History

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.

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 musicals from the 20th century, studying their creative origins, while also analyzing their complex social meanings revealed through the story, music, lyrics, staging, and dance.

Throughout history, music fed the machinery of war and helped to come to terms with war. We will be examining how music, as realized by military commanders 500 years ago, has the power to intimidate the enemy, to energize and coordinate combatants. In the Renaissance, composers wrote ‘battaglias’ which is program music imitating battles. We will study pieces that celebrated victories and songs of thanksgiving which were performed during peace celebrations. During the Second World War, more than ever, music became both a propaganda instrument of the Nazi Reich and of counter-cultures. We will also encounter how soldiers of the Vietnam War dealt with their traumas and how their soundtrack created the means for articulating the cultural memory of a generation.

In this course, we will actively investigate the dark and light side of music, namely, music’s role in wars, conflicts, and peace. On the dark side, we explore how music instigates or accompanies violence, music’s role in propaganda, and how music can be (ab)used to create hatred. On the light side, we investigate music as a medium of commemoration, remembrance, hope, and healing. We will be doing so through active listening at home and during class and by discussing our findings in this seminar-style course. Sound recordings will be our main historical source supplemented with weekly readings of secondary literature.

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 current indeterminacy of music studies—stemming from its overdue reckoning with the legacies of white supremacy and colonialism—has left scholars with the imperative and the opportunity to rethink the foundations of the field. Amidst this state of things, the seminar will set aside the familiar method of applying philosophical authorities to scholarship on music. Instead, we will investigate music-philosophy as its own praxis: as varied modes of action, of making, and of rethinking what music is, what it does, its pasts, futures, and its mind-bending significance. Through a varied set of course readings, we will discuss salient philosophical issues currently circulating in the field (affect, history, political economy, ineffability, technology, and social difference) and study the work of a few postwar avant-garde musicians who themselves worked with philosophical aspirations.

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.

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 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.