Here are links to notes that I’ve written to accompany the coursera course Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition. For those interested, I produced the music notation in these notes by using MuseScore, a free music composition program. The notation was then imported into LibreOffice Writer using the MuseScore Example Manager plugin. I found that ImageMagick was needed (GraphicsMagick didn’t work) in order for the plugin to trim the whitespace off the MuseScore images.
The document was then exported as a PDF and loaded into wordpress.com.
Update 24 Jan 2014: I’ve added weekly archives that contain all the PDFs for that week along with the MuseScore files for the examples. These files can be loaded directly into MuseScore so you can play them yourself.
Update 3 Feb 2014 (all notes in one PDF file): Here’s a link to a PDF with all notes to date as a single file, with a table of contents (makes it easier to find things).
Update 9 Feb 2014 (course complete): My notes for the course are now complete. To download everything in one zip file (all six week archives + the full PDF of the notes) click on this link. (This is a 12 MB download.)
Update 15 Dec 2014: Here’s a link to a rar file containing the source files in LibreOffice (odt) format, together with the MuseScore files used to create the music notation. Note that I used a master document (odm) file to link together all the separate odt files. You’ll also probably need to install the MuseScore Example Manager plugin (see above) for it to work.
Week 1
01.01 Chords
01.02 Voicing
01.03 Basic progressions
01.04 Voice leading
01.05.01 Voice leading with the common tone approach (I-V-I and I-IV-I)
01.05.02 Voice leading without common tones (I-IV-I and I-V-I)
01.05.03 Resolution of the V7 chord – tendency tones
01.05.04 Voice leading from IV-V
01.05.05 Voice leading with chords that have a mediant relationship
01.06 Texture types
01.07.01 Voice leading example 1
01.07.02 Voice leading example 2
Week 1 archive
Week 2
02.00 Inversion notation
02.01.01 Progressions with inversions – 1
02.01.02 Progressions with inversions – 2
02.02 More voice leading
02.03 Using inversions
02.04 Keyboard voicing
02.05 Creating accompaniment
02.06 Textural reduction
02.07 Reversing Schubert
Week 2 archive
Week 3
03.01 Circle of fifths progressions
03.02 Descending 5-6 progressions
03.03 Parallel sixths progressions
03.04 Analysis – Mozart piano sonatas K545 & K332
03.05 Analysis – Beethoven opus 109
03.06 Analysis – Mozart piano sonata K279
03.07 Analysis – Mozart sonata K533 (introduction to NCTs and polyphony)
03.08 Non-chord tones
03.09 NCTs with the circle of fifths
03.10 NCTs with the descending 5-6 progression
03.11 NCTs with parallel sixths
Week 3 archive
Week 4
04.01 Diatonic substitutions – substituting viio for V
04.02 Diatonic substitutions – substituting ii for IV
04.03 Diatonic substitutions – VI for I: the V-VI progression
04.04 Cadences
04.05 Analysis: Beethoven Op. 2 #3
04.06 Period form
04.07 Melodic writing
Week 4 archive
Week 5
05.01 Chromatic substitutions: the Neapolitan 6 chord
05.02 Analysis: Schubert’s Der Müller und der Bach
05.03 Chromatic substitutions: Augmented sixth chords
05.04 Analysis: Beethoven’s bagatelle, op. 119 #1
05.05 Chromatic substitutions: borrowed chords
05.06 Simple 2-voice counterpoint
05.07.01 Guided practice in one-to-one counterpoint
05.07.02 Guided practice in counterpoint: two-to-one
Week 5 archive
Week 6
06.01 Progressions within progressions: introduction
06.02 Progressions within progressions – examples
06.03 Progressions within progressions: secondary leading tone chords
06.04 The Alberti bass
06.05 Elaborating progressions
06.06 Mozart’s K. 331 sonata – rounded binary form
06.07 Guided practice – secondary dominants and Alberti bass
Week 6 archive
Notes on classical music composition 
There are also http://www.finalemusic.com/products/finale-notepad/resources/
http://www.nch.com.au/notation/index.html
Thanks for your notes sir, I’m using them a lot. Very clear and concise. Perfect !
Am retired and taking this course out of interest. I was ready to give up as the lectures are over my head – your notes are very helpful. Thanks so much! Terry
Very nicely done, Glenn.
Hello. I am Sujin from Korea. I am also taking this course. One my friend shared your page on facebook group and I could visited your awesome note. Thanks for your big contribution.
Extremely helpful for novices.
Thank you so much for sharing these notes – I find them very helpful after listening to the course material. The rest of your blog is really interesting too!
In your remark in lesson 02.01.01 you solved my question which V chord was used (A- C#-E). First I thought it was D major, but your solution sounds more convincing d harmonic minor. Very good, thanks!
Your notes provide great help while taking the course, and will be a wonderful archive to consult in the future. Many thanks for your good work.
Thank you sooooooo much for taking the time and energy to come up with such clear, concise and thorough notes and sharing it with us. It is definitely a huge help for all of us.
You’re a STAR!
Thanks for all your help.
Many thanks for your summary! It is the best reference I think after taking this course.
What an excellent piece of work! Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge, I (and I guess many others) reaally appreciate this.
Thank you very much for share this with all of us.
Thank you. Great job very useful!
Can’t say enough of thank you!!! 🙂
Wish you all the best.
Maja
Man, you’re great. Thank you so much.
Wonderful contribution—I especially like the diagrams included within the notes! Thank you so much for all your effort in this project!
Glenn, A lot of work you’ve done. I’ll use your notes to go through the course again..
I am still way behind in this course but I will work my way up and you wonderful notes are just very helpful in reviewing the material. Thank you!
Another note of thanks. Every time I look in on a Coursera offering I wonder why a compilation of lecture transcripts and course materials isn’t routinely available in a single downloadable package. This is a big help. So is the Chrome plug-in Coursera Downloader for the video files.
Great job, thank you!
Glenn, may I ask you for the full ODT file of the notes? I’d be happy to export it to mobi format for my Kindle ebook reader.
I’ve added a link to a rar file containing the LibreOffice source files and MuseScore files. Note that I used a master document (odm) to link together all the separate odt files. Good luck doing the transformation to mobi. Let me know if it works 🙂
Thank you.
I exported the master document into flat ODT, applied MuseScore Example Manager to several examples and converted the file with Calibre into mobi format. Unfortunately, I got placeholders instead of the figures in the mobi document.
There seems to be several extensions for exporting ebooks directly from LibreOffice so I am going to experiment with them.
After a couple of hours of experimenting I gave up. Neither Calibre nor Writer2xhtml export filters seem to properly include the resulted PNGs into an e-book.
eLAIX did the trick (having required massive manual intervention though).
http://www.otstavnov.com/temp/WriteLikeMozart.mobi
http://www.otstavnov.com/temp/WriteLikeMozart.epub
Not ideal but readable e-books, I hope.
Oh, Maksim! Thanks a lot for mobi and epub files! Great work!!! 🙂
Seems to be a misprint in the notes against professors’s transparency. The fourth item in the description of minor seven chords (the 1st lesson) should read something like:
4. The viiØ7 is a half-diminished chord, consisting of a diminished triad with a minor seventh on top (dm7).
Not “… viiO7 … dim7 … “.
Hope this helps.
Wow you are a life saver! Thanks so much!
In Lesson 2.1 (Progressions with inversions – 1; Triads),
“Because a triad has 2 possible inversions (third or fifth as root) and a 7th chord has 3 possible inversions (third, fifth or seventh as root), there are many more possibilities for progressions with inversions than with the tonic as root alone.”
should be, I believe:
“Because a triad has 2 possible inversions (third or fifth in the bass) and a 7th chord has 3 possible inversions (third, fifth or seventh in the bass), there are many more possibilities for progressions with inversions than with the root in the bass alone.”
Thank you so much for sharing this. I was struggling with the course, being away from music for over 10 years.. Thank you so so much!!
In Lesson 4.7 (Melody writing),
“Between the bass and the oboe there is a 9-8 suspension, which resolves down to the tonic as usual” should be worded, I believe:
“In the oboe part, there is a 9-8 suspension which resolves down to the tonic as usual.”
In Lesson 6.1, there seems to be an error:
“This B is a fourth above the F# and is a tendency tone, so we resolve it down to the A#.”
The example is in B minor, B is the tonic, not a tendency tone.
To whom it may concern: I produced a version in Russian! Thank you once more, Glenn, for the notations!
Thanks for your work.It is a good back up for the course
Thanks a lot for sharing your work!!!