Music Composition
Bachelor of Music
Overview
Develop a high artistic level of composition and be prepared for a career in composition, film and media scoring, orchestration and arranging, copying, and/or producing with a Bachelor of Music in Composition degree from Nazareth University. You will be able to create an individualized musical career that combines your musical expertise with the strong liberal arts background that is part of every Nazareth University undergraduate degree.
Weekly composition lessons are tailored to your priorities, strengths, and career goals. Possible areas of focus: concert music, film scoring, and — in collaboration with the Music Business program — pop and rock composition. Present your creative work at the weekly composers' forum, developing your teaching and public speaking skills.
Learn artistic, intellectual, entrepreneurial, and technical skills necessary for career development, from current aesthetic trends to negotiating a commission agreement, through presentations and master classes by faculty and visiting guest composers. Learn about topics such as music notation software, music publishing standards and options, performance-rights associations, commission and recording contracts, copyright law, and contemporary techniques and approaches to composition.
Highlights
- Receive weekly one-hour private composition lessons tailored to your priorities, strengths, and career goals
- Present at weekly composition forums
- Hear your compositions performed at semester recitals
- Choose to compete in an annual composition competition
- Experience annual readings of student compositions by the Nazareth University Orchestra and Wind Symphony in our state-of-the-art, 550-seat Glazer Music Performance Center. The building is designed to provide excellent acoustics for large instrumental and vocal ensembles, to integrate multimedia collaborations, and to enable live recording.
- Develop expertise on an instrument through weekly one-hour private performance lessons
Program Options
Degree: Bachelor of Music
Related Minors
How to Audition
Auditions are required for this major. View audition details and register.
Fully immersed
Weekly, private composition and performance lessons
Choose a focus: concert music, film scoring, pop/rock composition
Join guest composers for presentations and master classes
Hear your compositions live in Glazer Music Performance Center
Example internships/field experiences
Nazareth University film and media scoring students collaborate with students from School of Visual Arts (SVA) and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City, from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and from Pasadena College in Los Angeles. Each film and media student “hires” a Nazareth composer to score and then produce a complete soundtrack for one of his or her films made as part of a course. The collaboration mimics the professional client-composer process.
$4,000
UP TO $4,000 TO INVEST IN YOU
Unique to Nazareth, our SPARK Grant provides $1,500 for you to pursue internships, research, and study abroad, plus up to $2,500 in a tuition scholarship for summer SPARK-eligible experiences that earn credit. SPARK stories »
Alumni Spotlight
Aaron Siebert-Castiñeira '19
Nazareth faculty helped Aaron, a composition major, get an internship at Remote Control Productions, the Los Angeles-based film score company run by noted composer Hans Zimmer (Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek). Siebert-Castiñeira says Nazareth has stimulated his personal growth “at a multilayered level that goes beyond a specific degree,” by giving him “a scope of appreciation for detail” and the tools needed for making any kind of decision. “I actually observed a notable advantage over others during my time in L.A. due to this preparation,” he says.