The Center for 21st Century Music supports artistic research at the core of our PhD in Composition and the DMA in Contemporary Music Performance. Through concerts, workshops, forums and guest composer visits, the Center provides a space where students and faculty collaborate, experiment and shape the future of new music.
The Center encourages interdisciplinary work that links theory, performance and technology. Graduate seminars and qualifying exams draw from current movements in contemporary music and broader cultural and philosophical contexts.
Seminar topics often include:
Faculty collaborations extend into Comparative Literature (critical theory), English (poetry and poetics) and Media Study (technology, video and film).
Artistic research at UB is grounded in dialogue between composers, performers and scholars. Research circles support this collaboration by creating shared spaces for inquiry, experimentation and performance.
Focus areas include:
Focus areas include Adorno, Heidegger, Deleuze, materialism, subjectivity, gender, post-humanism, late capitalism and late style. Students examine the philosophical and aesthetic frameworks that inform contemporary composition.
Topics explore the aesthetics of noise, poetry and music composition, serial and stochastic approaches, mathematical music theory, microtonality, musical time and models of transcription.
Research examines historical and cross-cultural writings from figures such as Saint Augustine, Boethius, Gaffurius, Prosdocimus, Tinctoris, Zarlino, Morley and Descartes, as well as Greek and Chinese theory traditions. Contemporary studies include Schoenberg, Messiaen, Boulez, Stockhausen, Pousseur, Lachenmann, Xenakis, Babbitt, Feldman, Cage, Ferneyhough and Grisey.
Explorations in spatial audio, advanced computer tools, original sound design, interactive processing and intermedia collaboration connect composition with emerging digital practices.
Research focuses on the interpretation of contemporary works, including rhythmic complexity, microtonality and extended techniques. Students gain experience in ensemble performance and the study of new music repertoire.