Theory

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.

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.