The music theory placement exam comprises the following sections:

(1) exercises in common-practice chromatic voice-leading, i.e., 4-part SATB writing with chromatic harmony and/or modulations. Students should be able to realize a figured bass and/or harmonize a melody line (given no bass line and no other harmonic indicators), using in both cases standard procedures of common-practice voice leading (logical harmonic progressions, avoidance of motion in prohibited parallel intervals, and the like). Any and all of the exercises may require the use of standard elements of chromatic harmony, including modulations, augmented sixth chords, and Neapolitan chords. Students should be able to demonstrate understanding of how such elements function in harmonic progressions and how to employ them in a voice-leading exercised.

(2) 18th-century counterpoint analysis. This will involve analysis of a fugue, in which students are expected to know the names of, and be able to identify in score, the major components of standard Baroque fugues. Relevant terms may include: subject, countersubject, answer (real or tonal), exposition, bridge, episode, middle entry, etc.

(3) formal analysis of a large common-practice movement or portion thereof. This will involve score analysis in which students are expected to identify sections and characteristics of a standard sonata form. This will include analysis of the exposition and its constituent theme groups, transition, and coda sections, and may include analysis of a development (or portion thereof) and/or recapitulation. Harmonic analysis (i.e., Roman-numeral and figured bass analysis) of any section of the pievce may be required.

(4) analysis of post-common-practice, 20th-century materials. This will require students to recognize, given scores or score excerpts, compositional procedures such as 12-tone serialism; polymeter, metric shifts, or other metric procedures; harmonic resources such as extended tertian harmony or non-tertian harmony; and scalar and collectional resources such as diatonic modes, non-diatonic scales, pandiatonicism, or others.

Note that students will not be permitted to use a piano for assistance on any part of the exam.

In preparing for the exam, students may use for study and reference the latest editions of these widely-available theory texts: Benjamin, Horvit, and Nelson, Techniques and Materials of Music: From the Common Practice through the Twentieth Century, 6th ed. (on voice-leading theory and practice and twentieth-century materials); Aldwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading (on voice leading theory and practice); Robert Gauldin, A Practical Approach to 18th-Century Counterpoint; Douglass Green, Form in Tonal Music; Stefan Kostka, Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music.

View a sample graduate music theory diagnostic exam