History

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.

TBD

The history of the American musical in the 20th century is paradoxical. While the genre is often denigrated as staging lyrical utopias of romance and adventure allowing audiences to escape depressing quotidian realities, many musicals did seek to engage some of the most pressing social issues of their day. In this course, we will look—and listen—closely to four differing canonical musicals from the past 100 years, studying their creative origins, while also analyzing their complex social meanings revealed through the story, music, lyrics, staging, and dance.

In this course, we will interrogate the historical role of opera in consolidating, sustaining, and challenging colonial empires over the past four centuries. How was the growth and development of opera as a cultural institution affected by European expansionism? Does opera, like settler colonialism, have a special kinship with secular modernity? What can quintessentially operatic figures like the castrato, the diva, and the tragic heroine/femme fatale tell us about foreign, queer, or otherwise non-normative identities under systems of coloniality? And what social, cultural, or political roles can opera fill in the era of global/late/post-industrial capitalism? Inspired by recent trends in global music history; Black, Asian, and indigenous opera studies; as well as contemporary operatic productions and their critical responses, we will consider: exoticist and Orientalist tropes and racial costuming; exportation, adoption, and adaptation of European opera across the globe; depictions, explorations, and transgressions of the gender frontier; and postcolonial and hybrid re-interpretations and stagings of works from the operatic canon.

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 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 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 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.

The stark black and white of Madonna’s “Vogue” and the pinks and sparkles of “Material Girl.” The explosive surprise releases of Beyoncé's BEYONCÉ and Lemonade visual albums. The lavish cinematic spectacle of Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood” and the fanbait intertextuality of SM Entertainment’s Aespa. Since MTV’s advent in 1981, hit music videos have made a number of pop songs inextricable from iconic imagery and choreography; ubiquitous digital devices and the rise of platforms like YouTube and TikTok have only increased pop music’s audiovisuality.

Looking at and listening to female pop icons raises fraught questions of agency, representation, race, sexuality/sexualization, bodies, commodification, and capital. In this course, students will gain a vocabulary for talking about both the audio and visual parameters of music video, and they will use this vocabulary to engage with critical frameworks for examining meaning, circulation, and reception in contemporary music videos.

Assignments across the course will allow students to experiment with a range of writing and media genres, including critical close readings, micro-reception histories, thinkpieces, podcast episodes, and video essays.

MUSI 27300 treats music since 1800. Topics include the music of Beethoven and his influence on later composers; the rise of public concerts, German opera, programmatic instrumental music, and nationalist trends; the confrontation with modernism; and the impact of technology on the expansion of musical boundaries.