2 hours and 40 minutes for the examination. The AP Music Theory exam evaluates students' understanding of musical structure and compositional procedures through recorded and notated examples. Listening skills are emphasized, particularly those involving recognition and comprehension of melodic and rhythmic patterns, harmonic functions, small forms, and compositional techniques. Most of the musical examples are from standard western tonal repertoire; some examples of contemporary, jazz, vernacular music, or music beyond the western tradition are included. The exam requires fluency in reading musical notation and a strong grounding in music fundamentals, terminology, and analysis.
The AP Music Theory course supports mastery of the rudiments and vocabulary of music, including hearing and notating pitches; intervals; scales and keys; chords; meter; and rhythm. Building on this foundation, the course progresses to include more complex and creative tasks, such as melodic and harmonic dictation; composition of a bass line for a given melody, implying appropriate harmony; realization of a figured bass; realization of a Roman numeral progression; analysis of melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, and form in repertoire drawn mostly from the Western European Common Practice style, but also including jazz, 20th century works, and world music; and sight singing of simple melodies. Students learn to identify, both aurally and through score reading, tonal procedures based in common-practice tonality, such as functional triadic harmony in traditional four-voice texture (with vocabulary including nonharmonic tones, seventh chords, and secondary dominants); cadences; melodic and harmonic compositional processes (e.g., sequence, motivic development); standard rhythms and meters; phrase structure (e.g., contrasting period, phrase group); small forms (e.g., rounded binary, simple ternary, theme and variation, strophic); and modulation to closely related keys.The AP Music Theory Exam evaluates students' understanding of musical structure and compositional procedures through recorded and notated examples. Listening skills are emphasized, particularly those involving recognition and comprehension of melodic and rhythmic patterns, harmonic functions, small forms, and compositional techniques. Most of the musical examples are from standard Western tonal repertoire; some examples of contemporary, jazz, vernacular music, or music beyond the Western tradition are included. The exam requires fluency in reading musical notation and a strong grounding in music fundamentals, terminology, and analysis.