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Undergraduate Validation/Exemption Exams in Music Theory
The Department of Music Theory offers validation/exemption exams (“V/E exams”) in the core undergraduate music theory courses listed below. These exams are intended for students who come to the Jacobs School of Music already in possession of some substantial knowledge of music theory and mastery of aural skills, usually as a result of having taken comparable courses at other institutions. The exams provide a way for these students to demonstrate their mastery of the material, thereby being exempted from the requirement of having to take the courses. In some cases students may also receive course credit by passing the exam; questions about credit should be directed to the Music Undergraduate Office. All of the V/E exams are administered at the beginning of each fall and spring semester. At the beginning of Summer Session II, V/E exams are administered only for the courses offered during that session. See the schedule of upcoming V/E exams. It is not necessary to sign up for the exams in advance; students should simply show up at the designated room a few minutes before the starting time shown on the schedule. These exams will not be administered at any other times besides those officially scheduled. A student may take the V/E exam for any course only once. Students who have previously taken any V/E exam, or who have been enrolled in the course in question in any previous semester, are not eligible to take the exam. See below for further information about the V/E exam in each course. Note that some of the exams are in multiple parts (written and listening components for written theory and literature courses; dictation, sight-singing hearings, and keyboard hearings for aural skills courses). In general a composite grade of 72.5%, corresponding to a grade of C, is required to pass each exam. In some courses, as noted below, in addition to passing the V/E exam, students must complete an additional assignment, such as a short composition or an analytical paper, in order to exempt the course. In such cases the student will receive a grade of “Conditional Pass” on the exam. The Conditional Pass will convert to “Pass” if the additional assignment is completed satisfactorily within the allotted time. If it is not, the Conditional Pass will convert to a failing grade on the exam, and the student will be required to take the course in a subsequent semester.
T109: see Basic Musicianship Test
Aural skills courses
T132
T132 is the first aural skills course at IU; it covers diatonic pitch materials, and the validation/exemption exam involves both a written portion and a hearing.
The V/E exam includes identification of ascending, descending and harmonic intervals within an octave and sonorities in inversion including major, minor, augmented, and diminished triads as well as major-minor seventh chords. Students are asked to complete several dictation examples, including a pitch pattern, rhythm, melody, harmonic progression, and two simultaneous melodies (two-part counterpoint). Simple and compound meters are both covered, as well as different forms of minor scales including harmonic and melodic. Harmonies are all diatonic; in harmonic progressions, students are asked to notate the soprano and bass voices in a four-voice texture and provide a Roman numeral harmonic analysis.
Students scoring at least 69 percent on the written portion of the exam are eligible to complete a hearing with the instructor. This hearing involves both sight singing and keyboard skills. Students should be able to sing a harmonic or melodic minor scale, read a rhythm at sight (syncopation and ties are minimal), and sightread a diatonic melody in alto or tenor clef. Individual keyboard sonorities given the root and inversion will be tested, as well as reading a straightforward diatonic harmonic progression (from Roman numerals only) with proper voice leading. The written and hearing grades are averaged, and a minimum grade of 72.5% is required to validate T132.
Students who wish to practice for this exam are encouraged to obtain a copy of the course packet from university bookstores; the Unit 4 exercises represent the highest level of difficulty that might be encountered on the V/E exam.
T231
T231 focuses on basic chromaticism and modulation to closely related keys. Additionally, T231 builds on the sonorities learned in T132 by adding seventh chords and their inversions. Included are the major-minor (“dominant”) seventh, minor-minor seventh, half-diminished seventh, diminished seventh, and major-major seventh in most of their inversions. Melodic, two-part, and harmonic dictations are all designed to test these essential harmonic concepts. Students sing and dictate melodies and chord progressions involving secondary dominants, secondary diminished-seventh chords, and chromatic non-chord tones.
The rhythmic content of the course includes increasing complexity in simple and compound meters, eventually including various subdivisions of the beat (duplets, triplets, quintuplets, etc.). Rhythms are emphasized through rhythm singing and rhythmic dictation.
The course also includes a keyboard component in which students play all of the above harmonic elements at the keyboard. Students play given chord progressions in four parts, and compose their own progressions. Short three-chord progressions involving secondary dominants and diminished-sevenths are expanded and combined into longer tonal progressions, and eventually modulating progressions. On the validation/exemption exam students are asked to perform a modulating chord progression in four parts from a given Roman-numeral progression.
As the course emphasizes in equal parts the hearing and singing of these tonal materials, the validation/exemption exam includes both a dictation portion and a hearing that tests sight-singing and keyboard skills. Students who earn higher than 69% on the dictation portion are eligible for the hearing. To prepare for the hearing, students may find it helpful to practice exercises from chapters 6–10 of Rhythm Reading by Daniel Kazez and chapters 11–14 of Music for Sight Singing (7th ed.) by Robert Ottman and Nancy Rogers. The written and hearing grades are averaged, and a minimum grade of 72.5% is required to validate T231.
T232
The focus in T232 is on skills involving chromatic harmony. The validation/exemption exam has two parts: dictation and a hearing.
The dictation portion includes identification of intervals (up to a M14), sonorities (seventh chords and extended tertian chords), and modes (e.g., Dorian). It also involves writing down the notes and rhythms of short passages played on the piano. These exercises include pitch patterns, melodic dictation, harmonic dictation, modulating dictation, and rhythmic dictation. The pitch patterns may be tonal, or may include juxtapositions of functionally unrelated triads. The melodic, two-part, and harmonic dictations may include explicit or implied secondary dominant and seventh chords, Neapolitans, augmented sixth chords, extended tertian chords, and mode mixture. For modulating dictations, students will need to write the bass line and identify the new key and the type of modulation. Possible modulation types include modulation to a closely related key by common pivot chord, modulation to a key a half step away by enharmonic reinterpretation of V7 and Ger+6, and chromatic mediant modulation. Rhythmic dictation may include ties, syncopation, polyrhythms, and asymmetrical meters.
Students who earn higher than 69% on the written portion of the V/E exam will be eligible to complete a hearing to perform singing, rhythmic, and keyboard exercises. Sight-singing may include chromaticism and modulation. Rhythm reading may include polyrhythms, syncopation, asymmetrical meters, and two independent voices. Keyboard skills may include playing chord progressions from Roman numerals or figured bass realization, with a focus on secondary chords, Neapolitan, augmented sixth chords, extended tertian chords, and mode mixture. Correct voice leading is expected. Assessment of skills will be based on fluency, accuracy, and the ability to keep a steady tempo. Students may find it helpful to practice exercises from chapters 11–16 of Rhythm Reading by Daniel Kazez, and chapters 14–20 of Music for Sight Singing (7th ed.) by Robert Ottman and Nancy Rogers.
Familiarity with treble, bass, alto, and tenor clefs is expected for both the written and hearing portions of the exam. The written and hearing grades are averaged, and a minimum grade of 72.5% is required to validate T232.
T331
T331 deals with musical skills in the context of music since 1900. The validation/exemption exam for T331 has two components: an aural exam and a hearing. The pitch materials that students should expect to encounter include intervals (simple and compound); extended tertian, quartal, and quintal sonorities; modal, octatonic, and whole-tone scale patterns; and melodies without a specific tonal center. Rhythmic materials include polyrhythms; non-traditional beat divisions; changing meters; and irregular meters (e.g. 5/4, 7/8). The exam includes melodic and rhythmic dictations as well as error-detection exercises.
The aural exam takes about 60 minutes. Students who pass the aural exam are eligible to take a hearing in order to complete their exemption from T331. The hearing tests the student's sight-singing, reading and conducting of rhythmic patterns at sight, and the ability to realize extended sonorities (like those mentioned above) in four voices at the keyboard on any given bass note.
The T331 course packet summarizes all of the topics above in greater detail and provides examples of exercises one might encounter while taking the course. This packet is available at university bookstores.
Written theory and literature courses
T151
The validation/exemption exam for T151 is a 90-minute exam focusing on diatonic harmony. The exam includes brief part-writing exercises (to be completed in four voices, observing principles of good voice leading) as well as short musical excerpts for analysis and other short theoretical questions. Students will be required to write and/or identify common diatonic triads and seventh chords, identifying root, quality, inversion, Roman numeral, and/or harmonic function as appropriate. Students should be also be able to write and/or identify the common types of six-four chords, cadences, and non-chord tones. The analytical portions could also include questions about rhythmic/metric structure, basic phrase structure, and melodic/motivic structure in the given excerpts. There may also be questions about more fundamental concepts such as scales, intervals, key signatures, and spelling of triads and seventh chords.
T151 covers approximately the first 19 chapters of the textbook The Complete Musician, 2nd edition, by Steven G. Laitz. Students preparing to take the exam may find it useful to review these chapters. (Chapter 4, on counterpoint, is not covered in the exam.)
T152
The T152 validation/exemption exam is 90 minutes long. It assumes all the concepts covered in T151, and extends them further to include chromatic harmony. Central topics include tonicization (the use of secondary or applied chords), modulation, modal mixture (“borrowed” chords), Neapolitan harmony, and augmented sixth chords. In addition, T152 covers topics such as phrase construction (cadence types, period construction), small forms (e.g., binary form), and harmonic sequences. On the exam, students will be expected to demonstrate knowledge of these concepts through (a) fluent four-part writing, which might include harmonizing a melody or realizing a bass (figured or unfigured); and (b) the analysis of short musical excerpts. A central component of this analytical enterprise is harmonic or “Roman numeral” analysis.
T152 covers approximately chapters 20–30 of the textbook The Complete Musician, 2nd edition, by Steven Laitz. Students preparing to take the exam might find it useful to review these chapters. (Laitz’s terminology, especially with respect to sequences, can be idiosyncratic; the exam does not insist on adherence to the terms or notations of this particular text.)
T251
The validation/exemption exam for T251 includes both listening and written components, covering music from the very early Baroque through the Classical period, approximately the years 1600–1800. The listening exam consists of a few excerpts about which students could be asked general stylistic questions (possible composer, approximate date), and possibly questions about genre, form, and other technical aspects of the style. The questions are designed so that students with a good grasp of the music of the full breadth of these periods should be able to answer them even if they are not familiar with the specific excerpts.
The written part of the exam will provide some scores from which more detailed analytical questions are posed; these questions ask about harmony and counterpoint as well as larger formal prototypes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music. Finally, students will also be expected to complete various part-writing exercises such as the realization of a figured bass and modulatory harmonizations. Portions of texts such as The Complete Musician, 2nd edition, by Steven Laitz and Harmony in Context by Miguel A. Roig-Francolí cover some of this material well and might be useful to students preparing for this exam.
The listening and written exams together take about 90 minutes. To exempt T251, a student must earn a Conditional Pass on the exam and complete one additional requirement, a compositional assignment, usually a two-part invention in the style of J.S. Bach, to be completed during the semester in which the exam is taken. Students who pass the exam will receive additional information about the composition assignment.
T252
The validation/exemption exam for T252 includes both listening and written components, covering music written in the “Romantic era,” roughly the years 1800–1910. The pieces in the Beethoven-to Debussy portion of Charles Burkhart’s Anthology for Musical Analysis are representative of the period, and students preparing for the exam might find it helpful to review them, although familiarity with any specific pieces is not assumed.
The listening exam consists of a few excerpts about which students could be asked general stylistic questions (possible composer, approximate date), and possibly questions about instrumentation, texture, genre, form, etc. The questions are designed so that students with a good general grasp of the music of this period should be able to answer them even if they are not familiar with the specific excerpts. Part of the written exam is similar, but based on written score excerpts rather than on recorded excerpts. This format allows for more detailed analytical questions such as harmonic analysis, as well as possible score-reading questions (involving transposing instruments, for example). The written exam also includes a list of representative pieces (for example, Winterreise) and asks students to identify the composer (Schubert), genre (song cycle), and approximate date (from a multiple-choice list; e.g., 1820–1840) for about half of them—so students can pick the ones they know, but they must know some. Finally, there are some theoretical exercises, involving some part-writing with chromatic harmony and possibly modulations.
Theoretical topics potentially covered in the T252 exam include chromatic harmony; mode mixture and “borrowed chords”; chromatic key relationships; uses of diminished seventh, augmented sixth, and Neapolitan chords (including some less common types such as common-tone diminished sevenths and unusual inversions); nonfunctional linear progressions; extended tertian and added-note chords; tonal structure and organization; formal designs; motivic development; rhythmic devices; and considerations of orchestration, texture, and text setting. The more advanced portions of texts such as The Complete Musician, 2nd edition, by Steven Laitz and Harmony in Context by Miguel A. Roig-Francolí cover much of this material well and might be useful to students preparing for this exam.
The listening and written exams together take about 90 minutes. To exempt T252, a student must earn a Conditional Pass on the exam and complete one additional requirement, a written analysis paper to be completed during the semester in which the exam is taken. Students who pass the exam will receive additional information about the paper assignment.
T351
V/E exams are not offered in T351, as students very rarely attempt to exempt this course. In order to do so, students are expected to provide evidence of previous work in analysis of twentieth-century music, and to complete one or more additional assignments. Interested students should contact the department chair for further information.
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