Courses

Last offered Fall 2021

When you listen to music -- on your phone or computer, on the radio, at a concert -- how much do you really hear? This course refines students' listening skills through study of the major composers, styles, and genres of the Western classical tradition. We will explore music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern eras, including works by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Stravinsky, and other composers. Genres to be covered include the symphony, string quartet, sonata, opera, song, and choral music. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2022

The theory and application of basic techniques in jazz improvisation and performance styles, including blues forms, swing, bebop, modally based composition etc. Appropriate for students with basic skill on their instrument and some theoretical knowledge including all key signatures, major/minor keys and modes, intervals, triads and basic seventh chords and their functions within keys. This is a performance practice course and instrumental competence is essential. Vocalists and drummers will be encouraged to study the piano; pianists guitarists and bassists should be able to sight read chords on a jazz lead sheet. [ more ]

MUS 112 LEC Musics of Asia

Last offered Spring 2016

This course offers an introduction to the great diversity of Asian music. Our survey will span from East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) to Southeast Asia (Thailand and Indonesia) to the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia (Tibet and Afghanistan), to the Middle East (Iran and the Arabian peninsula), and will end with the extension of Asian music across North Africa and into Eastern Europe. Within this broad survey, we will focus on selected and representative musical cultures and genres. In each section of the course, aspects of cultural context (including music's function in religious life and its relationship to the other arts), will be emphasized. While our focus will be on the traditional and classical musics of these cultures, we will also briefly consider the current musical scene. Encounters with this music will include attendance at live performances when possible. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2022

The rise of Rock 'n' Roll in the mid-1950s has typically been viewed as a temporary confluence in American culture, suggesting possibilities for musical and racial integration even as various forms of appropriation and exclusion were perpetuated. This course will explore the earlier multiple musical streams that merged at this moment. We will start by engaging with contemporary and historical perspectives on race, adopting a radically interdisciplinary approach. Our focus will then be on several of the most prominent vernacular and commercial forms of American music during this period: ragtime, blues, early jazz, rhythm and blues, Tin Pan Alley, country and western, bluegrass, Tex-Mex/Tejano conjunto, "Latin jazz," and Cajun/zydeco. Prior to the 1950s, these musical styles were segregated, at least in terms of production and marketing. How did racial assumptions and histories shape the creation, dissemination, and reception of this music? Can we hear the multiple ways in which race played out in American music in the first half of the twentieth century? [ more ]

MUS 119 LEC Popular Music: Revolutions in the History of Rock

Last offered Spring 2017

This course will trace the history of rock music from the 1950s to the present, focusing on those musicians who revolutionized the genre in various periods. Such "revolutions" are discovered in the use of new sounds and musical forms, in the relationship between lyrics and musical setting, and in the conception of rock's role in society. Three objectives will underpin our studies: to develop listening skills with music that one often hears, but perhaps rarely listens to intently; to determine in what ways popular music can be interpreted as reflecting its cultural context; and to encounter the work of several of the more innovative musicians in the history of rock. Finally we will interrogate our own activities by asking why the study of the "merely popular" should be pursued in a liberal arts education, whether new approaches can be developed for this endeavor, and what makes music "popular." [ more ]

MUS 120 LEC Musics of Africa

Last offered Spring 2019

This course introduces a selection of musical cultures from the geographical breadth of Africa. Following an introductory exploration of the fundamental aesthetic and social parameters governing African musical practice, we will engage in a series of case studies considering a diverse array of musical practices and related social and political issues in specific locales. Featured countries include Ghana, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Algeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This course samples a wide range of musical practices from the Ghanaian dance craze, azonto, to Ethiopian liturgical chants, to Shona mbira music in Zimbabwe. Performance analysis and critical reading and listing assignments are combined with a number of hands-on workshops and musical exercises. [ more ]

MUS 138 LEC Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music

Last offered Spring 2017

Twentieth-century Euro-American art music involved a persistent exploration of the limits of musical possibility. Encounters with this music often challenge our ears and musical minds and require us to reconsider fundamental conceptions of music itself. Throughout the course, we will investigate in what ways the basic elements of music (e.g., harmonic organization, rhythm, timbre, instrumentation and performance conventions) were extended and revolutionized. Topics and styles to be discussed include: atonality, expressionism, twelve-tone techniques, neoclassicism, electronic and computer music, stochastic music, minimalism, and neoromanticism. We will also consider the music of this century in relation to contemporary developments in the other arts and to popular musical styles. The syllabus will include works by such composers as Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Bartók, Weill, Milhaud, Shostakovich, Ives, Copland, Babbitt, Stockhausen, Messiaen, Boulez, Berio, Cage, Górecki, Glass, Gubaidulina, and Tower. [ more ]

MUS 141 LEC Opera

Last offered Fall 2018

An introduction to the history of opera, from the genre's birth c. 1600 to the present. At various points in its 400-year development, opera has been considered the highest synthesis of the arts, a vehicle for the social elite, or a form of popular entertainment. Opera's position in European cultural history will be a primary focus of our inquiry. We will also study the intriguing relationship between text and music, aspects of performance and production, and the artistic and social conventions of the operatic world. The multidimensional nature of opera invites a variety of analytical and critical perspectives, including those of music analysis, literary studies, feminist interpretations, and political and sociological approaches. Works to be considered include operas by Monteverdi, Lully, Charpentier, Handel, Gluck, Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Puccini, Strauss, Berg, Britten, Glass and Adams. This course may involve a trip to the Metropolitan Opera. [ more ]

MUS 146 LEC The Concerto: Dialogue and Discord

Last offered Spring 2016

The concerto is the musical genre most akin to the novel, and like the novel, explores the individual's relationship to society. A musical protagonist--a solo instrumentalist or a group of individual players--engages the larger orchestral ensemble, and a story unfolds in a dramatic narrative told in sound. This course will trace the history of the concerto from its beginning in the Baroque period to today. We will explore the spirited exchanges of Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, the urbane conversations of Mozart's piano concerti, the impassioned struggles of the Brahms violin concerto, the ferocious arguments of the Shostakovitch cello concerto, the polyglot discussions of John Adam's clarinet concerto, and many more. Along the way we will also investigate transformations in patronage and performance contexts, the cult of the virtuoso, and aspects of musical form and style. Students will experience the excitement of hearing concerti performed on campus by the Berkshire Symphony and student winners of the Department of Music's Concerto Competition. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2020

Named for a specific road but enjoying a global impact, the Broadway musical has intersected with multiple styles and societal concerns over the past century. In this course, we explore the American musical theater's roots and relationship to opera, operetta, vaudeville, minstrelsy, and Tin Pan Alley. Traveling through the genre's history, we will encounter a wide range of musical styles, including ragtime, jazz, rock, and hip hop, and will explore several genre transformations, such as movies made into musicals and musicals into movies. We will develop a range of analytical skills as we investigate connections between choreography, lyrics, music, staging, and production. Throughout the semester, we will consider the genre's representations and reflections of ethnicity, race, sexuality, and class. The syllabus includes representative works by Gilbert and Sullivan, Cohan, Gershwin, Kern, Weill, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Bernstein, Sondheim, Lloyd Webber, and Miranda, with particular focus on such works as Showboat, Oklahoma!, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Hair, Rent, and Hamilton. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2020

"There are only three things that America will be remembered for 200 years from now when they study the civilization: The Constitution, Jazz Music and Baseball. These are the three most beautiful things this culture's ever created."--(Gerald Early) Jazz is the most common name for a great African American Art form that still defies definition. Over the past century this elastic tradition has laid down firm roots for numerous other American and World musics, while itself in the throes of a seemingly permanent identity crisis. Jazz is perennially declared dead or dying yet consistently summoned by advertisers to lend vitality and sex appeal to liquor or automobiles. By any name and regardless of its health status, jazz has a rich history of conservative innovators, at once restless and reverent, who made fascinating leaps of creativity out of inspiration or necessity. This "listening intensive" class will look at the past century of jazz music through ideas, "what-if" questions and movements that changed the way the music was created, presented and perceived. Both musical concepts (such as syncopation and cross instrumental-influence) and cultural connections (racial, technological and economic) will be examined, giving us freedom to link similar kinds of musical thought across disparate settings and decades. Our inquiry will include (but not be limited to) the lives and music of Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, John Lewis, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Wayne Shorter. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2019

This course explores the lives and music of two great composers of the High Baroque, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. We will examine their dramatically contrasting life experiences and musical pursuits within the larger social and cultural framework of the period: Bach as a provincial composer, servant to minor German aristocrats and the Lutheran Church, virtuoso organist and pedagogue; Handel as a cosmopolitan celebrity and entrepreneur, creator of operatic and instrumental entertainments for both the Italian and English nobility and the paying public. Development of listening skills and understanding of Baroque music styles, genres, and forms will be stressed. Bach's Brandenburg Concerti and Mass in B-minor, and Handel's opera Giulio Cesare and Water Music Suite are just a few of the works to be discussed and enjoyed. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2019

This course will examine the extraordinary life and musical genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through lectures, discussion, readings, and guided listening, students will gain appreciation of Mozart's classical compositional style and familiarity with many of his greatest works. The class will explore Mozart's pivotal position as a musician in Viennese society; his strange combination of bawdy behavior and sublime artistry; his relationship with his domineering father Leopold, as well as with Haydn, Beethoven, and Salieri; and the myths about Mozart that have sprung up in the two centuries since his death. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2022

This course provides an introduction to the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven. The composer's difficult childhood, loss of hearing, secret affair with his "Immortal Beloved," tempestuous relationship with his suicidal nephew, along with political, philosophical, social, and cultural developments of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, will provide context for our study of his artistic achievements. Students will listen to a broad selection of Beethoven's music, including sonatas, string quartets, symphonies, overtures, concertos, choral works, and opera. Some of the topics we will discuss include the nature of his genius, his compositional methods, his influence on later composers such as Schubert, Wagner, and Brahms, Beethoven in popular culture, and the continuing impact of his music around the globe. [ more ]

MUS 178 TUT Music and Politics

Last offered Fall 2016

This course examines how musical sound and musical discourse change, enable, and inhibit citizen formation and the functioning of a well-ordered society. We will take a very wide definition of "politics," as music can have political meaning and effects far beyond national anthems and propaganda. For instance, musical sound is often read as a metaphor for political structures: eighteenth-century commenters pointed out that string quartets mirrored reasoned, democratic discourse, and twentieth-century critics made similar arguments about free jazz. Beliefs about music can serve as a barometer for a society's non-musical anxieties: Viennese fin-de-siècle critics worried that the sounds and stories of Strauss's operas were causing moral decline, an argument that should be familiar to anyone who reads criticism of American popular music. Finally, a pervasive strand of Romantic thought holds that (good) music, by its nature, is apolitical-what might it mean to deny social relevance to an entire field of human expression? We will read classic philosophical texts on art and politics by Schiller, Kant, Schopenhauer, Marx, Adorno, and others, and pair them with contextual studies of works of Western classical music from the last two hundred years and popular music of the last hundred years. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2021

"It is only in his music [. . .] that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story. It is a story which otherwise has yet to be told and which no American is prepared to hear," wrote James Baldwin in Notes of a Native Son in 1955. In this course, we strive to listen more closely to racialized experience through James Baldwin's musical literature. Through analysis and creation of music, we hope to better understand cultural difference and collective humanity. In this course, we closely analyze James Baldwin's use of song names, creation of musician characters, and replication of musical elements in his writing. Baldwin's musical word play crosses historical and genre boundaries. So we will explore texts from his early to late career, such as the gospel music of his youth in the semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, the metaphor of the blues in the play written during the civil-rights movement Blues for Mr. Charlie, the jazz musician protagonist in "Sonny's Blues" written after World War II in Paris, and his only musical recording in A Lover's Question set down near the end of his life. In addition to closely analyzing James Baldwin's attention to music throughout his literature, students will learn basic music writing and production skills. The tutorial will draw on a range of musical resources, including playlists, music workshops, guest lectures and performances. All of these resources will guide students to a more attuned hearing not only of music but also of the African American experience it reflects. By the end of the course, students will have written several short 1-2 page close analysis essays and song lyrics. For their final project, students will produce an original song based on key insights from the course. No musical experience is required, though an openness to learn and practice songwriting is expected. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2021

A continuation of MUS 104b, this course builds upon theoretical knowledge, performance and aural skills developed previously. Students will deal with more complex theoretical and performance issues, including the use of symmetric scales, strategies for chord reharmonization, pentatonic and hexatonic scale shapes, and Coltrane's "Three Tonic" harmonic system. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2020

Designed for students with some music background who wish to learn basic principles of Musical Technology and practical use of current software and hardware. Topics include acoustics, MIDI sequencing, digital recording and editing, sampling, analog and digital synthesis, digital signal processing, and instrument design. Lectures will provide technical explanations on those topics covered in class and an historical overview of electronic music. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2019

Using select examples from throughout Africa, this course highlights genres, artists, and works that engage with social and ideological change. Students practice critical listening and performance analysis, while also considering the social contexts that render these performances meaningful and provocative. Topics include: challenges to mass mediated stereotypes of African populations, the social and economic impact of cultural tourism, music as a form of social critique, changing attitudes toward women and the LGBTQIA community, music and global aid organizations, issues of migration and displacement, and the changing roles of traditional musical occupations. Popular genres-among them Afrobeat, kwaito, soukous, raï, mbalax, Chimurenga music, and a variety of rap and hip-hop styles-are discussed alongside numerous traditional and ceremonial genres, national/political anthems, and concert pieces. Active participation in class discussion is an important component of this course. [ more ]

MUS 225 LEC Musics of the Caribbean

Last offered Spring 2017

From witty and politically charged calypsos to soulful bachatas, from folkloric displays that advertise a country's cultural diversity to ritual performances that facilitate communication with the spirit world, the music of the Caribbean is astonishingly diverse, both sonically and in its social application. This course serves as an introduction to a wide spectrum of Caribbean music in its broader social and historical context. Through engaging with audio and video sources, readings, performance exercises and workshops, students will learn to identify distinguishing features associated with particular countries and regions, while also exploring the sounds and musical structures that are shared between them. Featured genres include reggae, steel pan, calypso, zouk, Maroon music from Suriname and Jamaica, chutney, salsa, merengue and music from Haitian Vodu and Cuban Santería religions. Interlaced with discussion of musical genres and innovative musicians are a number of central questions about the social role of music within the region: How has slavery and colonial enterprise shaped the musical landscape of the Caribbean? How do the realms of sacred and secular performance relate to each other? What role does tourism and global circulation play in influencing musical tastes and practices? Finally, how do music and dance interconnect? [ more ]

MUS 230 LEC Musical Ethnography

Last offered Spring 2016

Music provides a constant accompaniment to most of our lives, from mundane activities to personal or collective moments of celebration and grief. Often, we experience music's impact on us without fully considering how it shapes our ideas and experiences. Drawing on ethnomusicology, anthropology, and related fields, this course explores how music can illuminate people's practices of being-in-the-world. Musical ethnography describes both the means by which scholars pursue this line of questioning, and also the written work that results from such an investigation. This course features a hands-on approach to musical ethnography. Students will each conduct ethnographic fieldwork in a musical community within Williamstown and the surrounding area. Coursework will survey approaches to methodology (modes and degrees of researcher involvement, practical skills related to documentation), issues of ethics, and social and musical analysis. [ more ]

MUS 238 LEC Music in Modernism

Last offered Fall 2017

The synthesis of the arts was a primary pursuit of modernist composers, artists, choreographers, and writers. Seeking either to realize Wagner's "total work of art" in the theater, or to uncover the more general correspondences celebrated by Baudelaire, modernists consistently looked beyond their own media. Collaborations on works of "total theater" were common: Satie, Cocteau, Massine, Picasso; Brecht, Hindemith, Weill; Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Bakst; Claudel, Honegger, Rubinstein. Modernists explored new connections between music and color (Scriabin, Kandinsky), music and literature (Joyce, Mann), and music and dance (Duncan, Graham). Occasionally, modernists attempted to unite the arts on their own: Schoenberg painted, Pound composed, and Kokoschka wrote. Our focus will be on those works of music, art, dance, and literature that explored new relationships between the arts. One goal will be to investigate whether specific equivalents exist between techniques of modernist painting, poetics, choreography, and composition. Aware of the risks and rewards of interdisciplinary study, we will attempt our own theories of artistic synthesis. This course is designed to bring multiple perspectives to the study of music in modernism. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2021

Throughout the Cold War (1947-1991), music was deployed as a weapon, as a source of nationalist and ideological inspiration, as a form of political protest and resistance, and as propaganda. Music both echoed and helped shape political views and, therefore, prompted various forms of regulation and censorship (McCarthyism in the U.S.; the Union of Soviet Composers). To counter Soviet claims of American cultural inferiority and racism, the U.S. sponsored numerous musical diplomacy efforts showcasing both jazz (Armstrong; Ellington; Brubeck) and classical musicians and composers (Bernstein; American orchestras). Cold War politics and the threat of nuclear war influenced musical styles (Copland; Soviet Socialist Realism; the popular American folk music revival; serialism; rock behind the Iron Curtain), specific musical events (Tokyo East West Music Encounter; concerts celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall), and individual careers (Shostakovich; Robeson; Van Cliburn). To investigate music's political roles and capacity for expressing communist and democratic capitalist ideologies, we will adopt a case study approach. The Cold War was a global political and, frequently, militaristic struggle. Though our focus will be on music in the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A., we will also consider musical developments impacted by the Cold War throughout Western and Eastern Europe, in Latin America, and in East Asia. [ more ]

MUS 244 LEC Opera Since Einstein

Last offered Spring 2016

After 400 years, we might assume we know what "opera" is. However, in recent decades the genre has moved far beyond our preconceptions. This course asks us to examine opera of the last forty years with fresh eyes and ears, expanding our understanding of the term to include the interdisciplinary, multimedia, cross-cultural work that has been created by composers, directors (Peter Greenaway, Peter Sellars, Robert Wilson), filmmakers, choreographers, and visual artists in that period. Using the 1976 premiere of Philip Glass's seminal Einstein on the Beach as a starting point, we will examine such diverse works as Adams's Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, Glass's Satyagraha, Tan Dun's Marco Polo, Neuwirth's Lost Highway, Unsuk Chin's Alice in Wonderland, Andriessen's Writing to Vermeer, Ades's Powder Her Face, Muhly's Two Boys, Monk's Atlas, and Ashley's television opera, Perfect Lives. [ more ]

MUS 251 LEC Introduction to the Music of Duke Ellington

Last offered Spring 2015

This course will survey the career and compositional style of Edward Kennedy (Duke) Ellington (1899-1974). Students will learn to listen to and analyze music from throughout Ellington's five-decade career as a bandleader, composer, arranger, and writer. Particular emphasis will be placed on development of aural analysis skills, in terms of form, style, orchestration, and the ability to identify the individual sounds of key Ellingtonian soloists. Ellington's importance as a key figure in American cultural history, and relationships between his music and parallel stylistic developments and influences from both within and outside of the jazz tradition will be discussed. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2019

This course offers the serious music student an opportunity to study the unique body of work produced by saxophonist and composer John Coltrane (1926-1967). The course traces the evolution of Coltrane's compositional and performance styles in the context of the musical and cultural environment in which they developed. Emphasis placed on Coltrane's musical style, representing a unique synthesis of influences, including jazz, world, and European Classical music and spirituality. Substantial listening and reading assignments, including a biography and related criticism, as well as detailed score analysis and study, are required. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2022

Remarkably few female voices from the first 1500 years of music in the West are audible today; most of the extant music and poetry of these centuries was composed by men to communicate male perspectives on matters worldly and divine. In this course we will listen to the experiences and viewpoints of medieval and Renaissance women as expressed through their poetry and song. We will ask how these women, whose lives were shaped either by the requirements of monastic culture or by the complex dynamics of aristocratic court culture, negotiated their places and made their voices heard within the patriarchal society of their time. We will examine how the contrasting environments of church and court informed the different outlooks, ideas, and aesthetics expressed in the words and music of their songs. Along the way, we will critically assess how these lost voices have been recreated to speak to us today through recordings and film. Our exploration begins in Byzantium and travels through Germany to France, Spain, and Italy. Along the way we encounter the Greek chant of the 9th century Byzantine abbess Kassia, the Latin poetry, chant, and sacred music drama of the 12th century German polymath St. Hildegard of Bingen, and the elegant poems and courtly melodies of the Countess of Dia and Queen Blanche of Castile in 12th and 13th century France. Heading south, we explore 14th century sacred polyphony at the royal convent of Las Huelgas in northern Spain, and voyage cross the Mediterranean to sample the lively musical life of 15th and 16th century cloistered female communities in northern Italy. We conclude our journey with a comparison of three remarkable 16th century women: the archduchess Margaret of Austria, Governor of the Hapsburg Netherlands, and poet-composer of French chansons; Sister Leonora d'Este, an Italian princess who spent her life enclosed in a Venetian convent, and likely authored a collection of anonymous Latin motets; and Maddelena Casulana, a northern Italian composer of madrigals, and the first women to publish music under her own name. Her introduction to her first book of madrigals encapsulates the aim of this course: "I want to show the world, as much as I can in this profession of music, the vain error of men that they alone possess the gifts of intellect and artistry, and that such gifts are never given to women." [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2021

Nearly everyone finds music meaningful, but what exactly does it mean? Without the help of words, this largely non-referential art presents special challenges to interpretation. While most would agree that musical sounds can do such things as mimic the rumbling of thunder, evoke the countryside, suggest the act of chasing, or express rage, the capacity of music to convey meaning remains controversial among scholars, performers, and listeners. Some, following music critic Eduard Hanslick, assert that musical works are essentially "tonally moving forms"--patterns of sound with no reference to the world outside themselves; a work's meaning derives solely from the interplay of musical elements. Others counter that music can signify aspects of human experience, its sounds and structures not merely referring to the outside world but even relating complex narratives. Certain writers have argued that, without the assistance of language, what music signifies remains vague, while others insist that the meaning of music is actually more precise than that of words. In this tutorial course, we will explore a range of questions regarding musical meaning. How can combinations of pitches, rhythms, and instrumental timbres signify something beyond themselves? Is the subject of musical meaning more relevant to some historical styles or genres than others? How can we determine the meaning(s) of a work? Should we concentrate on formal processes within the music? Consider socially constructed meanings? Seek the composer's intentions? Emphasize our personal responses? What makes some interpretations more convincing than others? In grappling with these questions, students will engage with writings by Agawu, Cone, Hanslick, Kramer, Langer, Lewin, Newcomb, and Schopenhauer, among others. Music to be studied includes works by Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Stravinsky, Glass, and Adams. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2021

As a largely non-referential art whose meanings are far from transparent, music might seem to pose little danger. How could mere sounds represent a threat? Yet precisely because its meanings can be obscure, enabling it to achieve its ends surreptitiously, music has intertwined with danger throughout history. With its power to stir the emotions, stimulate bodily movement, encode messages, and foment rebellion, music has often been perceived as an agent of harm. Plato claimed that too much music could make a man effeminate or neurotic, and warned that certain musical modes, melodies, and rhythms promote licentious behavior and anarchic societies. Puritans, Victorians, and totalitarians, as well as opponents of ragtime, rock 'n roll, and rap, have also accused certain musical genres or styles of exerting dangerous influences, and sought to limit or suppress them. In Afghanistan, the Taliban banned music altogether. While music has often been unfairly accused, its potential for placing people in actual danger is undeniable. Works that are played at ear-splitting decibel levels, that call upon performers to injure themselves, that are used as a form of psychological torture, or that incite violence demand reconsideration of the widely shared view that music is fundamentally a form of entertainment. [ more ]

MUS 276 LEC Music and the Internet

Last offered Fall 2017

Since the release of Napster in 1999, the Internet's relationship with music has been sometimes elevating and sometimes adversarial. While it has granted listeners access to broad music libraries and musicians access to large audiences, the Internet has also exposed listeners to legal action, taxed artists with dwindling royalties, and disrupted and reshaped the recording and publishing industries. This course examines how the Internet has affected music at every level, from its creation to its distribution and consumption. Topics will include music written for online spaces, musical performances that take place online, music and online gaming, live music that refers to the Internet, the financial and philosophical background of music file formats, changing notions of musical ownership, censorship of music online, music's place in memes, and the user experience in (and attitudes toward music projected by) services like iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, and musically. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2021

The story of the gypsy femme fatale Carmen has endured for over 150 years. In Western culture and beyond, she exemplifies the seductive, exotic, independent, and dangerous woman who drives an upstanding man to a life of crime and finally murder. This course explores a broad array of treatments of this archetypal and problematic narrative, starting with Prosper Mérimée's 1845 novella on which Bizet based his famous 1875 opera Carmen. We will consider various staged and film versions of the opera itself, including Francesco Rosi's stunning 1984 movie, and discuss various other film transformations of the story, from DeMille's 1915 silent film through Hammerstein's 1954 all-black musical Carmen Jones, to the MTV version A Hip Hopera of 2004. Comic approaches will also be assessed, from Charlie Chaplin's Carmen Burlesque of 1915 through Spike Jones' 1952 Carmen Murdered! and The Naked Carmen of 1970. We will explore provocative dance interpretations ranging from Carlos Saura's 1983 flamenco version through David Bourne's choreography in his 2001 gay reading called The Car Man. Our journey concludes with a comparison of two post-colonial sub-Saharan African films--the Senegalese director Ramaka's Karmen Geï (2001) and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha (2005) by the South African director Dornford-May--that push critical reaction to Bizet's story and music beyond Western cultural boundaries. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2020

This tutorial will investigate the representation of Asians and Asian Americans in American popular culture since the late nineteenth century. Our focus will be on music's role in Orientalist representation in a wide variety of media and genres, including Hollywood film, television, popular song, music videos, Broadway musicals, hip hop, and novels. We will begin with major texts in cultural theory (Said, Bhabha) and will attempt throughout the semester to revise and refine their tenets. Can American Orientalism be distinguished in any fundamental way from nineteenth-century European imperialist thought? How does Orientalist representation calibrate when the "exotic others" being represented are themselves Americans? Our own critical thought will be sharpened through analysis and interpretation of specific works, such as Madame Butterfly, "Chinatown, My Chinatown," Sayonara, Flower Drum Song, Miss Saigon, Rising Sun, M. Butterfly, Aladdin, and Weezer's Pinkerton. We will end the semester by considering the current state of Orientalism in American popular culture. [ more ]

MUS 280 TUT Dancing the Score/Scoring the Dance

Last offered Spring 2019

This course is designed for students interested in intensive collaborative composition work in dance and music. Students in dance will be paired with students in music; both students will be supported in creating in collaboration by practicing composition in their respective disciplines while working closely with each other in a structured, intimate setting. Any genre or style of music or dance may be explored. Projects will allow students to practice methodologies of collaboration and creation. Groups will evolve, and document procedures unique to their group. Students are expected to rigorously build upon and revise their work(s) by making active use of feedback sessions. Studying historic and contemporary dance and music collaborations in a variety of genres will give further context to our work. Weekly presentation of assignments, active participation in feedback sessions, identifying to the group what the next steps are, written reflection on sessions, and final showing will be required. Creating in collaboration trains students to articulate vision and intention while enabling the instructors to differentiate their aesthetic values from those of the students. It also trains students to collaborate with other disciplines during the creative process. The format allows class members to receive undivided focus on their processes, while also challenging them to assess their own abilities, create their own next steps, and discover how movement can inspire music as well as music inspiring dance. This tutorial provides a crucial central aspect of the creative arts: a space for ongoing feedback driven by the questions arising for the students, rather than specific aesthetic preferences or working practices. Investment in the work of one's group is central, sharing responsibility for the development of others' as well as one's own work. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2020

Counterpoint, the study of the ways independent melodic lines can be joined in music, has been essential to musical and compositional instruction for centuries. Counterpoint was taught by Mozart, studied by Beethoven, and to this day remains an integral part of compositional training. The course will introduce students to species counterpoint in two and three voices--exercises that develop discipline in polyphonic writing, hearing, and thinking. The exercises will focus on the constraints of sixteenth-century vocal polyphony (music of Palestrina and Lassus) but will illustrate how such contrapuntal discipline is also manifest in music of Corelli, Bach, Brahms and Debussy. [ more ]

MUS 305 TUT Jazz Ear Training Tutorial

Last offered Spring 2015

This tutorial is designed for jazz performers, composers and arrangers who have taken Music 212 or 104b and who seek further work in the area of aural development. The focus of the tutorial will be on the development of advanced aural skills specific to the disciplines of jazz performance and arranging/composition. Its format will involve two weekly meetings. In the first, tutorial pairs will meet individually with the instructor to present transcriptions of approved improvised solos, which will be thoroughly notated and performed by the students. A critique of both the performance and notation of these transcription projects will be offered by the partnered students for one another, as well as by the instructor, with revisions and corrections incorporated into an edited performance for the entire class the following week. In the other weekly meeting, all of the tutorial pairs will meet jointly with the instructor in order to do group assignments involving sight-singing (both rhythmic and melodic), and advanced harmonic and melodic dictation. During these sessions the instructor will offer a critique of the past week's performances as well, based on the following criteria: 1.) notational technique, 2.) observations relating to performance practice, 3.) how such factors contributed to the evolution of the given soloists' style, and, 4.) historical significance of the given performance and its relationship to the overall evolution of the given performer's personal voice. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2021

At the heart of this class is the question, how do artists and organizations use the performing arts to effect social change in their communities? Drawing from a number of case studies from throughout Africa and the African Diaspora, we will first endeavor to understand and contextualize issues related to education, social uplift, the environment, and the economy as they relate to specific communities. We will then examine how a series of organizations (from grassroots campaigns to multinational initiatives) utilize the performing arts in response to those issues. Among the issues we will discuss at length are: -How do performers and organizations navigate the interplay between showcasing the performance talents of individuals and groups and foregrounding an issue or cause? More broadly, what dilemmas emerge as social and aesthetic imperatives intermingle? -What are the dynamics between people acting on a local level within their communities and their various international partnerships and audiences? -How can government or NGO sponsorship help and/or hinder systemic change? By the end of the semester, students will be equipped with conceptual frameworks and critical vocabularies that can help them ascertain the functions of performance within larger organizations and in service to complex societal issues. Throughout the course, we will watch and listen to a variety of performances from traditional genres to hip-hop, however this class is less about learning to perform or analyze any particular genre than it is about thinking through how performance is used as a vehicle for social change. Case studies will include youth outreach and uplift in Tanzania through the United African Alliance, campaigns to promote girls' education in Benin and Zimbabwe, community-wide decolonizing initiatives through the Yole!Africa Center in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the cultural reclamation of a mining town in Suriname through the arts organization, Stichting Kibii. [ more ]

MUS 330 STU Modern Folklore: Postcolonial Dance and Music in Africa

Last offered Spring 2019

"Folklore is a mixture of traditions, poems, songs, dances and legends of the people, it can be no other than the reflection of the life of the country and if that country develops, there is no reason why the folklore which is the living expression, should not develop as well. Modern folklore in present Africa is as authentic as the Africa of old." --Keita Fodeba, founding Artistic Director of Les Ballet Africain, Guinea, West Africa. This course will involve intensive dance and musical practice that is rooted in traditional and contemporary/forms from the African continent and the Diaspora. We will examine the international impact of countries who achieved independence from Europe in the late 1950's-1990s such as Les Ballets Africain, National Dance Company of Senegal, Bembeya Jazz, Ghana Dance Ensemble, and the national dance and music companies of Zimbabwe, Jamaica, and Cuba. Our study will include the impact of artists such as James Brown, Miriam Makeba, Michael Jackson, and Youssou N'Dour, as well as Hip Hop culture and the emergence of new forms of music and dance or modern folklore. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2021

"Meaningful theorizing about jazz improvisation at the level of the ensemble must take the interactive, collaborative context of musical invention as a point of departure"- Ingrid Monson, Saying Something. Collaboration gives birth to specific musical moments, shapes the dramatic arc of whole pieces and performances, and is the foundation out of which the styles and larger artistic identities of individuals and groups arise. This class is an opportunity for advanced students of jazz music to investigate the uniquely collaborative nature of jazz language assimilationand communication. Participants will transcribe and analyze examples of musical interplay from the recorded works of the Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960's, the John Coltrane Quartet of the 1960's, and other notable jazz ensembles. They will also undertake a thorough profile of a modern-day ensemble, including a performance-based final project. Essays on jazz aesthetics by Berliner, Monson, Hobson and Rinzler among others will serve to broaden our discussions as we examine the ideas of musical collaboration and group identity through social and commercial lenses. [ more ]

Last offered Fall 2021

This course will introduce and develop a broad range of subjects associated with conducting, including: leadership, rehearsal techniques, physical and aural skills, interpretation, performance practices, and programming. Related areas to be discussed include: balance, intonation, rhythm, articulation, bowings, and complex meters. Weekly conducting and score reading assignments will form the core of the workload. Larger projects may include conducting existing instrumental ensembles, and along with score reading, will be the basis of the midterm and final exams. This course includes instrument demos, and conducting videos. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2021

Timbre is central to the experience of all music and often enables us to identify styles and cultures nearly instantaneously. However, timbre is not commonly discussed in detail since our technical vocabulary for describing this musical element has been comparatively limited. Our work in this seminar will involve readings in music theory and history, ethnomusicology, and cognitive studies as well as in the emerging field of sound studies as we attempt to define timbre, explore its manifestations in a wide variety of music, and develop an analytical approach and descriptive vocabulary tooled specifically to this musical element. We will consider how composers and performers of both art and popular musics have wielded timbre as an expressive device and how technology may allow us to analyze details of timbral performance and perception. We will investigate the relationship between timbre and orchestration, from the rise of Haydn's orchestra to the Klangfarbenmelodie of Schoenberg. We will consider extremes of timbral distortion in both vocal and electric guitar effects in rock music as well in such traditions as Korean p'ansori and will explore various forms of speech music and the work of composers of spectral music to expand our case studies. Finally, our own experiments with timbral effects will bring our seminar to bear on our musical performance. [ more ]

MUS 472 SEM Bach's Legacy

Last offered Spring 2019

How have composers after Bach engaged with his legacy? This seminar will trace the course of the Classical and early Romantic period "Bach Revival" through Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Clara and Robert Schumann, and explore how he was venerated in the later Romantic era by Brahms and Busoni. Our main focus, however, will be on how composers of the modern era have viewed him and used his music. We will test critical conceptual frameworks offered by David Lowenthal's "The Past is a Foreign Country" and Harold Bloom's "The Anxiety of Influence," using them as lenses through which to view contemporary classical composers' Bach-inspired creations, ranging from Schoenberg and Webern through Sophia Gubaidulina, George Crumb, and David Lang. Finally, we will consider both the musical techniques and meanings of reworkings and quotations of Bach's music in film, jazz and popular music. [ more ]

MUS 473 SEM Process Music

Last offered Spring 2018

The course explores process music--music organized by the unfolding of various mathematical or mechanistic procedures--as defined by Steve Reich's "Music as Gradual Process." The seminar centers upon Reich's process music, placing it in the context of its intellectual and musical precursors, the process and minimalist music of his contemporaries, and the subsequent generations of composers who built on Reich's foundation. The course will develop analytical tools to both define the processes that composers use in their music and to explore the particular relation between the musical materials (melodic, rhythmic) a composer chooses and the processes to which those material are subject. Reich's process music and its techniques will serve as both a lens and mirror to examine and reflect upon precursor repertoires, including the contrapuntal music of Bach, isorhythmic motets of the middle ages and their cyclic counterparts in the music of Messiaen, serial procedures of the 1950s, and Ghanaian ensemble drumming. Contemporary musicians/composers to be explored as lecture topics and student projects will include Riley, Glass, Tenney, Lang, Tom Johnson, and Radiohead. [ more ]

Last offered Spring 2022

Music is often said to derive its own special quality from the fact that it exists outside of visual representation and is not contained within a physical form, yet musical sound and practice are created through and act upon bodies in numerous ways. This course aims to address how music and bodies shape and respond to one another. Drawing from sources across musical sub-disciplines and extending to fields including cognitive science, sound studies, performance studies, and anthropology, we will follow four lines of inquiry related to music and corporeality: 1.) Embodied practices: techniques and pedagogies in performance and in listening (including praxis [Bourdieu], Deep Listening [Oliveros, Becker], Alexander Technique); 2.) Music's physical effects and affects: pleasure and pain, the vocalic body [Bonefant, Connor, Barthes], cognitive processes; 3.) Ideological moves: questioning the universality of music and of bodies and Cartesian dualism; 4.) Music and bodies at their limits: cyberfeminism, futurism, disembodiment, ecstasy, questions of artificiality/virtuality. Musical examples will be drawn from classical and popular sources from Euro/American idioms and beyond, predominantly from the late 20th and 21st centuries. [ more ]