The composition program at CSULB provides students with advanced skills covering a wide range of compositional techniques and technologies in order that they become more informed, literate musicians, better prepared to develop their own unique creative compositional voices. Skills taught include: beginning and advanced film scoring, advanced theory, electronic and computer music, experimental music and digital media, sound design, advanced topics in listening and analysis, text setting and strategies for working with contemporary poetry, contemporary and computer music notation, beginning and advanced orchestration, and sound engineering and recording. In addition to the expertise that the composition faculty members bring to the program, our musicology faculty includes specialists in 20th-Century music and in film music, regularly offering seminars that are also open to composition students.

Students go on from our master’s degree programs in composition to work in the film industry and in higher education, to found their own ensembles and concert series, and many other composition-related pursuits. Many of our students have also gone on to doctoral study in composition at excellent programs on the West Coast, throughout the U.S., and abroad.

Students in this program write works for the full range of traditional acoustic instruments, from solo works to ones for large orchestra, as well as for various electronic resources, working constantly to refine their own compositional voice under the guidance of the composition faculty. The program offers many courses for advanced study, with recent offerings including seminars focused on computer notation, Max/MSP/Jitter, art song composition, Schenkerian theory, and composition informed by music outside of the classical tradition (including influences from rock, jazz, and non-Western traditions). Students in the program have written works for readings and workshops by the BCCM Symphony Orchestra, the BCCM Wind Symphony, Kronos Quartet, the Friction String Quartet, and many other resident and guest ensembles.