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The UNLV School of Music Graduate Music History Placement Examination

The Graduate Music History Placement Examination assesses the breadth and depth of incoming students’ music-historical and stylistic knowledge, understanding, and perceptivity. The Examination helps ensure that graduate students can participate productively in graduate-level music-historical and other historically-oriented course work. It further emphasizes that musicology courses at UNLV help our students to think, speak, and write with authority and understanding of western musical repertoires and practices, whether during subsequent graduate studies or professional careers, which in many instances demand teaching, public lecturing, or writing about music of European traditions.

Most newly admitted Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts candidates are required to take the Examination. The following categories of students are exempted: (1) doctoral students who completed a Master’s degree in music at UNLV no more than five years prior to matriculation; (2) those entering the A.D. (Artist Diploma) program; (3) those pursuing only the K-12 Teacher Licensure Certificate; and (4) those entering the M.M. or D.M.A program in Jazz and Commercial Music.

Dates and Administration of the Examination

The Examination is administered on-line through UNLV’s Canvas course management system. The Examination is offered over a period of several days prior to the first day of instruction of both the fall and spring semesters. The specific dates and times of the examination’s open window will be advertised in late spring or early summer, normally on the School of Music Web site and/or in other electronic or printed communications. Students who will matriculate in a spring semester may opt to take the Examination prior to the start of the subsequent fall semester.

The Examination has a time limit of three hours and may be taken during any convenient three-hour interval that falls within the announced date and time range. The student will want to start the Examination at least three hours prior to its 11:59 PM closing time. Students should not start the Examination until they are prepared to complete it in its entirety. Once started, it must be completed in one sitting. No part of the Examination may be reopened or repeated after it has been started and its duration has ended. Students should select a time to take the Examination (a) when they feel prepared to do so, (b) can give it uninterrupted attention, and (c) are in a location where they will be able to work undisturbed.

If technical problems arise while taking the Examination, contact I.T. Support (702-895-0777) as a first step toward resolving the problem. If they are unable to assist, notify the members of the Musicology Area by email (anthony.barone@unlv.edu, Jonathan.r.lee@unlv.edu, and Richard.miller@unlv.edu) of your difficulty. We recommend that students plan to take the Examination during business hours (Pacific Standard Time) to ensure that I.T. phone support is available. The Musicology faculty's response time will vary according to its schedules, and inquiries sent after business hours might not be addressed until the following day.

Preparing for the Placement Examination

Suitable preparatory and review materials include Burkholder's A History of Western Music or Barbara Hanning’s Concise History of Western Music (in any recent edition) and the accompanying volumes of the Norton Anthology of Western Music.Students enrolled at UNLV also have free access to the A-R Music Anthology (access via the UNLV Libraries’ database page), an online resource that includes both scores and essays about the classical repertoire; students preparing for the Examination may find particularly helpful the Content Guides on this site, which are organized by music-historical style period. In principle, any current, eminent college-level music-history text and associated score anthology, can be used for the purpose.

It is important that students be able to reference and discuss examples of repertoire in the course of the Examination, so preparation and review should not be limited to mere historical and biographical facts (e.g., "Beethoven died in 1827"); rather, it is more important that students have in mind a broad historical repertoire of works that they have studied or performed that can be invoked to demonstrate important historical phenomena (e.g., "Beethoven's Third Symphony is a good example of...", “Debussy’s String Quartet in G Minor demonstrates the use of…”, etc.).

Enrolling to Take the Examination

Newly matriculating graduate students will be identified by the School of Music and added to the roster of the Canvas course called “Music History: Graduate Placement Exam.” Those students will receive an email invitation to join this course.

Additionally, any current student who has not yet passed the Examination and must retake it will be able to request that they be added to the Examination roster.

Once students have accepted their invitations to join the course, they will have access to the three important items below:

• Instructions on Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor
• Sample Graduate Placement Quiz: Technology Check (Requires Respondus LockDown Browser + Webcam
• Graduate Placement Exam - [semester and year] (Requires Respondus LockDown Browser + Webcam

The Examination requires the use of Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor, two integrated tools that help ensure the integrity of on-line examinations. The instructions for using these tools and the Sample Quiz will be immediately available to students who are enrolled in the “Music History: Graduate Placement Exam” course; the Examination itself will only become accessible at the start of the Examination window.

Description of the Placement Examination

The Examination has four parts: (1) terminology, (2) multiple-choice questions, (3) style analyses of scores, and (4) an essay. The four parts are designed as follows:

1. Students will be presented with columns of terms representing different periods of music history (loosely corresponding to "Medieval/Renaissance," "Baroque," "Classical," "Romantic," "Modern") from each of which students will choose two terms to explain in brief paragraphs that should include examples of composers and/or works that illustrate in a salient way the significance of the terms.
2. Students will be presented with a series of twenty-eight multiple-choice questions that address a spectrum of music-historical facts across all periods.
3. Students will be given a set of five score excerpts, from which they will choose four to discuss with respect to their stylistic and technical features, with the aim of assigning the score to a particular style period and/or movement and speculating on its possible composer. The aim here is to ascertain students’ ability to draw conclusions about musical styles, genres, forms, techniques, and processes from notated music. Each score can probably be addressed with an essay of between 80 and 150 words, but there is no specific length requirement. Examinees are advised to provide as much detailed evidence as appropriate to substantiate their conclusions.
4. Examinees will choose one from among four essay-length questions on broad music-historical topics. A response of 250-400 words may be appropriate, but there is no specific required length.

The design and content of the Examination is subject to change; substantive changes will be announced and described in advance of any subsequent Examination offering.

Members of the musicology faculty grade the Examination. The minimum passing score is 70%.

Results of the Examination

Students who pass the Examination may enroll—subject to individual course prerequisites—in graduate musicology-area seminars. Students who do not pass the Examination will be sent recommended remediation strategies, which may include coursework, or self-study followed by retaking the Examination.

Integrity of the Examination

The Examination is governed by University “Academic Misconduct” and other relevant policies. Students alleged to be in violation of Academic Misconduct policies will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. Penalties for such violations may include the nullification of Examination results.

Penalties, costs, and other consequences of a student’s failure to observe these Placement requirements are the responsibility of, and will be borne solely by the student.

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