Undergraduate Courses

This one-quarter course is designed to enrich the listening experience of students, particularly with respect to the art music of the Western European and American concert tradition. Students are introduced to the basic elements of music and the ways that they are integrated to create works in various styles. Particular emphasis is placed on musical form and on the potential for music to refer to and interact with aspects of the world outside.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is required.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is required.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is required.

This course aims to develop students' analytical and critical tools by focusing on a select group of works drawn from the Western European and American concert tradition. The texts for the course are recordings. Through listening, written assignments, and class discussion, we explore topics such as compositional strategy, conditions of musical performance, interactions between music and text, and the relationship between music and ideology as they are manifested in complete compositions.

This course aims to develop students' analytical and critical tools by focusing on a select group of works drawn from the Western European and American concert tradition. The texts for the course are recordings. Through listening, written assignments, and class discussion, we explore topics such as compositional strategy, conditions of musical performance, interactions between music and text, and the relationship between music and ideology as they are manifested in complete compositions.

This course aims to develop students' analytical and critical tools by focusing on a select group of works drawn from the Western European and American concert tradition. The texts for the course are recordings. Through listening, written assignments, and class discussion, we explore topics such as compositional strategy, conditions of musical performance, interactions between music and text, and the relationship between music and ideology as they are manifested in complete compositions.

This course is for everyone interested in connecting performativity with sound and music making. Through a hands-on workshop format, students combine research on live performance methodologies—such as text scores, graphic scores, and improvisation across acoustic and electronic sources, as well as non-Western and non-notated approaches to performance—with the study of performativity theories. The course emphasizes practical and critical exploration of social, cultural, and aesthetic aspects of sound practices, enabling students to develop, present, and critically discuss new and experimental work that integrates these approaches. We will have critical listening sessions, regular work-in-progress and improvisation sessions, and open strategies for notating and documenting sound-based performances.

The first quarter focuses on fundamentals: scale types, keys, basic harmonic structures, voice-leading and two-voice counterpoint. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.

The second quarter explores extensions of harmonic syntax, the basics of classical form, further work with counterpoint, and nondiatonic seventh chords. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.

The third quarter undertakes the study of modulation, sequences, and additional analysis of classical forms. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.

This course is geared toward students who would like to improve their music literacy skills and strengthen their overall musicianship through intensive sight-singing practice. In this supportive environment, we will explore not only a wide range of musical concepts (including rhythm, meter, musical symbols, note-names, solfege, scales, intervals, and harmony), but we’ll also learn to recognize common pitfalls, tackle anxiety surrounding sight-reading, and learn to trust our instincts so that we may keep pushing forward after faltering. This course will sharpen students’ aural skills as we work on listening and notating what we hear. We will go beyond the confines of Western Classical traditions to explore other systems of musical notation, and learn how singing music from oral traditions can help us to become stronger musicians.

Note: This course is recommended for students who have had at least some experience singing or playing an instrument, but who wish to strengthen their skills and confidence. Students should be able to match pitch.

This course explores research in the mind and brain sciences that helps us to understand how we understand music. Although a portion of the material we cover will relate quite directly to what happens when we listen to music, other readings and topics will concern some of the more-general cognitive capacities that humans recruit to make sense of the sounds they hear. One challenge, then, will be to come to terms with what we have learned from research in music psychology and music cognition, which often involves relatively technical explorations of how musical sounds are organized. A second challenge will be to consider what research that isn’t as directly related to music—research, for instance, on analogical processes, the motor system, or gesture—can tell us about how we organize our understanding of the sounds we associate with music. The class is organized around selected readings—spanning both empirical research and more speculative work—that will provide a basis for class discussions, lectures, and brief writing assignments. There will also be ample opportunity to explore how these readings inform our understanding of specific musical pieces, which can help us to both understand and critique a range of approaches to music and mind.

Instructor: Fiona Boyd

This seminar examines the foundational role of Black sound and artistry in country music, from the genre’s pre-histories in West Africa and the Caribbean, to its multiracial and multicultural present across the United States and the world. With a particular focus on Black American country musicians and their experiences of place, belonging, and Americanness, we will think and listen alongside scholars and artists who examine intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class in their work, who employ a diversity of methodological approaches across music studies, and who ask questions about genre, industry, collectivity, nationalism, fandom, place, and labor. Throughout the course, we will expand our listening skills and explore how the study of music and sound can illuminate our social and cultural understandings, in turn redefining what we consider country music and Black music to be. The course will culminate in a final project designed to prompt students to reflect on the sounds, skills, issues, concepts, and methodologies discussed in the course, and to explore a research question related to Black country music. This course is open to students with no formal training or background in music.

Bob Dylan (b. 1941) is one of the most celebrated artists of the postwar era, a musician who revolutionized popular songwriting, whose lyrics won him a Nobel Prize in Literature, and whose idiosyncratic voice and performance style have thrilled his fans—and baffled everyone else—for over six decades. Now, as a result of the film A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet, a new generation is discovering Dylan’s music. In 2020, he released one of his most critically acclaimed albums in years. His mystique, allure, and enigma show no sign of waning; he continues to perform prolifically in this, his 86th year.

What makes Bob Dylan tick? Why has his curious combination of highly ambitious lyrics and ramshackle music making so captivated so many? This course addresses those questions, focusing on both famous tracks and deep cuts, with a particular emphasis on the ways his songs change in performance. We will engage Dylan’s music as carefully as we do his words, but no formal music training is required for the course.

Instructor: Anne Monique Pace

This course provides an introduction to ethnomusicology and related disciplines with an emphasis on the methods and contemporary practice of social and cultural analysis. The course reviews a broad selection of writing on non-Western, popular, vernacular, and "world-music" genres from a historical and theoretical perspective, clarifying key analytical terms (i.e., "culture," "subculture," "style," "ritual," "globalization") and methods (i.e., ethnography, semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism). In the last part of the course, students learn and develop component skills of fieldwork documentation and ethnographic writing.