Theory

Songs are vehicles of expression that simultaneously employ two modes of communication: language and music. This course will focus on songs in which the linguistic component comes from poems to which music has been added. This practice goes back to antiquity, but it flourished in a remarkable and influential way in German-speaking countries at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We will explore analytical techniques that consider how words and music combine (and occasionally compete) in songs by composers like Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, moving later in the course to composers like Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, and Claude Debussy. We will also explore instrumental arrangements of songs done by Franz Liszt and others to consider how music can evoke the spirit of a song in the absence of its words.

The first quarter focuses on fundamentals: scale types, keys, basic harmonic structures, voice-leading and two-voice counterpoint. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.

This course aims to develop students' analytical and critical tools by focusing on a select group of works drawn from the Western European and American concert tradition. The texts for the course are recordings. Through listening, written assignments, and class discussion, we explore topics such as compositional strategy, conditions of musical performance, interactions between music and text, and the relationship between music and ideology as they are manifested in complete compositions.

This proseminar analyzes rock music's complex, evolving legacy in global culture and the study of popular music and genre. For better or worse, we still think and hear popular music through rock. Tangled up in the political upheavals of and around 1968, rock music continues to shape how musicians and scholars imagine political agency and how music might make a difference. Later musicians have sought to recapture rock's alleged disruptive potential in ever-new paradigms: prog rock, punk, metal, and many more. Scholars, too, looked to rock music when they began to study subcultures and supposedly counter-hegemonic cultural production. As the semi-mythical archetype of "popular music that doesn't care about being popular," rock helped establish the study of recorded popular music and genre. We will scrutinize rock music’s ambivalent legacy in forming new musical, political, and scholarly discourses with readings, research projects, presentations, and discussions. Since we will try to understand the whole of popular music through rock, this course will benefit greatly from participants with diverse musical backgrounds and skill sets. 

How do listeners perceive musical meter? How do composers manipulate rhythm for expressive purposes? How do performers modify notated rhythms? Why does music make us move? These questions have motivated an extensive body of recent research in music theory and cognition, after a long-standing focus on the domain of pitch. Students will engage with this literature through reading and music analysis, to learn about rhythmic and metrical structures in music—from baroque dance to hip-hop. 

The first quarter focuses on fundamentals: scale types, keys, basic harmonic structures, voice-leading and two-voice counterpoint. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.

This one-quarter elective course covers the basic elements of music theory, including music reading, intervals, chords, meter, and rhythm.

This course aims to develop students' analytical and critical tools by focusing on a select group of works drawn from the Western European and American concert tradition. The texts for the course are recordings. Through listening, written assignments, and class discussion, we explore topics such as compositional strategy, conditions of musical performance, interactions between music and text, and the relationship between music and ideology as they are manifested in complete compositions.

In this pro-seminar we will survey some major themes that emerge in pre-modern music theory (antiquity to about 1700). Among the topics we will study are the nature and classification of mode, classical canonics (interval theory), rhythm and mensuration, discant and contrapunctus theory, tuning and temperament, and the "periphery" of music theory: musica humana, magic, and the emergence of modern science. (These latter topics will indeed help us critically scrutinize just what we might mean by "music theory" when considered historically.)

The first quarter focuses on fundamentals: scale types, keys, basic harmonic structures, voice-leading and two-voice counterpoint. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.