Storytelling in Music

Many of the songs we hear on the radio derive their appeal, in part, from the interest of the narratives conveyed by their lyrics. Even without lyrics, however, music itself can compellingly depict characters, emotions, settings, or events in order to relate tales of love, tragic loss, conflict, heroism and victory, transcendence, comedy, adventure, and the exotic. This course explores the various musical means through which composers of the past several centuries have sought to convey such stories in both texted and untexted genres including the sixteenth-century madrigal; opera; the concerto and the symphony; nineteenth-century song cycles, solo piano works, and tone-poems; ballet and film scores; and jazz and rock ‘n roll.