Autumn

Writing about music is bringing together seemingly disparate worlds of experience— word and sound— worlds that are inherently incompatible as the quote suggests. How do we write about musical genres, emotions and memories generated by sound, people and technology that make, curate, and circulate music? This course will introduce students to writing and research methods in musicology, ethnomusicology, and popular music studies. We will collectively engage existing tools and develop new ones to write about music and sound creatively, analytically, and multimodally. Focusing on various forms and genres of music writing including but not limited to (e)-journalism, fan reviews, scholarly writing, writings by musicians, new media and AI writing, musician (auto)biographies, album covers, and liner notes, we will experiment with various registers and styles of describing music and develop a toolkit for rendering various aspects of music and sound in words. Critical, artistic, fictional, and various creative mediations on music will be surveyed with a focus on how writings about music become artistic works in and of themselves.

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.

The composition seminar is a weekly session designed for undergraduate students in composition lessons. It is an open forum for composers to listen to recent music, including their own, and to discuss issues connected with trends, esthetics, and compositional techniques. The entire composition faculty takes part in these sessions. The composition seminar often hosts well-known visiting composers whose works are performed in the city by various groups or ensembles, as well as performers specializing in new music and contemporary techniques. 

Students may enroll in this course more than once as an elective, but it may be counted only once towards requirements for the music major or minor. Students must also register for MUSI 24100, Seminar: Composition. 

This course examines Caribbean popular music through its sonic features, performance practices, and cultural meanings. Students will explore a range of genres — including calypso, soca, dancehall, reggaeton, zouk, and bachata — and consider how these styles reflect and shape Caribbean identities and histories. Participants investigate how music engages with key concepts such as creolization, hybridity, colonialism, nationalism, and migration, with a focus on both local traditions and global diasporic expressions. Special attention will be given to Carnival and fête culture as dynamic spaces of performance, resistance, and cultural celebration. The course also examines how Caribbean music travels and transforms beyond the region, influencing artists and audiences worldwide.

No musical background required. Open to undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines.

This survey charts the history and development of jazz from its earliest origins to the present. Representative recordings in various styles are selected for intensive analysis and connected to other musics, currents in American and world cultures, and the contexts and processes of performance. The Chicago Jazz Archive in Regenstein Library provides primary source materials.

This course explores research on music in the mind and brain sciences as it has developed over the past four decades. During this time, we have come to an increasingly refined understanding of the ways the brain processes sound. It remains the case, however, that not all sound is music, and in this course we will investigate how musical sound is organized to make it musical, and how this organization reflects the capacities of the human mind.Among the topics the class will engage are the origins and functions of music, absolute pitch, music and memory, how music shapes emotional responses, movement and music, connections between music and images, and the relationship between music and language.

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. 

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.