The department offers professional degree programs in composition at both the undergraduate and graduate level. We have a high success rate at placing our undergraduate students in distinguished composition programs at the master’s and doctoral levels around the country, including at such institutions as the Eastman School of Music, New England Conservatory, Cincinnati College Conservatory, University of Illinois, University of Texas/Austin, and University of Southern California.

Undergraduate and graduate students study privately with one member of the Setnor School’s prestigious composition, theory, and history faculty each academic year, rotating to a different professor each year the student is in residence.

Both students and faculty meet weekly in the Composer's Seminar to discuss current issues and to meet a variety of nationally established guest composers. Recent guests have included Samuel Adler, Claude Baker, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, Michael Daugherty, Violeta Dinescu, Luca Francesconi, Don Freund, John Harbison, Karel Husa, Libby Larsen, David Liptak, Augusta Read Thomas, Joan Tower, Gunther Schuller, Steve Stucky, Judith Weir, and Dana Wilson.

The Setnor School offers a rich variety of opportunities for young composers. Each semester you have the opportunity to have works performed on the student composers’ concert. In addition to this concert, you often have works performed on fellow student junior, senior, and graduate performance recitals. All students in the school are required to play works written in their own lifetime, which results in a great deal of collaboration between student performers and composers. Finally, all composition majors (seniors and graduate students) are required to prepare one full composition recital of their own works before they graduate.

Other opportunities include concerts by the nationally acclaimed Syracuse Society for New Music (SNM); additionally, each year one student from the department works with the SNM to see how a professional, not-for-profit new music organization works from the inside. The Setnor School’s ongoing collaboration with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra includes at least one student work read by the orchestra each year.

The department’s facilities include an electronic music studio with both analog and state-of-the-art digital equipment as well as a computer lab equipped with MIDI keyboards and such music notation software as Finale and Sibelius. The electronic and digital music studio includes a PowerMac G-4 with a variety of audio and MIDI software and hardware. Applications include Protools, Peak, Digital Performer, Kontakt, Absynth, Reaktor, Sonic Synth, MaxMSP, and Pluggo.

Undergraduate composers are eligible to receive a number of opportunities in financial aid, including full scholarships from the Setnor School. Graduate composers may apply for teaching assistantships or the Heaton Fellowship in Composition. All of these may include full tuition plus a stipend. For more information, visit Apply.

Contact

For information on applying to/auditioning for our degree programs, visit Apply. For questions about the department, contact Dr. Nicolas Scherzinger, chair, at 315-443-3907 or nscherzi@syr.edu.