Winter

During the five three-hour sessions of the Dissertation Chapter Seminar each quarter, Ph.D. students in their fourth and fifth years will have the opportunity to share strategies for writing up their dissertations during the years of most intensive research. We shall work collectively to develop these strategies, investigating the on-the-ground research work that students bring to the DCS from the early stages of research to the completion of chapters in preparation for the dissertation-completion year. Each session will begin with a discussion of research-to-writing strategies, and it will conclude with discussion in the seminar of one or two pre-circulated chapters by students in the DCS. Ph.D. students who are not in residence during their fourth and fifth years, because they are conducting research or no longer in residence in Chicago, will participate remotely. During the Autumn Quarter of 2020/2021, the DCS will be entirely remote. The DCS provides students an opportunity for a sustained and supportive dissertation-writing workshop for Ph.D. students in Music.

The Dissertation Pre-Proposal Seminar (DPPS) is a yearlong course required of all first- and second-year students in the Department of Music. The DPPS provides Ph.D. students in all sub-disciplines—history/theory, ethnomusicology, and composition—with methods and approaches to guide them in the early stages of preparing for the dissertations or, in the case of composers, their minor-field papers. In the course of the year, students will read and examine dissertations and the proposals that led to them. Students develop a fuller understanding of what kinds of research can be helpful in the first and second years, for example, whether short-term visits to archives or ethnographic work might assist them in identifying the empirical materials they will use. At various times during the year, we workshop some of the written work that students prepare as the subjects of their dissertations become clearer.

The purpose of this seminar is to assist students (typically in their third year) in crafting a dissertation proposal, gaining critical feedback from their peers, and honing compelling research projects. The meeting schedule of the seminar will be flexible: beginning in the fourth week of Autumn term, we will meet about once every two weeks; it may be, however, that we pick up the tempo a bit during Winter term, such that during Spring term we can slow it down a bit to allow students more time to work with their advisors on the formulation of their research projects. Once I know the schedule of the Department workshops I will schedule the meetings of the DPS to avoid conflicts with classes, workshops and other events, and distribute an initial assignment for reading and discussion.

The purpose of this seminar is to assist students (typically in their third year) in crafting a dissertation proposal, gaining critical feedback from their peers, and honing compelling research projects. The meeting schedule of the seminar will be flexible: beginning in the fourth week of Autumn term, we will meet about once every two weeks; it may be, however, that we pick up the tempo a bit during Winter term, such that during Spring term we can slow it down a bit to allow students more time to work with their advisors on the formulation of their research projects. Once I know the schedule of the Department workshops I will schedule the meetings of the DPS to avoid conflicts with classes, workshops and other events, and distribute an initial assignment for reading and discussion.

In this pro-seminar we will survey some major themes that emerge in pre-modern music theory (antiquity to about 1700). Among the topics we will study are the nature and classification of mode, classical canonics (interval theory), rhythm and mensuration, discant and contrapunctus theory, tuning and temperament, and the "periphery" of music theory: musica humana, magic, and the emergence of modern science. (These latter topics will indeed help us critically scrutinize just what we might mean by "music theory" when considered historically.)

The composition seminar is a weekly session designed for graduate students in composition. 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.

This course is a selective introduction to anthropology and related, influential strands of high/critical theory, on one hand, and the changing relation of both to the study of music and the field of ethnomusicology, on the other. After an opening situating the course's origin and content in university and broader intellectual currents, we will proceed through a series of modules focused on particular issues and approaches: culture; society; research paradigms and theory; ethnography; intellectual crises and questions; the emergent field known as sound studies; and, finally, anthropological studies of art and music. Rather than providing a comprehensive survey, then, this course presents students with a series of paths they might fruitfully explore further, a set of tools for navigating the heterogeneous, distributed nature of fields with ever-proliferating sub-fields and research/writing paradigms.

This course examines issues and contexts for European music in the period, concentrating on cultural meaning, transmission, improvisation, and sources. Students will do work with digital editions of Renaissance music, interactions between Europe and the Americas, and problems of gender and music.

MUSI 27200 addresses topics in music from 1600 to 1800, including opera, sacred music, the emergence of instrumental genres, the codification of tonality, and the Viennese classicism of Haydn and Mozart.