Theory

This course is intended for students who wish to pursue specialized readings in music or to do advanced work in composition.

Disability is often an afterthought, an unexpected tragedy to be mitigated, accommodated, or overcome. In cultural, political, and educational spheres, disabilities are non-normative, marginal, even invisible. This runs counter to many of our lived experiences of difference where, in fact, disabilities of all kinds are the "new normal." In this interdisciplinary course, we center both the category and experience of disability. Moreover, we consider the stakes of explicitly designing for different kinds of bodies and minds. Rather than approaching disability as a problem to be accommodated, we consider the affordances that disability offers for design.

This course begins by situating us in the growing discipline of Disability Studies and the activist (and intersectional) Disability Justice movement. We then move to four two-week units in specific areas where disability meets design: architecture, infrastructure, and public space; education and the classroom; economics, employment, and public policy; and aesthetics. Traversing from architecture to art, and from education to economic policy, this course asks how we can design for access.

This course focuses on the knowledge necessary to improvise over the chord changes of standard jazz tunes. We cover basic terminology and chord symbols, scale-to-chord relationships, connection devices, and turn-around patterns. For the more experienced improviser, we explore alternate chord changes, tritone substitutions, and ornamentations. Using techniques gained in class, students write their own solos on a jazz tune and transcribe solos from recordings. All instruments are welcome, and students should write to the instructor prior to the first class to let them know their instrument.

The second quarter explores extensions of harmonic syntax, the basics of classical form, further work with counterpoint, and nondiatonic seventh chords. 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 explores topics in the history of music theory from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries (with excursions into the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries as necessary). We will focus on a range of topics, including: scientific empiricism and music theory, musical rhetoric, the transition from modal to tonal thinking, the partimento tradition, harmonic theory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, theories of modulation and tonality, theories of form, theories of musical rhythm, hermeneutic and semiotic approaches to musical analysis. Although secondary literature on these topics will be an important part of the assigned readings, our focus will be on primary sources. Not all of these have been translated, and so a reading knowledge of French and German will be useful. (Of course, secondary sources may be in either of these languages as well.) In additional to doing the readings and participating in class discussion, students will make a short presentation on conceptual material relevant to the course and complete two brief analysis assignments. There will be a final exam similar in design to the theory essay exams given during comprehensives.

This course focuses on the tonal language of nineteenth-century European composers, including Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, and Wagner. Students confront analytical problems posed by these and other composers' increasing uses of chromaticism and extended forms through traditional (classical) models of tonal harmony and form, as well as alternative approaches specifically tailored to this repertory. We will also address the ways in which these analytical perspectives might impinge on or influence matters of performance; students with a performance background will be invited to propose a final project that involves both performance and analysis.

The third quarter undertakes the study of modulation, sequences, and additional analysis of classical forms. Musicianship labs in ear training and keyboard skills required.

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 will meet asynchronously; attendance at any scheduled lectures and tutorials is completely optional and will have no bearing upon the student’s grade. Lectures will be given live and scheduled at times that accommodate the majority of students’ schedules. They may be attended via Zoom, but they will be recorded and made available for viewing at each student’s leisure. Further optional tutorials will be scheduled at student’s best convenience. Once again, attendance is not compulsory and will have no bearing upon the course grade.