Composers have often both collaborated with other artistic disciplines and drawn from extra-musical sources for inspiration for their work. Composition & The Collaborative Impulse is a music composition study/ seminar course for the development of advanced students’ original music composition that intersects with other disciplines and group investigation of topics on music collaboration with other arts and the sciences. The course consists of individually scheduled meetings with the instructor on a project of the student’s choosing and three group seminar meetings spaced throughout the semester where topics in music composition in collaboration with other disciplines including theater, dance, film, literature, visual art and science will be discussed. As a class composers will also look at scores by contemporary music composers Charles Ives, Edgar Varese, George Crumb, and John Adams. Composers will discuss the direction and scope of their planned work with the other student composers in the first seminar meeting and will also present their work-in-progress at the second seminar meeting and final presentation. Group conversation will focus on students’ different experiences translating concepts from other disciplines into music vocabulary and/ or communicating musical concepts to collaborators in other disciplines. Composers will be responsible for creating and submitting a final notated score and optional recording of their musical work by the end of the semester. Up to five composers will be selected to take part in the seminar. Attendance at each meeting is a prerequisite of the course. At the conclusion of the semester, composers will be responsible for handing in a notated score of their musical work. An optional recording may also be submitted but not in place of a notated score. Selection for participation in the independent study course is at the discretion of the instructor.