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Composition

Composition

Composition

The music composition program is designed to prepare students for graduate work in composition or for freelance work as composers, copyists, or arrangers. The curriculum includes a strong emphasis on analog and digital synthesis and on current computer applications for the preparation of musical scores. Additional course work is available in recording technologies.

Music speaks to everyone in a language unto itself. Expressing its technical and emotional power takes fluency in the art and science of composition.

The Music Composition program will give you the knowledge to share your musical voice freely, clearly, and confidently.

You’ll develop fundamental knowledge—control of melody, harmony, rhythm, and form—and learn to articulate musical ideas through analog and digital synthesis, recording technologies, songwriting, and yes, jazz composition. (This is New Orleans, after all.)

By graduation, you’ll have a deft grasp of the compositional tools you need to express the nuances of music, and to share your sound and vision with fellow performers, audiences, and the world.

Undergraduate Degree Programs

Bachelor of Music in Composition

We strongly emphasize the development of fundamental tools—control of melody, harmony, and form— but we also make courses available in analog and digital synthesis, recording technologies, jazz composition, and songwriting. That way, you graduate with not just a realized artistic voice but also a way to capture and share it.

Course requirements

Faculty

Dr. Janna Saslaw
Coordintor of the Composition program at the Loyola School of Music. 
Student Composer's Forum, Theory III-IV, Form & Analysis I-II

Dr. James Walsh
Private Composition Lessons

Dr. Louise LaBruyère
Student Composer's Forum, Piano I-II, Theory I-II

Dr. William Horne
Counterpoint, Orchestration Emeritus

Dr. James MacKay
Private Composition Lessons

Recent Graduates

Alex Burtzos
DMA in composition, Manhattan School of Music

Joshua Eustis
Member of Nine Inch Nails, and Telefon Tel Aviv

Ryan Olivier
PHD in composition, Temple University

Sarah Ann Phillips
MM in composition, California Institute of the Arts

Joseph Shirley
Film composer, co-owner Magnolia Music House, Cardinal Sons (band)

Ransom Prestridge
MM in composition, Peabody Institute

William Reed
Music Department chair, Wooster School, Danbury, CT

Jason Sagebiel
MA in composition, Queens College, NY; owner of Sage Music; Orchestra Director of the New York Guitar Ensemble

Requirements

See an overview of the program's curriculum and requirements.

Alumni