Spring

Johann Sebastian Bach is somewhat of a cipher, one whose image and meaning has changed remarkably over the centuries. In this class, we will look at many of these shifting images of the famous Leipzig composer. Was he the pious Thomaskantor dutifully churning out his cantatas and passions or the intellectual wizard of an abstract and dying fugal art? A belated hero of German nationalism, or a universal icon of musical humanity celebrated by many as the greatest composer of all time? We will do a fair amount of readings that reflect many of these changing views of Bach. But we will also spend much of our time listening to—and studying—his music, seeing what clues he has offered to help us understand this most enigmatic of composers. While an advanced understanding of music theory is not a prerequisite for this course, it will be important that you can read music and helpful to have a foundational understanding of harmony and counterpoint.

Black artists are often written out of the history of musical experimentalism. John Cage’s place in the canon is secure, but what of Cecil Taylor’s? Or Anthony Braxton’s? Or Matana Roberts’s? Labels like “jazz” or “free jazz” segregate these artists from white experimentalists, suggesting that their music is best understood within a narrowly racialized genre category, rather than as part of the experimental mainstream, with its assumed whiteness, institutional support, and inbuilt prestige. This course redresses this imbalance by centering the music of Black radical composers in the latter half of the twentieth century. We will study the music of a wide range of composers, including many associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), one of the most venerable musical collectives of the twentieth century, rooted right here in Chicago’s South Side. The course will tack between studies of the music’s sounds and its historical, political, and ideological contexts. We will develop critical and analytical language for engaging the often-bracing sound worlds of those composers while building out a contextual understanding of their work as at once capaciously experimental and situated in a political context of resistance.

This course presents an open environment for creativity and expression through composition in the electronic music studio. The course provides students with a background in the fundamentals of sound and acoustics, covers the theory and practice of digital signal processing for audio, and introduces the recording studio as a powerful compositional tool. The course culminates in a concert of original student works presented in multi-channel surround sound. Enrollment gives students access to the Electronic Music Studio in the Department of Music. No prior knowledge of electronic music is necessary.

This course is a continuation of MUSI 261: Introduction to Composition, and an opportunity to go deeper into creative work. The focus will be on writing new pieces while also learning about various techniques and aesthetics, with special attention on music of the last hundred years. The new works will be performed and recorded by professional musicians, with demonstrations of instruments as well. Students are encouraged to bring their own existing interests into discussions and projects, while also incorporating newly acquired ideas and inspirations. There will also be focused attention on analysis of more recent repertoire for a variety of instrumentations and configurations, addressing new ways of thinking about harmony, melody, form, timbre, orchestration, rhythm, improvisation, notation, technology, theatricality, and concept. Students will also attend rehearsals and performances of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition and other events on campus.

This course introduces theoretical and analytical approaches to twentieth-century music. The core of the course involves learning a new theoretical apparatus—often called "set theory"—and exploring how best to apply that apparatus analytically to pieces by composers such as Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky. We also explore the relevance of the theoretical models to music outside of the high-modernist canon, including some jazz. The course provides an opportunity to confront some foundational questions regarding what it means to "theorize about music."

Over the course of the last 120 years, opera and cinema have been sounded and seen together again and again. Where opera is commonly associated with extravagant performance and production, cinema is popularly associated with realism. Yet their encounter not only proves these assumptions wrong but produces some extraordinary third kinds--media hybrids. It also produces some extraordinary love affairs. Thomas Edison wanted a film of his to be “a grand opera,” and Federico Fellini and Woody Allen wanted opera to saturate their films. Thinking about these mutual attractions, “Opera across Media” explores different operatic and cinematic repertories as well as other media forms. Among films to be studied are Pabst’s Threepenny Opera (1931), Visconti’s Senso (1954), Powell and Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Zeffirelli’s La traviata (1981), DeMille’s Carmen (1915), Losey’s Don Giovanni (1979), Bergman’s The Magic Flute (1975), and Fellini’s E la nave va (1983). No prior background in music performance, theory, or notation is needed. Students may write papers based on their own skills and interests relevant to the course. Required work includes attendance at all screenings and classes; weekly postings on Canvas about readings and viewings; attendances at a Met HD broadcast and a Lyric Opera live opera; a short “think piece” midway through the course; and a final term paper of 8-10 pages.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

In this course, we gather sound and music to afford new ways to understand the history and culture of a geographical region. Instead of an area study, we concern ourselves with listening to sound worlds, local and global. We balance the reading of primary and secondary sources—the writings of travelers and practitioners alongside theoretical treatises and modern ethnomusicological scholarship—with the different listening practices, especially collections and assemblages of recorded sound and film. Each student will develop her or his own means of entering different sound worlds. Accordingly, students with varying degrees of musical background will be able to navigate the Indian Ocean World in ways suitable to their own backgrounds and interests. Students from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Divinity are welcome. Both College students and graduate students may register for the course, with the only distinction being in the scope of the final project.