<p>I think for future career prospects you should think seriously about staying in Canada. There may be more opportunities for you there, as a Canadian composer - but it wouldn’t keep you from getting known elsewhere - such as rising star Zosha diCastri (whose work I’ve heard and liked.) And funding may be easier.</p>
<p>There is an interesting article about Esprit Orchestra, a New Music orchestra in Toronto. This quote from the conductor made me think of you: “What is distinctive about Canadian music is that there is a sense of artistic freedom here,” Pauk said, “Canadian music composition is not weighed down by centuries of history and slotted into certain pervasive schools of thought, such as in Europe where you have the Boulez school or the Stockhausen school.” [Joel</a> Garten: How An Orchestra Found Success With an Oil Company](<a href=“http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/joel-garten/esprit-orchestra_b_2084236.html]Joel”>How An Orchestra Found Success With an Oil Company | HuffPost News)</p>
<p>Silly me - I realized after I posted above, that Zosha diCastri is a bad example for someone sticking to their home ground for grad school. Last I heard she was pursuing her doctorate at Columbia!</p>
<p>^lol I always tell undergrads to stay in Canada for fiscal and immigration purposes, but in the hunt for full funding, and once they have a mature portfolio, I can see merit to casting the net wider. In Canada there really are only 3-4 top programs to consider, 3 of which I believe the poster has mentioned.</p>
<p>Btw, Putwither, you might want to check out University of Michigan’s school of music composition grad program. I believe it’s fully funded. There’s a fair bit of variety among faculty. My son attends as an undergrad in it’s hybrid tech/comp/eng program. In his department there are 3 different Canadian profs that I know of directly’ and the current dept head hails from mcgill. So maybe they like that eclectic Canadian style to which spirit manager refers ;)</p>
<p>BTW, as spirit manager’s article might suggest, I have been told by a Canadian composer and prof (who studied at McGill and UBC for grad work) that he personally feels it’s a bit easier to make a living as a composer in Canada for a variety of reasons. Of course, that’s also what he knows, and at the time, he was advising my son, who would have done better in Canada financially had he not been offered a good scholarship at Michigan.</p>
<p>One final note on describing aesthetics…through ceaselessly aggravating my son, I’ve learned that aesthetic descriptions in music to a composer are quite like aesthetic descriptions in literature to a writer…
The artist a) doesn’t exactly care what you call it nearly as much as how it affects you…because typically a layperson doesn’t have the deeper understanding from which the “label” derives in the first place and b) feels their work is multifaceted from multiple influences so it’s pointless to deconstruct it, eg “it’s mcsonian”
(aka "stick to your knitting, mom, I don’t call YOUR work post-structuralist, don’t call MY work neo-classical…because it’s not and you don’t really know what that means ;)</p>
<p>If anyone has not yet heard Samuel Barber’s Knoxville Summer 1915 please listen to it. Dawn Upshaw on Nonsuch is my favorite version. Barber is considered a neotonal composer. But more importantly, I just wanted to put in a plug for the piece because it is so great!</p>
<p>So I’m applying all of this and racing to find the best schools for me. I can’t thank you guys enough! I hope I make things happen in time.</p>
<p>kmcmom13: I guess it could be called neoclassical, in a broad way, relative to some contemporary trends. But not so much in a specific way, as in Stravinsky’s neoclassical period. But I think I’d agree with you about the dilemma about labelling artists’ work. We all have to use concepts to understand things, but as in many areas of life, hasty “labelling is disabling!” </p>
<p>“The artist a) doesn’t exactly care what you call it nearly as much as how it affects you…because typically a layperson doesn’t have the deeper understanding from which the “label” derives in the first place and b) feels their work is multifaceted from multiple influences so it’s pointless to deconstruct it”</p>
<p>compmom: I hadn’t heard of the EAMA program and it sounds amazing! Thanks so much for this. Will scheme about acquiring the funding to go someday.</p>
<p>On Canada or not – a complex question with lots of info here and at least one other thread on the forum! No matter what it will probably be where I end up, unless I get a teaching position I want in the US. There is a lot of truth in that quote SpiritManager posted "“What is distinctive about Canadian music is that there is a sense of artistic freedom here,” Pauk said, “Canadian music composition is not weighed down by centuries of history and slotted into certain pervasive schools of thought, such as in Europe where you have the Boulez school or the Stockhausen school.” Perhaps it is more common in Canada for an artist to approach making music from a blank slate, with less or no link to classical western music traditions for example. Pros and cons in this.</p>
<p>Bartokrules: I also highly recommend Barber’s violin concerto, cello concerto, Capricorn Concerto, and Summer Music!</p>
<p>Putwither- lots of summer programs offer fellowships. Sometimes they state them on the website - sometimes they don’t. It wouldn’t hurt to email EAMA directly and ask if there’s any financial support. There are other ‘traditional’ summer music programs out there, as well - although EAMA is known as “Counterpoint Bootcamp.”</p>
<p>Putwither - know all those pieces well. I would also throw in the Piano Concerto. Reference Recordings paired the Violin Concerto with Menotti’s Violin Concerto performed by Ruggiero Ricci. Curtis classmates on one record.</p>
<p>Re Curtis - as Compmom says they don’t offer an MM - but there are probably as many post grad composers studying there as there are undergrads, pursuing their Artist Diplomas.</p>
<p>Bartokrules - the reason I posted that is to make it clear one CAN go to Curtis for graduate study - it just doesn’t lead to an MM - but it’s probably just as useful a degree - both for networking, performances, and resume. Only if one wants to study at Curtis, of course!</p>
<p>Thanks for the clarification. I think one limit to Artist Diplomas in the context of composition if one wanted to teach composition in a very academic setting such as a Ph.D program or some conservatories.</p>
<p>Perhaps those posters looking at grad school for composition can address the limitations of an Artist Diploma vs an MM - especially if one is considering further PhD studies. I do know that at programs like Bard, the composers do not need a DMA to be a professor - in all the arts disciplines they hire working artists whose resume is their calling card, rather than a degree. I don’t know how unusual that is, or not. What about Oberlin?</p>
<p>All of Oberlin’s composition faculty have Ph.D’s or DMA’s. At Curtis it is at least two out of three with Ph.D’s. Not sure about the others. Oberlin has a great track record of placing its composition graduates directly into Ph.D or DMA programs and thus may have more of an academic bent than some others. It is just my impression that in composition, theory and musicology, there are a higher level of terminal degrees than in performance. That is the case at Oberlin.</p>
<p>Artist Diplomas, as a qualification, have no bent on acquiring a tenure-track assistant professorship.</p>
<p>But then again, I suppose MMs or MAs don’t cut it either.</p>
<p>Of course, if you make it a wildly successful composer with lots of high profile commissions, etc., you will likely be invited to teach at schools regardless of your academic qualifications. These tend not to be the entry-level tenure-track Assistant Professorships though. More often than not, when universities hire big-name “private sector” composers, they go straight into a full Professorship, removed from lots of the typical mundane bureaucracies of true academia. For the latter, more conventional ladder-climbing academic careers, you will certainly need a PhD/DMA. For these tracks, universities tend to hire young, bright, up-and-coming composers recently completing their doctorates, and with scholarship/research experience in addition to an increasingly active and high-profile creative career.</p>
<p>Back to the point of artist diplomas vs. master’s degrees and their usefulness for eventual entry to a doctoral program: it depends. Some PhD programs (including Harvard, Chicago, etc.) will consider applicants with just a bachelors degree, and then award the MA en-route. This is a pretty typical approach in academia (in humanities, STEM fields, etc). For these schools, I don’t think having a masters vs. artist diploma in hand at application time will matter much. Other PhD programs (and all DMA programs that I know of) require applicants to already hold a Masters degree if they want to apply for the PhD; otherwise they have to apply to the standalone Masters degree. I know UCSD and Brandeis are like this; they offer standalone Masters degrees, and do not take applications to their PhD programs without a Masters. For these schools, I don’t think having a grad/artist diploma will cut it; you will need an MM/MA/MFA.</p>
<p>Just quickly about anecdotal sentiment about teaching jobs where you “don’t need a doctorate,” you may be eligible to apply there without one, but you WILL be competing with 150-300 applicants for every job who DO have theirs.</p>
<p>And if you look at composers who don’t have their doctorates who have won teaching jobs, they tend to be already well-established successful composers who are doing very innovative work; not fresh young faces on the scene out of school with a budding career.</p>
I always tell undergrads to stay in Canada for fiscal and immigration purposes, but in the hunt for full funding, and once they have a mature portfolio, I can see merit to casting the net wider. In Canada there really are only 3-4 top programs to consider, 3 of which I believe the poster has mentioned.</p>