Courses

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.

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.

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.

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.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This course is a selected survey of classical, popular, and folk music traditions from around the world. The goals are not only to expand our skills as listeners but also to redefine what we consider music to be and, in the process, stimulate a fresh approach to our own diverse musical traditions. In addition, the role of music as ritual, aesthetic experience, mode of communication, and artistic expression is explored.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is required.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is required.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is required.

This introductory course in music is intended for students who are interested in exploring the language, interpretation, and meaning of music through coordinated listening, analysis, and creative work. By listening to and comprehending the structural and aesthetic considerations behind significant written and improvised works, from the earliest examples of notated Western music to the music of living composers and performers, students will be prepared to undertake analytical and ultimately creative projects. The relationship between cultural and historical practices and the creation and reception of music will also be considered. The course is taught by a practicing composer, whose experience will guide and inform the works studied. No prior background in music is 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.

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, 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 second quarter (MUS 12200 etc.) runs from the beginning of European Romanticism around 1800 to the turn of the 21st century.

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.

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 University Chorus is the largest vocal ensemble on campus. Its season includes an annual production of Handel's Messiah as well as presentations of choral masterworks such as Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and Verdi's Messa da requiem. Among its 80 to 100 members are undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff members, and singers from the Hyde Park and University community: The result is a wonderfully diverse group of vocalists, collaborating in performances of monuments of the literature. The University Chorus presents three to four concerts per season, culminating in a festive year-end performance with the combined choirs and the University Symphony Orchestra.

As the premier undergraduate choral ensemble at the University of Chicago, the Motet Choir accepts 28-36 singers each year. Concentrating on a cappella masterworks of all periods, this polished vocal ensemble specializes in music of the Renaissance and also performs historically and culturally diverse repertoire ranging from Gregorian chant to gospel standards. The Motet Choir presents at least three major concerts per year (one each quarter) and sings at convocations and special events on campus and throughout the Chicago area. The ensemble goes on tour every second year, often during the University's spring break.

The Women's Ensemble is made up primarily of undergraduate women at the University of Chicago. We explore classical repertoire from the Medieval era up through the present day and music from polyphonic singing traditions across the world, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Republic of Georgia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Sweden, and Norway, as well as a variety of American singing traditions. Through diverse repertoire, we strive to bring our voices together in powerful ways.

The Rockefeller Chapel Choir and its professional subset, the Decani, sing at Sunday services and festivals throughout the academic year and also in Rockefeller's signature Quire & Place concert series, presenting major works from the entire historical canon, lesser-known gems, and the premières of new work by distinguished composers. The choir's members come from diverse spiritual and cultural backgrounds, sharing together the rich musical experience of singing an array of choral music in the unique religious and cultural contexts of a chapel to which students of all world traditions are drawn.

The 100-member University Symphony Orchestra presents an ambitious season of six major concerts per year (two each quarter). Known for its imaginative presentations of unusual repertoire as well as for its powerful performances of major symphonic literature, the University Symphony opens each year with a costumed Halloween concert-a family-friendly event enhanced by storytelling, dancing, and special effects-and closes with a celebratory year-end collaboration with the combined choirs. Repertoire generally encompasses 19th- and 20th-century works written for large orchestral forces, including masterpieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorák, Mahler, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and more. In recent years the USO has presented several silent films with live orchestral accompaniment, including Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and performed with acclaimed professional soloists every season. USO string sections are coached by the Pacifica Quartet. Membership is chosen on the basis of competitive auditions, and includes both undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, alumni, and some community members.

The University Chamber Orchestra is a 40-member ensemble of strings, woodwinds, and horns that specializes in Baroque, Classical, and 20th-century repertoire for smaller orchestra. The group presents three concerts per year, often pairing a major symphony by Mozart or Haydn with an overture, suite, or concerto for similar forces. The Chamber Orchestra also serves as the pit orchestra for the Music Department's annual collaboration with the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company.

The University Wind Ensemble is an auditioned group of fifty to sixty instrumentalists with a diverse range of musical interests and experience. The UWE presents one concert per quarter, after an intensive preparation period of six to seven weeks. With a focus on modern literature conceived specifically for the wind ensemble medium, the UWE provides its members with an opportunity to perform music by such renowned wind composers as Malcolm Arnold, Percy Grainger, Gustav Holst, and Frank Ticheli, as well as transcriptions of orchestral masterpieces by J. S. Bach, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, and others. Membership includes talented undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and community members who are dedicated to bringing a wide array of music to the University community.

The Early Music Ensemble is an historically oriented performance and study group led by members of the Newberry Consort. Participation in the group is open to anyone in the University community with music-reading experience; private lessons and coaching in voice and early instruments are likewise available through the Newberry Consort. Repertoire is drawn from 15th- to 17th-century sources, with special emphasis given to historically informed performance practices such as reading from original notation, improvisation, and ornamentation. The Early Music Ensemble also provides a forum for undergraduate majors and graduate students in Music who wish to explore repertories particular to their scholarly research. Collaborations with professional performers take place throughout the year, culminating in the Early Music Ensemble's year-end spring concert.

The Middle East Music Ensemble explores a variety of classical, neo-classical, and popular musical forms from throughout the Middle East, encompassing compositional and improvisational techniques unique to non-Western musical culture. Members perform on traditional instruments, often in company with noted guest artists, and present multiple concerts both on and off campus. No previous experience in the genre is required, but the ability to read music is necessary. Membership includes students, faculty, and staff of the University, as well as community members interested in the art and music of the Middle East.

The South Asian Music Ensemble explores a variety of classical, vernacular, and popular song repertories from the Indian Subcontinent, with membership open to beginners as well as to more experienced performers with a background in South Asian music. The ensemble will focus on teaching vocal techniques, stylistic features, compositional forms, improvisational practices, and performance conventions specific to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and South Asian diasporas. In addition to participating in weekly ensemble rehearsals, members will have the option of attending voice coaching sessions and/or engaging the instructor for private lessons. Membership is open to students, faculty, and staff of the University, as well as community members interested in South Asian music.

The Chamber Music Program creates opportunities for intermediate and advanced wind players, string players, and pianists to learn and perform small ensemble chamber music. Participants in the program study duo, trio, quartet, and quintet repertoire spanning the entire chamber music repertoire, and hone their collaborative skills under the guidance of the chamber music coaches. Weekly Rep Classes offer extra-curricular musical activities as well as studio and masterclass opportunities for ensembles to practice performing and learn from guest artists. Chamber Music Program ensembles receive three coachings per quarter focusing on instrumental technique, interpretation, and collaboration, with the expectation that ensembles maintain regular weekly rehearsal schedules and perform their repertoire at least once during the academic year. Performance opportunities are available at a wide variety of venues on the U of C campus and in the Hyde Park community. Additionally, CMP participants are eligible to take private lessons with the instrumental teacher of their choice, and may audition for the annual Lesson Awards and the bi-annual Concerto Competition.
 

The Piano Program is designed for intermediate and advanced undergraduate and graduate students to enhance their musical skills and experience through regular coaching opportunities, master classes, quarterly Piano Showcase concerts, and numerous other opportunities offered by the Department of Music’s Piano Program. Undergraduate and graduate student pianists interested in taking advantage of these opportunities must audition for the Piano Program in order to be included in these activities. Auditions are held at the beginning of the academic year.

The Vocal Studies Program provides opportunities for the solo singer, and supports the U of C choirs with vocal pedagogy and technique coaching. The program focuses on developing the solo classical and musical theater singer. Private lesson study is encouraged but not required. Students prepare for performances on regularly scheduled departmental concerts and in a variety of special programs on and near the Hyde Park campus. Singers may also work with instrumentalists involved in the Chamber Music Program or Piano Program, and may collaborate with graduate and undergraduate composers on new works. They are eligible to audition for the Concerto Competition hosted by U of C Orchestra, as recommended by their teacher.

Percussion Ensemble provides students with a wide background of experience the opportunity to develop practice, rehearsal, and performance techniques in a small ensemble format. Repertoire focuses on integrating many forms of percussion such as mallets, drums, world, and found instruments to familiarize students to a variety of compositional styles and processes. Percussion Ensemble presents two or more concerts per season, featuring works for solo, duo, and small ensembles.

Throughout history, music fed the machinery of war and helped to come to terms with war. We will be examining how music, as realized by military commanders 500 years ago, has the power to intimidate the enemy, to energize and coordinate combatants. In the Renaissance, composers wrote ‘battaglias’ which is program music imitating battles. We will study pieces that celebrated victories and songs of thanksgiving which were performed during peace celebrations. During the Second World War, more than ever, music became both a propaganda instrument of the Nazi Reich and of counter-cultures. We will also encounter how soldiers of the Vietnam War dealt with their traumas and how their soundtrack created the means for articulating the cultural memory of a generation.

In this course, we will actively investigate the dark and light side of music, namely, music’s role in wars, conflicts, and peace. On the dark side, we explore how music instigates or accompanies violence, music’s role in propaganda, and how music can be (ab)used to create hatred. On the light side, we investigate music as a medium of commemoration, remembrance, hope, and healing. We will be doing so through active listening at home and during class and by discussing our findings in this seminar-style course. Sound recordings will be our main historical source supplemented with weekly readings of secondary literature.

This course provides an introduction to ethnomusicology and related disciplines with an emphasis on the methods and contemporary practice of social and cultural analysis. The course reviews a broad selection of writing on non-Western, popular, vernacular, and "world-music" genres from a historical and theoretical perspective, clarifying key analytical terms (i.e., "culture," "subculture," "style," "ritual," "globalization") and methods (i.e., ethnography, semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism). In the last part of the course, students learn and develop component skills of fieldwork documentation and ethnographic writing.

This course provides an introduction to ethnomusicology and related disciplines with an emphasis on the methods and contemporary practice of social and cultural analysis. The course reviews a broad selection of writing on non-Western, popular, vernacular, and "world-music" genres from a historical and theoretical perspective, clarifying key analytical terms (i.e., "culture," "subculture," "style," "ritual," "globalization") and methods (i.e., ethnography, semiotics, psychoanalysis, Marxism). In the last part of the course, students learn and develop component skills of fieldwork documentation and ethnographic writing.

This course explores the music and sound of popular Hindi cinema from aesthetic, social, cultural, economic, historical, and political perspectives. Students will be introduced to the musical conventions and practices of the genre, and to changes in Bollywood musical style over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will watch select films with keen attention to music’s imbrication with cinematic visuality, narrative, technology, and dance, and with consideration of issues like emplacement, gender, caste, religion, capitalism, nationalism, and transnationalism. Bollywood is a cosmopolitan music, drawing from and contributing to a range of regional and international music practices; we also venture into some of those streams.

Each May since 1956 popular musicians and fans from Europe gather in a European metropolis to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), a competitive spectacle in which musicians from one nation compete against one another. Organized, funded, and broadcast by the European Broadcasting Union, the largest conglomerate of national radio and television networks in the world, the ESC is extensively participatory, creating its own communities of fans, musicians, musical producers, and ordinary citizens, who join together at all levels of society to interact with the politics and historical narratives of Europe. From the moment of heightened Cold War conflict at the birth of ESC to the refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing nationalism in the present, ESC has generated public discourse that not only reflects European and global politics, but provides a conduit for local and national citizenries to respond and shape such public discourse about gender and sexuality. The weekly work for the course draws students from across the College into the counterpoint of history and politics with aesthetics and popular culture. Each week will be divided into two parts, the first dedicated to reading and discussion of texts about European history and politics from World War II to the present, the second to interaction with music. Students will experience the ESC through close readings of individual songs and growing familiarity with individual nations with a participatory final project.

Writing about music is always an act of translation: trying to set the indescribable—sound, beyond words—into a worded space. This class will explore different tactics taken by writers across form and genre and look at how they attempt to solve the problem; we’ll also practice writing about music within different conventional forms (reference article, review) in order to test out their strengths and weaknesses ourselves. We will look to the expanded approaches to music writing offered by the internet as well as older genres, as defined in the four nodes of the course: personal, contextual/analytical, fictional, and multimodal, with the idea of communication about and with music at the center of all the writing we do. As primarily a writing class, we will build a toolbox of techniques, looking to both academic and popular forms, and will focus on developing article and essay pitches for journalism and web outlets as well as gaining a broader knowledge of the different kinds of music writing there are and ways to use them separately and in combination.

This course explores how geography shapes culture and how culture shapes geography within the context of traditional and popular musical practices from around the world. Starting from the premise that social processes, cultural practices, and different scales of geographic space are mutually interdependent, two foundational questions arise. First, how do diverse geographical knowledges mediate the interpretation and practice of different musical genres? Second, how does musical performance in the context of the political economy of music and musicians’ artistic agendas promote particular and competing spatial imaginaries? Students will interrogate terms from human geography such as space, place, local, global, and scale; assess debates surrounding these terms; and critically evaluate the power of maps to shape geographic knowledge. Through assembling this critical geographic lens, students will analyze the ways in which musical practices across different cultures converge with social processes and discourses including race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, diasporas, and technology and how a spatial imagination shapes this nexus.

This course is an advanced, project-oriented writing workshop with an emphasis on dramatic structure, storytelling through music, and the exploration of character as practical matters. Each student will propose a new, full-length musical and will work towards the creation of a first draft over the course of the quarter. In addition to presenting and workshopping new scene or song material weekly, students will study, discuss, and draw inspiration from standout examples of the genre. Students will present excerpted readings from their musicals at the end of the course. Some experience in writing for musical theater is expected.

The history of the American musical in the 20th century is paradoxical. While the genre is often denigrated as staging lyrical utopias of romance and adventure allowing audiences to escape depressing quotidian realities, many musicals did seek to engage some of the most pressing social issues of their day. In this course, we will look—and listen—closely to four differing musicals from the 20th century, studying their creative origins, while also analyzing their complex social meanings revealed through the story, music, lyrics, staging, and dance.

Over the course of the last 120 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 with 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), DeMille’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 introduces theoretical and analytical approaches to twentieth-century music. The core of the course involves learning a new theoretical apparatus—often called "set theory"—and exploring how best to apply that apparatus analytically to pieces by composers such as Schoenberg, Bartók, and Stravinsky. We also explore the relevance of the theoretical models to music outside of the high-modernist canon, including some jazz. The course provides an opportunity to confront some foundational questions regarding what it means to "theorize about music."

Black artists are often written out of the history of musical experimentalism. John Cage’s place in the canon is secure, but what of Cecil Taylor’s? Or Anthony Braxton’s? Or Matana Roberts’s? Labels like “jazz” or “free jazz” segregate these artists from white experimentalists, suggesting that their music is best understood within a narrowly racialized genre category, rather than as part of the experimental mainstream, with its assumed whiteness, institutional support, and inbuilt prestige. This course redresses this imbalance by centering the music of Black radical composers in the latter half of the twentieth century. We will study the music of a wide range of composers, including many associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), one of the most venerable musical collectives of the twentieth century, rooted right here in Chicago’s South Side. The course will tack between studies of the music’s sounds and its historical, political, and ideological contexts. We will develop critical and analytical language for engaging the often-bracing sound worlds of those composers while building out a contextual understanding of their work as at once capaciously experimental and situated in a political context of resistance.

Johann Sebastian Bach is somewhat of a cipher, one whose image and meaning has changed remarkably over the centuries. In this class, we will look at many of these shifting images of the famous Leipzig composer. Was he the pious Thomaskantor dutifully churning out his cantatas and passions or the intellectual wizard of an abstract and dying fugal art? A belated hero of German nationalism, or a universal icon of musical humanity celebrated by many as the greatest composer of all time? We will do a fair amount of readings that reflect many of these changing views of Bach. But we will also spend much of our time listening to—and studying—his music, seeing what clues he has offered to help us understand this most enigmatic of composers. While an advanced understanding of music theory is not a prerequisite for this course, it will be important that you can read music and helpful to have a foundational understanding of harmony and counterpoint.

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.

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 is a continuation of MUSI 261: Introduction to Composition, and an opportunity to go deeper into creative work. The focus will be on writing new pieces while also learning about various techniques and aesthetics, with special attention on music of the last hundred years. The new works will be performed and recorded by professional musicians, with demonstrations of instruments as well. Students are encouraged to bring their own existing interests into discussions and projects, while also incorporating newly acquired ideas and inspirations. There will also be focused attention on analysis of more recent repertoire for a variety of instrumentations and configurations, addressing new ways of thinking about harmony, melody, form, timbre, orchestration, rhythm, improvisation, notation, technology, theatricality, and concept. Students will also attend rehearsals and performances of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition and other events on campus.

This course presents an open environment for creativity and expression through composition in the electronic music studio. The course provides students with a background in the fundamentals of sound and acoustics, covers the theory and practice of digital signal processing for audio, and introduces the recording studio as a powerful compositional tool. The course culminates in a concert of original student works presented in multi-channel surround sound. Enrollment gives students access to the Electronic Music Studio in the Department of Music. No prior knowledge of electronic music is necessary.

MUSI 27200 addresses topics in music from 1600 to 1800, including opera, sacred music, the emergence of instrumental genres, the codification of tonality, and the Viennese classicism of Haydn and Mozart.

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.

The seminar guides students through the preliminary stages of selecting and refining a topic, and provides an interactive forum for presenting and discussing the early stages of research, conceptualization, and writing. The course culminates in the presentation of a paper that serves as the foundation of the honors thesis. The instructors work closely with honors project supervisors, who may be drawn from the entire music faculty.

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

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

The University Chorus is the largest vocal ensemble on campus. Its season includes an annual production of Handel's Messiah as well as presentations of choral masterworks such as Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and Verdi's Messa da requiem. Among its 80 to 100 members are undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff members, and singers from the Hyde Park and University community: The result is a wonderfully diverse group of vocalists, collaborating in performances of monuments of the literature. The University Chorus presents three to four concerts per season, culminating in a festive year-end performance with the combined choirs and the University Symphony Orchestra.

As the premier undergraduate choral ensemble at the University of Chicago, the Motet Choir accepts 28-36 singers each year. Concentrating on a cappella masterworks of all periods, this polished vocal ensemble specializes in music of the Renaissance and also performs historically and culturally diverse repertoire ranging from Gregorian chant to gospel standards. The Motet Choir presents at least three major concerts per year (one each quarter) and sings at convocations and special events on campus and throughout the Chicago area. The ensemble goes on tour every second year, often during the University's spring break.

The Women's Ensemble is made up primarily of undergraduate women at the University of Chicago. We explore classical repertoire from the Medieval era up through the present day and music from polyphonic singing traditions across the world, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Republic of Georgia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Sweden, and Norway, as well as a variety of American singing traditions. Through diverse repertoire, we strive to bring our voices together in powerful ways.

The Rockefeller Chapel Choir and its professional subset, the Decani, sing at Sunday services and festivals throughout the academic year and also in Rockefeller's signature Quire & Place concert series, presenting major works from the entire historical canon, lesser-known gems, and the premières of new work by distinguished composers. The choir's members come from diverse spiritual and cultural backgrounds, sharing together the rich musical experience of singing an array of choral music in the unique religious and cultural contexts of a chapel to which students of all world traditions are drawn.

The 100-member University Symphony Orchestra presents an ambitious season of six major concerts per year (two each quarter). Known for its imaginative presentations of unusual repertoire as well as for its powerful performances of major symphonic literature, the University Symphony opens each year with a costumed Halloween concert-a family-friendly event enhanced by storytelling, dancing, and special effects-and closes with a celebratory year-end collaboration with the combined choirs. Repertoire generally encompasses 19th- and 20th-century works written for large orchestral forces, including masterpieces by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorák, Mahler, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, and more. In recent years the USO has presented several silent films with live orchestral accompaniment, including Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and performed with acclaimed professional soloists every season. USO string sections are coached by the Pacifica Quartet. Membership is chosen on the basis of competitive auditions, and includes both undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff, alumni, and some community members.

The University Chamber Orchestra is a 40-member ensemble of strings, woodwinds, and horns that specializes in Baroque, Classical, and 20th-century repertoire for smaller orchestra. The group presents three concerts per year, often pairing a major symphony by Mozart or Haydn with an overture, suite, or concerto for similar forces. The Chamber Orchestra also serves as the pit orchestra for the Music Department's annual collaboration with the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company.

The University Wind Ensemble is an auditioned group of fifty to sixty instrumentalists with a diverse range of musical interests and experience. The UWE presents one concert per quarter, after an intensive preparation period of six to seven weeks. With a focus on modern literature conceived specifically for the wind ensemble medium, the UWE provides its members with an opportunity to perform music by such renowned wind composers as Malcolm Arnold, Percy Grainger, Gustav Holst, and Frank Ticheli, as well as transcriptions of orchestral masterpieces by J. S. Bach, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, and others. Membership includes talented undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and community members who are dedicated to bringing a wide array of music to the University community.

The Early Music Ensemble is an historically oriented performance and study group led by members of the Newberry Consort. Participation in the group is open to anyone in the University community with music-reading experience; private lessons and coaching in voice and early instruments are likewise available through the Newberry Consort. Repertoire is drawn from 15th- to 17th-century sources, with special emphasis given to historically informed performance practices such as reading from original notation, improvisation, and ornamentation. The Early Music Ensemble also provides a forum for undergraduate majors and graduate students in Music who wish to explore repertories particular to their scholarly research. Collaborations with professional performers take place throughout the year, culminating in the Early Music Ensemble's year-end spring concert.

The Middle East Music Ensemble explores a variety of classical, neo-classical, and popular musical forms from throughout the Middle East, encompassing compositional and improvisational techniques unique to non-Western musical culture. Members perform on traditional instruments, often in company with noted guest artists, and present multiple concerts both on and off campus. No previous experience in the genre is required, but the ability to read music is necessary. Membership includes students, faculty, and staff of the University, as well as community members interested in the art and music of the Middle East.

The South Asian Music Ensemble explores a variety of classical, vernacular, and popular song repertories from the Indian Subcontinent, with membership open to beginners as well as to more experienced performers with a background in South Asian music. The ensemble will focus on teaching vocal techniques, stylistic features, compositional forms, improvisational practices, and performance conventions specific to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and South Asian diasporas. In addition to participating in weekly ensemble rehearsals, members will have the option of attending voice coaching sessions and/or engaging the instructor for private lessons. Membership is open to students, faculty, and staff of the University, as well as community members interested in South Asian music.

The Chamber Music Program creates opportunities for intermediate and advanced wind players, string players, and pianists to learn and perform small ensemble chamber music. Participants in the program study duo, trio, quartet, and quintet repertoire spanning the entire chamber music repertoire, and hone their collaborative skills under the guidance of the chamber music coaches. Weekly Rep Classes offer extra-curricular musical activities as well as studio and masterclass opportunities for ensembles to practice performing and learn from guest artists. Chamber Music Program ensembles receive three coachings per quarter focusing on instrumental technique, interpretation, and collaboration, with the expectation that ensembles maintain regular weekly rehearsal schedules and perform their repertoire at least once during the academic year. Performance opportunities are available at a wide variety of venues on the U of C campus and in the Hyde Park community. Additionally, CMP participants are eligible to take private lessons with the instrumental teacher of their choice, and may audition for the annual Lesson Awards and the bi-annual Concerto Competition.

The Piano Program is designed for intermediate and advanced undergraduate and graduate students to enhance their musical skills and experience through regular coaching opportunities, master classes, quarterly Piano Showcase concerts, and numerous other opportunities offered by the Department of Music’s Piano Program. Undergraduate and graduate student pianists interested in taking advantage of these opportunities must audition for the Piano Program in order to be included in these activities. Auditions are held at the beginning of the academic year.

The Vocal Studies Program provides opportunities for the solo singer, and supports the U of C choirs with vocal pedagogy and technique coaching. The program focuses on developing the solo classical and musical theater singer. Private lesson study is encouraged but not required. Students prepare for performances on regularly scheduled departmental concerts and in a variety of special programs on and near the Hyde Park campus. Singers may also work with instrumentalists involved in the Chamber Music Program or Piano Program, and may collaborate with graduate and undergraduate composers on new works. They are eligible to audition for the Concerto Competition hosted by U of C Orchestra, as recommended by their teacher.

Percussion Ensemble provides students with a wide background of experience the opportunity to develop practice, rehearsal, and performance techniques in a small ensemble format. Repertoire focuses on integrating many forms of percussion such as mallets, drums, world, and found instruments to familiarize students to a variety of compositional styles and processes. Percussion Ensemble presents two or more concerts per season, featuring works for solo, duo, and small ensembles.

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 a continuation of Music 31100, a study of advanced techniques in tonal analysis. Much of our work will center on Schenkerian theory, but we will also place Schenkerian approaches in dialogue with other methods, including recent approaches to Formenlebre, schema theory, and neo-Riemannian theory. We will be interested in exploring the intersections (and frictions) between these diverse analytical methods, seeking at once to develop analytical fluency in each of them and to heighten our sensitivity to the methodological issues involved in a pluralist approach to tonal analysis.

The seminar will introduce students to issues and trends in the study of music since 1900. We will explore how scholars have in the last several years have studied musical practices of the 20th and 21st centuries as well as how they have determined salient repertoires, concepts, and themes for their research. Genres explored include German modernism, gospel, EDM, South African Kwaito, noise, and Tejano/Latinx pop (among others). Concepts encountered include migration-diaspora, sound recording, community formation, experimentation, nationhood, diva worship, improvisation, and mourning. We will also reflect on the ways in which scholars have blurred boundaries between musicological subfields and variously combined historiography, ethnography, performance studies, and music analysis.

This survey charts the history and development of jazz from its earliest origins to the present. Representative recordings in various styles are selected for intensive analysis and connected to other musics, currents in American and world cultures, and the contexts and processes of performance. The Chicago Jazz Archive in Regenstein Library provides primary source materials.

In this course, we gather sound and music to afford new ways to understand the history and culture of a geographical region. Instead of an area study, we concern ourselves with listening to sound worlds, local and global. We balance the reading of primary and secondary sources—the writings of travelers and practitioners alongside theoretical treatises and modern ethnomusicological scholarship—with the different listening practices, especially collections and assemblages of recorded sound and film. Each student will develop her or his own means of entering different sound worlds. Accordingly, students with varying degrees of musical background will be able to navigate the Indian Ocean World in ways suitable to their own backgrounds and interests. Students from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Divinity are welcome. Both College students and graduate students may register for the course, with the only distinction being in the scope of the final project.

This course explores the music and sound of popular Hindi cinema from aesthetic, social, cultural, economic, historical, and political perspectives. Students will be introduced to the musical conventions and practices of the genre, and to changes in Bollywood musical style over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will watch select films with keen attention to music’s imbrication with cinematic visuality, narrative, technology, and dance, and with consideration of issues like emplacement, gender, caste, religion, capitalism, nationalism, and transnationalism. Bollywood is a cosmopolitan music, drawing from and contributing to a range of regional and international music practices; we also venture into some of those streams.

The topic of this seminar varies per faculty member. This proseminar is designed to equip graduate students with methodological and epistemological tools for doing ethnographic fieldwork in expressive cultural contexts.

The composition seminar is a weekly session designed for graduate students in composition. It is an open forum for composers to listen to recent music, including their own, and to discuss issues connected with trends, esthetics, and compositional techniques. The entire composition faculty takes part in these sessions. The composition seminar often hosts well-known visiting composers whose works are performed in the city by various groups or ensembles, as well as performers specializing in new music and contemporary techniques.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

This course consists of individual weekly composition lessons.

The composition seminar is a weekly session designed for graduate students in composition. It is an open forum for composers to listen to recent music, including their own, and to discuss issues connected with trends, esthetics, and compositional techniques. The entire composition faculty takes part in these sessions. The composition seminar often hosts well-known visiting composers whose works are performed in the city by various groups or ensembles, as well as performers specializing in new music and contemporary techniques.

This course presents an open environment for creativity and expression through composition in the electronic music studio. The course provides students with a background in the fundamentals of sound and acoustics, covers the theory and practice of digital signal processing for audio, and introduces the recording studio as a powerful compositional tool. The course culminates in a concert of original student works presented in multi-channel surround sound. Enrollment gives students access to the Electronic Music Studio in the Department of Music. No prior knowledge of electronic music is necessary.

This course explores practical applications of external sensing hardware in live and interactive electronic music and interdisciplinary art creation. We will explore topics such as motion detection, gesture mapping, and machine listening in depth though readings, in-class activities, and assigned projects.

This class explores sixteenth century counterpoint through the lens of species counterpoint training as codified in the eighteenth century. Students will produce compositions and exercises for two and three voices, with a brief excursion into four voice counterpoint. The class will develop a critical ear and a mind towards good counterpoint with in-class critique and discussion. Each class will also be devoted to discussing counterpoint in repertoire from medieval to present, focusing on sixteenth century masterworks, in tandem with assignments in which students complete brief lines of missing voices in existing repertoire, comparing their own solutions with the original. We also compare and discuss famous examples of student counterpoint from Mozart, Beethoven, and others.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

In this seminar we examine and disentangle the triangulated historical and cultural spaces that form through the complex interaction of the three larger subject areas: music, colonialism, and nationalism. Colonial encounter because audible to the extreme when sound is unleashed as the language of control and resistance by the colonizer and colonized alike. Music, as the amalgam of sonic difference, opens the metaphorical and material spaces in which the struggle for power is also articulated as the aesthetic expression of sovereignty. Song sounds linguistic and geographic borderlands, transforming them into the contested boundaries of nations both in ascendancy and in decline. In the course of the seminar, we seek the ways in which music and sound articulate the counterpoint between colonialism and nationalism, yielding one of the most forceful narratives for understanding the history of the present.

We shall draw upon diverse resources and approaches throughout the seminar. We shall devote attention to specific repertories and genres that have the power to represent the colonial and national interests. In addition to reading critically important works on colonialism and nationalism, we shall also listen widely and to different types of sound material, ethnographic and commercial, classical and popular, in literature and in film. It will be our goal to bear witness to the shape of the music-colonialism-triangle in as many shapes as possible.

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).

The uncanny, the ghostly, the spectral, the dead: terms like these, often housed under the umbrella of “spectrality,” have lately haunted the borders of music history. This is especially true where its disciplinary objects—sounding music, listeners, histories, technologies--cannot easily be defined but also cannot be reduced away. They have forced music studies toward a reckoning with its past certainties, challenging its canons but also furnishing new modes of analysis and criticism for refractory sites of research.

Most particularly, spectrality has emerged prominently in considerations of race and gender. This seminar will read recent literature, musicological and non, to ask how spectrality as a conceptual paradigm mediates anxious musical relationships to race, gender, and sexuality by focusing on death and mortality, including music’s own vanished pasts. Our inquiries will engage the sonic analogues to visibility / invisibility and presence / absence paradoxes conjured by death and haunting in the forms of inaudibility / audibility and silence / noise, especially as they pertain to phonography, film, and other media. We will find that far from circumventing the realms of the material and technological, the seemingly immaterial realms of spectrality turn out to engage and perpetuate them.

This seminar will take a critical look into the role of electronics in contemporary music-making and transdisciplinary art creation. We will pay special attention to the increasing democratization of music composition, performance, and improvisation through the advent of new technology that gives people of varying musical backgrounds a heretofore unprecedented palette of sonic colors and transformative audio signal processes with which they can express themselves musically. Extensive readings, listenings, and viewings will uncover how electronics have been instrumental in facilitating cooperation across artistic and scientific disciplines, leading to works of collaborative art that foster a spirit of mutual discovery and growth, and that can challenge tradition and dogma. Furthermore, we will explore how advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning are leading to automated improvisation machines, providing an extra layer of complexity to performers who engage in improvisation, as well as a companion to those practicing the craft.

The seminar explores musical embodiments of a scriptural book, which has stood in the midst of rich theological and philosophical debates, within and between two religious universes. The seminar’s title paraphrases a major moment in the book: when God reveals himself to Job the sufferer, from the whirlwind. That was a powerful, boisterous moment. Combined with other audible articulations strewn throughout the book, it has opened itself up to a plethora of sonic imaginaries, suggested and elaborated in the course of its long durée. Inspired by the book, the seminar aims to probe the aesthetic theology of sound, noise and silence. We will study its manifestations in poetic, oratorical, pictorial, choreographic and cinematic embodiments of the book, from early times to the present day. We will focus mainly on modern expressions, which, while referring to ancient and medieval legacies, respond to contemporary plights and aporias. The figure of the suffering Job, at times the patron saint of music, will shed new light on the cultural connections among music, heresy, compassion, and consolation. Methodological considerations will be highlighted in each class, crossing disciplinary borders, periods and media.