The third quarter undertakes the study of modulation, sequences, and additional analysis of classical forms. 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 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.
Without a doubt, memory is crucial to the production and understanding of musical sound. At the small scale, much of musical discourse relies on being able to remember what was just heard so that we can compare and relate it to what we are now hearing. On the large scale, memories for musical materials can persist over a lifetime and—as research with Alzheimer’s patients has shown—may remain when other memories have vanished. Memory is equally a tool for composers and improvisers: consider the striking recollections of earlier songs in Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und Leben, or Jim Hall’s references to “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” in his 1975 solo over “The Way You Look Tonight.” Memory is equally basic to evocations or enactments of nostalgia through sound, as in the Magic Numbers’s “Roy Orbison” (from the album Alias). Indeed, an argument can be made that musical practice writ large is how societies remember—that is music, especially as it is linked with embodied practice, is a technology for memory.
Readings include research on memory processes (such as Frederick Bartlett’s Remembering, David Rubin’s Memory in Oral Cultures, and Gabriel Radvansky and Jeffrey Zack’s Event Cognition), approaches from social anthropology (like Paul Connerton’s How Societies Remember), and readings from music scholars engaged with the topic of memory (for example, Charles Rosen’s observations about Dichterliebe in The Romantic Generation).
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.
The Colloquium is a series of lectures followed by discussion and normally given by speakers from other institutions who are specially invited by the Music Department to share their recent research or compositions with students and faculty. All lectures take place on Friday afternoons.
This course introduces fundamental tools of tonal analysis, applied to music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, accomplished through a focus on Heinrich Schenker's influential theory of linear analysis. A portion of the course will be given over to exploring the historical and cultural context of Schenker's theory, its critical reception, and the ways it has been applied. This will be complemented by an introduction to Schenkerian techniques and the analytical resources they offer. Note: Music 31100 is conceived as a preparation and foundation for Music 31200, which will build directly upon the analytic models and repertoire introduced in Music 31100.
