Spring

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 focuses on the research and development of live performance methodologies that utilize sound. In this class, we will explore text scores, graphic scores, and improvisation techniques using both acoustic and electronic sources. The research and practice areas include but are not limited to electroacoustic and audiovisual performance, non-Western and/or non-notated music performance, and the creation of new music. We will incorporate transducers, sound exciters, audio processing, and control surfaces in our performative events. This course is for students who have previous experience in performing musical ideas with “tools” such as everyday objects, traditional acoustic instruments, and electronics. We will have critical listening sessions, discussion of the student compositions in progress, focusing particularly on the instrumental and electroacoustic components, and open strategies of notating electroacoustic work and performances.

This one-quarter elective course covers the basic elements of music theory, including music reading, intervals, chords, meter, and rhythm.

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 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 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 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 seminar provides graduate students with an introduction to the economics of music, focusing on historical developments since the advent of mechanical reproduction and radio broadcasting around 1900. Key topics include the labor of music-making, the evolving relationship between musical production and technology, and the commodification of music—published, performed, recorded, licensed, and streamed. We will examine the growth of the global music industry and critically engage with issues such as remuneration, exchange, and assetization. These discussions will be framed within broader debates on late capitalism, addressing themes like income inequality, tax policy, vocational versus avocational labor, intersectionality and the social movements of the New Left, productive versus reproductive labor, and the potential decline of neoliberalism amidst shifting geopolitical dynamics. A central question will be whether music—given its metaphysical and intensely affective qualities—harbors a unique or distinctive status within larger economies of aesthetic, cultural, and material production. Readings will draw from a wide range of disciplines, including music studies, history, anthropology, law, economics, media studies, philosophy, and critical theory.