Readiness Audit — Evidence File (NASM)

Provider	Caldwell Conservatory of Music (fictional — demonstration)
Course	MUH 301 — Survey of Western Music History · Bachelor of Music · 3 credit hours · course type: survey
Declared scope	Standalone-comprehensive — the syllabus states the course "satisfies the music-history requirement of the Bachelor of Music degree in a single semester." That declaration is what makes breadth checkable at the course level (see §2).
Date prepared	June 12, 2026
Standards yardstick	NASM Handbook 2024-25, Section VIII.B "Common Body of Knowledge and Skills" (edition of January 17, 2025)
Method	Coverage lane only — mechanical, offline, no LLM involved in any check. The grounded-generation and refusal lanes were not exercised in this run (see §5).

Demonstration notice. The course examined here is synthetic demonstration content created for a pipeline dry run; the institution is fictional. The anchor works in the syllabus are real, public-domain repertory — titles, composers, and period attributions are facts. This document maps the course against the NASM Handbook by locator. It implies no NASM review, endorsement, or approval of any course or institution, and is not an accreditation determination — the NASM Commission on Accreditation holds final authority. The standards catalog used is a point-and-cite record (competency-area headings, section locators, and our own paraphrases only); no Handbook body text is stored or reproduced.

SECTION 01

Executive summary

Two findings, both anchored to NASM VIII.B.4 and recomputable from the syllabus's own module list. The same promise-versus-delivery gap pattern as the NASBA sample: the catalog copy promises a survey "to the present day" — the repertory stops at Brahms.

Findings

Eras covered

Modern eras

Tradition

Records mapped

VIII.B.4 · temporal breadth ("through the present time")

Promised "to the present day" — repertory stops at Brahms

The course is declared as covering the full history requirement on its own, but its works span medieval → romantic and no module reaches the 20th century or later. NASM VIII.B.4 expects music history "through the present time." Engine recommendation: add 20th-century / contemporary repertory. Every input appears in §3 for hand-checking.

VIII.B.4 · cultural breadth ("beyond the primary specialization")

Every anchor work sits in a single tradition

All 8 modules anchor to Western art music. VIII.B.4 expects exposure to "various music cultures… beyond the primary specialization." For a course declared standalone-comprehensive, a cross-cultural unit is needed — or the requirement must be carried elsewhere in the degree, which the declaration forecloses. Detail in §4.

SECTION 02

Coverage map

Mapped against all 5 competency records of the NASM VIII.B catalog — mechanical, no LLM. NASM competencies are met across an entire degree program, not within one course, so the lane assesses only what a music-history course answers to (VIII.B.4, and contextually VIII.B.2) and labels the rest honestly. Breadth findings fire here only because the syllabus declares the course standalone-comprehensive; a course presented as one slice of a multi-course sequence reports facts, not gaps.

Locator	Competency area	Relevance	Status
VIII.B.1	Performance	not assessed	Addressed elsewhere in the degree
VIII.B.2	Musicianship Skills and Analysis	contextual	Supported design-level — not a coverage count
VIII.B.3	Composition/Improvisation	not assessed	Addressed elsewhere in the degree
VIII.B.4	History and Culture	primary	2 findings temporal + cultural breadth
VIII.B.5	Synthesis	degree capstone	Degree-level — not a single-course property

Computed facts for VIII.B.4: eras covered 6 · span medieval → romantic · reaches present false · traditions [western_art_music].

SECTION 03

Temporal breadth recomputation VIII.B.4 · "through the present time"

Each module's anchor work resolves to a period on the engine's era ladder. The judgment is mechanical: does any module reach a modern era? Green = covered by the module sequence; dashed red = missing.

medieval renaissance baroque classical transition classical romantic 20th century — missing contemporary — missing

Module	Anchor work	Era
1 · Chant and the medieval polyphonists	Machaut — Messe de Nostre Dame	medieval
2 · The Franco-Flemish high renaissance	Josquin — Ave Maria … Virgo serena	renaissance
3 · Counter-Reformation polyphony	Palestrina — Missa Papae Marcelli	renaissance
4 · The high baroque	J. S. Bach — Brandenburg Concerto No. 3	baroque
5 · Baroque oratorio	Handel — Messiah	baroque
6 · The Viennese classical style	Mozart — Symphony No. 40	classical
7 · Beethoven at the threshold	Beethoven — Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"	classical_transition
8 · The romantic symphony (final module)	Brahms — Symphony No. 4	romantic — sequence ends here

8 modules · 6 of 9 ladder eras covered · latest era reached: romantic · catalog copy promises "from plainchant to the present day." The gap is between the syllabus's own promise and its own module list — the same shape as the NASBA sample's objective-4 finding.

SECTION 04

Cultural breadth VIII.B.4 · "beyond the primary specialization"

Tradition resolution across all anchor works. VIII.B.4 expects study and experience of "various music cultures" extending beyond the student's primary specialization — checkable mechanically as the count of distinct traditions in the repertory.

Tradition	Anchor works	Share
western_art_music	8 of 8	100%
any other tradition	0 of 8	0%

Distinct traditions: 1 — below the breadth a standalone-comprehensive declaration requires. Remediation options surfaced by the engine: add a cross-cultural unit to the course, or carry the requirement in a separate world-music/ethnomusicology course — which would mean withdrawing the standalone declaration rather than leaving the promise unmet.

SECTION 05

Lanes not exercised in this run

This sample ran the mechanical coverage lane only — no course corpus was ingested and no generation was attempted, so this file contains no grounded-rebuild or refusal exhibit. Those lanes are demonstrated end-to-end, on a live run with per-claim receipts and an honest refusal, in the NASBA sample evidence file (§6–7).

Why two yardsticks in two sample files. The engine is catalog-agnostic: the same coverage lane that recomputed CPE credit math against the NASBA Standards resolves repertory eras against NASM VIII.B. The catalog is data, not code — a new standard is a new point-and-cite catalog, and every finding still carries the standard's own locator as its yardstick.

SECTION 06

Provenance log

Run configuration	Value
Run date	2026-06-12 (UTC)
Lane	standards_coverage — mechanical, offline
Course declaration	course_type: survey · standalone_comprehensive: true · 8 modules
Era/tradition resolution	Demo domain pack (8 anchor works, era ladder per engine convention), regenerated by demo/run_nasm_coverage.py
Compliance checks	Deterministic (no LLM, no embeddings, no network) — every finding reproducible from the syllabus + catalog

Standards-catalog provenance	Value
Yardstick	NASM Handbook 2024-25, §VIII.B Common Body of Knowledge and Skills (National Association of Schools of Music, Reston, VA)
Edition	2024-25, published 2025-01-17 (public PDF at nasm.arts-accredit.org)
Retrieved	2026-06-10
Catalog class	Point-and-cite record — competency headings, locators VIII.B.1–5, and our paraphrases only; no Handbook body text stored
Requirement records	5 (VIII.B.1 – VIII.B.5)

End of evidence file. Demonstration only — fictional institution, synthetic course; anchor works are real public-domain repertory. This document implies no NASM review, endorsement, or approval, and is not an accreditation determination. The NASM Commission on Accreditation holds final authority over accreditation matters.

Survey of Western Music History (MUH 301)