History

This course explores current understandings of the medieval motet, in the wake of a flurry of recent scholarly interventions in monographs by David Rothenberg (2011), Emma Dillon (2012), Jennifer Saltzstein (2013), Anna Zayaruznaya (2015 and 2018), Catherine A. Bradley (2018), and Karen Desmond (2018). The new genre of the motet emerged in early thirteenth-century Paris in the cultural circles surrounding Notre Dame Cathedral and the burgeoning Parisian University. It represented a radically new form of polyphonic composition that frequently combined sacred and secular elements and traditions to sometimes shocking and ironic effect. Beginning with largely anonymous motet creations in the thirteenth century, which often borrowed and/or re-texted pre-existing materials, the course concludes with the carefully-curated 'complete works' collections overseen by Guillaume de Machaut in the mid fourteenth century. Through readings that span a diverse range of scholarly approaches-from sound studies to the study of musical monsters-we will investigate motets ca. 1200-1350 from various angles, engaging with questions of cultural contexts, audiences, and manuscript production; musical chronologies, quotations, and notations; the sonic impact of polytextuality; intertextuality and textual hermeneutics; authorship and authoriality.

This proseminar approaches nineteenth-century European music from an evolving perspective that gained momentum during the 1990s, when American musicology became more interested in the historical context. Amid this new orientation and the exploration of new areas of research, many methods and topics have remained remarkably stable. There have been only few attempts to conceive music history and historiography in a way that reflects these new perspectives and the new themes in a more comprehensive framework. This proseminar will try to make some steps in the direction of rethinking our approach to the history and historiography of music-this time with a focus on the 19th century. We will touch on a number of important topics, but no attempt can be made to be comprehensive with respect to both repertory and scholarly 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.

A seminar in twentieth- and twenty-first-century western music is a terribly hoary "topic", if such a tame word can really access the taxonomic catastrophe of "what happened in/with/to western music after 1900". This is somewhat alleviated by the "pro" in proseminar: as with the other proseminars, ours is not principally a survey, but rather an engagement "with salient scholarly issues on trends and repertories" of its chosen time-period. Put another way: we'll be focusing more on how people within the last long decade think and write about music that emerged since 1900, and less on "what actually happened”* (the "content", history, or music-theoretical aspects of various repertories, styles, movements, figures). In the process, we’ll proceed conceptually and thematically rather than chronologically or via various “traditions”; in addition, we’ll explore three mutually irreducible but often interacting fields of musical production: 1) classical or “composerly” musics, 2) popular musics, and 3) jazz and improvisational idioms. We’ll maintain a dual-focus on how these fields listen to themselves (traditions, legacies, evolutions and revolutions) but also to each other (fusions, hybrids, crossovers) and to their other (in many cases non-Western) others.

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.

Open to all undergraduates. Over the course of the last hundred and twenty 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 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), De Mille'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, part of the Social Sciences Civ core, looks at musics in different moments of Euro-American history and the social contexts in which they originated, with some comparative views on other world traditions. It aims to give students a better understanding of the social contexts of European music over this period; aids for the basic sound structures of pieces from these different moments; and convincing writing in response to prompts based on source readings or music pieces. Our first quarter (MUS 12100 etc.) spans roughly the period between Charlemagne's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor (800 CE) and the dissolution of the Empire (1806) with the triumph of Napoleon across Western Europe.

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.