History

The seminar explores musical embodiments of a scriptural book, which has stood in the midst of rich theological and philosophical debates, within and between two religious universes. The seminar’s title paraphrases a major moment in the book: when God reveals himself to Job the sufferer, from the whirlwind. That was a powerful, boisterous moment. Combined with other audible articulations strewn throughout the book, it has opened itself up to a plethora of sonic imaginaries, suggested and elaborated in the course of its long durée. Inspired by the book, the seminar aims to probe the aesthetic theology of sound, noise and silence. We will study its manifestations in poetic, oratorical, pictorial, choreographic and cinematic embodiments of the book, from early times to the present day. We will focus mainly on modern expressions, which, while referring to ancient and medieval legacies, respond to contemporary plights and aporias. The figure of the suffering Job, at times the patron saint of music, will shed new light on the cultural connections among music, heresy, compassion, and consolation. Methodological considerations will be highlighted in each class, crossing disciplinary borders, periods and media.

The seminar guides students through the preliminary stages of selecting and refining a topic, and provides an interactive forum for presenting and discussing the early stages of research, conceptualization, and writing. The course culminates in the presentation of a paper that serves as the foundation of the honors thesis. The instructors work closely with honors project supervisors, who may be drawn from the entire music faculty.

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.

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 uncanny, the ghostly, the spectral, the dead: terms like these, often housed under the umbrella of “spectrality,” have lately haunted the borders of music history. This is especially true where its disciplinary objects—sounding music, listeners, histories, technologies--cannot easily be defined but also cannot be reduced away. They have forced music studies toward a reckoning with its past certainties, challenging its canons but also furnishing new modes of analysis and criticism for refractory sites of research.

Most particularly, spectrality has emerged prominently in considerations of race and gender. This seminar will read recent literature, musicological and non, to ask how spectrality as a conceptual paradigm mediates anxious musical relationships to race, gender, and sexuality by focusing on death and mortality, including music’s own vanished pasts. Our inquiries will engage the sonic analogues to visibility / invisibility and presence / absence paradoxes conjured by death and haunting in the forms of inaudibility / audibility and silence / noise, especially as they pertain to phonography, film, and other media. We will find that far from circumventing the realms of the material and technological, the seemingly immaterial realms of spectrality turn out to engage and perpetuate them.

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 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.