]
My work explores the implications of what psychologists call "multidimensional scaling," as bases for connections between ideas, voices, and other conventional categories of musical structure. I have developed algorithms for the composition of ametrical ("unpulsed") rhythm, which are founded on an idea that I have also attempted to confirm empirically: that our experience of musical time is wholly dependent on our experience of group distinctions along other continua. My broader interdisciplinary research involves questions about the changing ideology of compositional method, especially as it might reflect the history of industry and post-colonial modernity. Whenever these two research areas sometimes seem overly divergent, I always try to tie my scholarship back to a central concern: what are musical "subjects," and where are they located? In other words, how does one identify with musical experience, and what are the features of music that carry that identity?

Karlton E. Hester [ email | website ]
I began my career as a composer and recording artist in Los Angeles where I worked as a studio musician and music educator. I received my Ph.D. in composition from the City University of New York Graduate Center and currently am Director of "Jazz" Studies at the University of California in Santa Cruz. I specialize in premeditated, spontaneous and electro-acoustic composition. As a composer, I have created works in an array of styles, ranging from solos and duets, chamber music for string quartet and flute choir, to orchestral compositions, music for various types of combos and chamber ensembles, and works that blend electronic and acoustic instruments. Amongst my numerous awards are grants from the NEA, Meet the Composer, and travel grants from Arts International. A performer on both flute and saxophone, my formal study included work with Harry Nelsova and Paul Renzi on flute, Joe Henderson and John Handy in "jazz" improvisation, composition with Bruce Saylor and Robert Starrer, as well as lessons with Frank Chase and Bill Tremble on saxophone.

Peter Elsea [ email | website ]
I began my study of electroacoustic composition and music technology with Peter Todd Lewis and Lowell Cross in the early 70s. Since then I have dedicated my career to the development of new tools for performers and composers. At one time this meant construction of synthesizers and production studios; now it's writing software. My best known effort is the Lobjects plugins for the interactive music programming environment Max. My current work focuses on techniques for meaningful interaction of music and images. Not too surprisingly my music is technically based, generally involving computer-mediated performance and real time composition. As director of the UCSC electronic music studios (since 1980), I supervise a rich environment of equipment and ideas, where a student can explore the full range of classic and cutting-edge compositional techniques.