Composing Like Beethoven

We will explore Beethoven's style through composition and analysis, focusing particularly on "schemas": specific routines for handling parallel and contrary motion, important sequences and near-sequences, and a few idioms defying standard analysis. During the semester students will write two sonata-form movements. The first will be composed piecemeal, in small supervised chunks; the second will be written independently. We will also consider how these patterns are embedded in specific Beethoven compositions. Depending on student interest we may experiment with these idioms in classical-style improvisation.