MUSSUPST 1002 - Musicianship Fundamentals 1B

Classical Stream – Assignment 1

Course Coordinator: Steven Knopoff
Tutor: Anne Cawrse

Melody Composition
TASK:
You are to compose a melodic setting of a text, approximately 12-16 bars in length. Your
melody should be presented using music notation software (Sibelius, Finale etc.) or neatly
written by hand, and include appropriate performance indications such as dynamics,
tempos, articulations etc.
You may choose one of the texts supplied, or you may select your own, making sure it is of
similar length. Your melody must be written for a specific vocal range (Soprano, Tenor etc.)
and must include the text written below the music.
You may compose your melody in any key or mode you choose. You do not need to
compose an accompaniment for your melody, but you must write with a harmonic outline in
mind, and so chord symbols (not Roman Numerals) should appear in your score.
Other elements you will be assessed on include:

• Demonstration of both syllabic and melismatic text setting

• Appropriate scansion of the text
• Approach to form, motivic usage, melodic contour, rhythmic features etc.
• Melodic and Harmonic creativity.
Finally, write a short paragraph (200-300 words) in which you describe and analyse the key
features of your melody. Focus your discussion on the most interesting musical elements of
your composition, and how the chosen lyrics influenced the musical choices you made.

Submissions should be uploaded as .pdf (no .sib files please) through MyUni.
Texts (you may choose your own if you like)

This is my letter to the world

That never wrote to me
The simple news that nature told
With tender majesty

Emily Dickinson

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroad.

One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness.
The other, to total extinction.
Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

Thou art indeed a world, oh Rome;

And yet, were love absent, then would the world be no world,
Then would even Rome be no Rome

Goethe

There was an Old Man who supposed

That the street door was partially closed;
But some very large rats, ate his coats and his hats,
While that futile old gentleman dozed.

Edward Lear

How much better is silence;

How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake.
Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in
themselves, myself being myself.

Virginia Woolf

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days

T.S. Eliot