Master Class in Composition

SHE LIVES — the leading European musical association for promoting the dissemination of contemporary music — is honoured to announce its 7th Master Class in Composition.

About SHE LIVES

SHE LIVES is a not-for-profit organisation. Since its establishment it has had the privilege of working with internationally acclaimed artists such as Peter Eötvös, Lasse Thoresen and Sidney Corbett, as well globally renowned institutions, including the Solisti della Scala di Milano, the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, the Accademia Chigiana di Siena, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, the Fondazione Scelsi, the Reale Ambasciata di Norvegia, the Istituto Svizzero di Roma, the UMZE (the historic ensemble founded by Bartók), the Budapest Music Center, the LAC – Lugano Arte e Cultura, the Festival oggimusica, the Yamaha Concert Hall Wien, the Pro Helvetia, the Contemporary Art Festival Budapest, Warner Classics, and Naxos.

GENERAL INFO
Period: 23-26 July 2025
Place: BMC – Budapest Music Center
Address: Mátyás utca 8- 1093 Budapest.
Ensemble in Residence: Roman Quartet (string quartet)
Final Concert: 26 July 2025. BMC – Budapest Music Center.

PROFESSORS: Sidney Corbett, Alessio Elia

COURSES

Sidney Corbett / Alessio Elia
- Compositional strategies in writing for string instruments and string quartet. With analytical examples taken from works by Ligeti, Lachenmann, Corbett, Romitelli, Scelsi, Elia, Haas and Stahnke.

Sidney Corbett
- Learning Composition: A composer’s guide to the practice of learning our craft “I have for many years now been a professor of composition and thus have presumably “taught” composition and this is of course at least formally true. It is my belief however, that composition can’t really be taught but what I can do is share how I learned and am still learning composition. What I would like to speak about in this course is first what I believe to be the preliminary step of training the mind and secondly to briefly go over the various technical areas we need to explore and master in order to make progress as composers.”

Alessio Elia
- Hidden architectures in formal construction. An exploration of the concepts of implicate/explicate order in the light of the holographic theory of the Universe. A compositional approach to microtonality and the use of different tuning systems (polysystemism) related to the physical dimension of sound and auditory perception (extension of the lectures held at the Cité de la Musique, the Hungarian Academy of Arts, and the Liszt Academy in Budapest).

ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS
Active students are entitled to attend the courses, and invited to discuss their own works with professors during individual meetings. They can also take part to the final concert with a piece written for the ensemble in residence.

PASSIVE PARTICIPANTS
Passive participants are entitled to attend the courses and the discussions of active students about their works, but they cannot discuss their own works with the professors. Passive participants are invited to attend the rehearsals and the final concert of active students, but they cannot propose their own works.

LANGUAGES
The course is held in English.
Individual meetings can be done in the following languages:
Sidney Corbett: English, German, Spanish
Alessio Elia: English, Italian, German, Hungarian

PERFORMANCE OF THE COMPOSITION COURSE STUDENTS’ PIECES
The Master Class provides the performance of the active students pieces during the final concert (26 July 2025. BMC – Budapest Music Center).
Composers are invited to write a piece for the ensemble in residence (with conductor):
String quartet

The piece can be written for any combination of the instruments present in the ensemble, from solo instrument to the whole group and must not be longer than 6 minutes.

APPLICATIONS
There are two types of application: active students and passive students (auditors).

Details are available at web pages:
https://www.shelivesmusic.it/composition-master-class.html