Course Descriptions
20th Century American Music (MUSC 744A)
The
question of defining American music continues to be a tricky and interesting
one. Is there such a thing as American music? Can a country whose history
has from the beginning been one of immigration and cultural importation have
its own singular style? Since this country, within the context of the history
of western music, is rather young, is the project of defining an American
music better suited to the 20th century, rather than the 18th or 19th centuries?
While the question of American music is often approached from the perspective
of the history of jazz, or the history of American popular music, this class
approaches that question primarily from the perspective of concert music.
It focuses on influential orchestral, instrumental, opera, band and choral
works by American composers in this century--from Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Harris,
Hanson, Copland, and Partch to Babbitt, Reich, Adams, Tower and Zwilich. As
much as possible, however, this class also considers important trends in the
development of jazz, music theatre and film music--the music of Gershwin,
Ellington, Bernstein, Hermann and Goldsmith--and how these separate mediums
have interacted and influenced one another to create a music that can be considered
uniquely American
Mahler and His Contemporaries (MUSC 744M)
This
class looks at the life and works of the composer Gustav Mahler and the influence
his work had on the music of his contemporaries. As a composer working in
fin-de-sciecle Vienna, Mahler was himself influenced by a number of important
late romantic literary and philosophical movements. From his early flirtation
with the Pernerstorfer Circle, to his interest in the philosophies of Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche and Freud, Mahler's work reflects the influence of a number of important
artistic and literary movements in the 19th and 20th century. From a musical
standpoint, Mahler'smain compositions, his nine symphonies, are an important
extension of the German symphonic tradition defined by Beethoven. Where his
early symphonies confront the troublesome question of program versus absolute
music, the Ninth symphony and the song cycle Das Lied von der Erde especially
challenge the limits of conventional harmony and clearly anticipate the atonality
of the next generation. That other similar challenges to common practice form
and harmony were also being tried by Mahler's contemporaries Struass, Debussy
and Schoenberg will also be briefly considered. The period from 1905 to 1911
finds Mahler's final compositions in the same company as Strauss's Salome,
Debussy's La Mer, and Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie Op. 9. The final objective
for the course is to contextualize Mahler's last works within this fertile
and experimental period of music history
Russian Nationalism (MUSC 744R)
Music about Music (MUSC 744X)
Composer
have borrowed from one another virtually from the beginning of notated music.
Perotin wrote organum and clausulae based on existing chant, Renaissance composers
used pre-existing chant and secular melodies as canti firmi, or incorporated
entire four-voice motets into their polyphonic mass settings. Even well into
the Baroque era, composers such as Bach and Handel borrowed freely from their
predecessors. With the exception of the wide-spread practice of theme and
variation form, however, the practice of overt musical borrowing was less
prevalent in the Classical and romantic periods. This absence makes the profusion
of examples of borrowing and the enormous variety of borrowing techniques
that have flourished in the 20th century all the more interesting. Why have
composers in this century borrowed so frequently and so openly from the music
of the past? Is there a difference between overt and acknowledged forms of
borrow and more subtle or general allusions to a past composer or style? What
sort of attitude towards the past and what sort of attitude toward composition
in general is reflected in this practice? How is Stravinsky's method and attitude
towards borrowing different from Ravel's, Ives', Berio's or Mozart's or Josquin's?
In addition to detailed score analysis of an historical survey of literature,
this course considers past and current critical theories of influence and
composition
Film Music (MUSC 744F)
The twentieth century, and now the twenty-first, occupy the unique position of having witnessed the birth of a new art form: film. That music has from the very beginning been an essential and formative part of this new art in an often overlooked and under appreciated fact. Even before films had words, they had music. From the very beginning our understanding and interpretation of the images on the screen have been shaped by music. This course looks at the history of film and the essential and changing relationship film has had with music over its short one hundred year history. Although individual films and composers are viewed and considered, this class focuses on the aesthetic assumptions film composers have made about the marriage of images and music. It considers how the film score has changed from the compilation soundtracks of the silent period, to the conventions of the original Hollywood orchestral score, to the pop soundtracks and hit songs that began to surface in films in the 1960s and to a certain extent still dominate film music today. In addition to describing the changing aesthetic of music in film history, this class also discusses many of the practical changese in score and soundtrack production--the invention of sound film and the use of microphones. The expanding sonic resources of the film score,the use of dissonance, atonality and electronic music, are considered and is the question to what extent film music has been affected by the changes in 20th century concert hall music.
MUSC 744G Music and Gender.
How does music contribute to the construction of gender identity? How does
gender contribute to the construction of musical identity? How do both contribute
to the history of our culture? This course seeks answers to these questions
by exploring the music of the past and present through the lens of a burgeoning,
often controversial secondary literature that has emerged largely within the
past two decades. Taking this critical literature as a starting point, the
course surveys:
1) the representation of gender in music from the Middle Ages to the present,
from baroque opera to Bessie Smith, and from Beethoven to the music video;
2) the music and lives of women composers, from Hildegard of Bingen to Pauline
Oliveros and beyond;
3) gender issues in performance, from the courtesans, castrati and divas of
early modern Europe to the popular performers of twenty-first century America.
SCCC 482F. Louis XIV and the Politics of Art (Honors College "Music and Society" Series)
This course will explore a dialogue between absolutism and the arts during the reign of Louis XIV (1661-1715). Beginning with the court ballet as a site for the confluence of the arts, we will examine Louis's use of courtly entertainment as an instrument for propaganda and royal image-making. We will particularly look at the roles danced by Louis himself, and the manner in which they became part of the vocabulary of absolutist politics. We will then look at the artists behind the image, and seek to detect their practice of an artistic double entendre, subverting the royal image even as they fashion it. The second part of the course will track music, dance and art as they move from the court to public sphere. In it, we will trace the artistic expression of an underground libertine movement, beginning with the comedy-ballets of Molière and Lully (read in translation) and continuing through the spectacular entertainments of the Paris Opéra. Finally, we will study the paintings of artists such as Antoine Watteau as the utopian glorification of a free society characterized by intimate fêtes galantes and Italianate public spectacles, in opposition to the courtly fêtes associated with monarchical propaganda.
Beethoven. MUSC 744B
The course, while following a 'life and works' format, also introduces the student to questions raised by recent secondary literature. What is the mystique that places Beethoven's music at the center not only of a western, but even a world canon? Is it dependent on, or independent of his music? How was Beethoven the hero a product (or fabrication) of his (or a later) society? Beethoven the classicist? Beethoven the romantic? Beethoven the independent agent? Beethoven the mystic? Beethoven the artist? Beethoven the genius? How is Beethoven seen (and heard) by advocates of, and opponents to, the musical canon? In seeking answers to these and other questions raised by the vast Beethoven literature, the course will span not only the life and creative output of Beethoven, but the reception of Beethoven's music during his own time, and by later generations including our own.
MUSC 744. Music of Court and Town during the Reign of the Sun King.
This course seeks to position the music of the French baroque in the two settings for which most of it was created, the court of Louis XIV and public venues of Paris ('la cour et la ville,' as they were known to their contemporaries). It will begin with the early court of Louis XIV at the Louvre, focusing on the music of the court ballet as the reflection of a French absolutist identity, and move with Louis XIV and his court to Versailles in the 1680s. There it will follow the music, both sacred and secular, associated with the daily life of court, as well as the grands divertissements associated with special events. The second half of the course will trace the comedy-ballets of Lully and Molière, and the operas of Lully and Quinault, as they move fluidly between town and court, displaying a courtly identity for public consumers. It will end with the opera-ballet from André Campra to Jean-Philippe Rameau, as a genre exemplifying a new public taste associated with a changing social, aesthetic and political milieu.
MUSC 744 Baroque Opera: A Tale of Three Cities.
This course provides an intensive look at a few baroque operas, as each exemplifies the musical, social, aesthetic and political values of a specific milieu, namely, the cities of Venice, Paris and London. Beginning with an introductory look at Monteverdi's Orfeo as an example of courtly opera, we move to the public opera houses of Venice, with Monteverdi's Incoronazione di Poppea and Cavalli's Giasone. A study of Lully's Armide and Rameau's Platée introduce the Paris Opéra and its seventeenth-and eighteenth-century audiences. Finally, Handel's Giulio Cesare and Alcina serve as the starting point for a study of the cultural life of London.
MUSC 353-354 – History of Western Music
Designed for undergraduate music majors, this two-semester survey places the music of the middle ages through the present in cultural and stylistic context. The course develops informed listening skills to help students understand the changes in musical style and compositional technique over the centuries. Students also learn European history that helps them to understand the context in which composers and performers made their music. MUSC 353 covers music history from plainchant through Handel, and MUSC 354 covers C.P.E. Bach to the present.
MUSC 560 – The Renaissance
This course provides a deeper look at music created between 1430 and 1600. Beginning with John Dunstable, the course examines composers and their works, the social institutions that supported music composition, and the historical movements that influenced composers and their lives. Special attention is paid to the effects that historical developments like the printing press, the Reformation, or the rise of amateur music makers had on the musical Renaissance.
MUSC 744P - Performance Practice in Early Music
As early music becomes increasingly popular, musicians are more and more likely to be called upon to perform works written before 1750. Many of the styles of performance and of reading music from that time are unfamiliar to modern performers, who lack the training to make the deviations from the notated music that are necessary for correct and artistic performances of early music. This course will explore problems with performing early music, early ancestors of modern instruments, and the historical research that sheds light on lost musical practices. Students will study, listen to, and perform early music over the course of the semester to come to a better understanding of music from before 1750.
MUSC 744L – Orlando di Lasso
Orlando di Lasso was respected in his day as one of the greatest composers in Europe. His cosmopolitan style combined techniques learned in Italy’s musical centers with the Franco-Flemish tradition in which he was trained, to which Lasso added the flavor of the Bavarian court where he served. His compositions run the gamut of late Renaissance style: motets, Masses, and Magnificats, as well secular works in German, French, and Italian. Lasso’s music provides a view of the compositional techniques of the late sixteenth century. His Masses and Magnificats incorporate elements of cantus firmus technique, imitation (or "parody"), and free composition. Lasso’s concern for modal ordering in his printed collection helps us to understand the meaning of mode for composers at the time.
Student participation for this course will include performance of Lasso’s music, sight-reading from original notation in prints and manuscripts, the creation of a motet edition based on original sources, and a final paper.
MUSC 744D - "Dangerous Music": Musical Ethos, Propaganda, and Censorship
Boethius asserted that by changing the mode of a piece of music, one could prevent a listener from committing a crime of passion. During the Reformation, the Jesuits worried that Luther’s music would bring more souls to their destruction than all his books and sermons combined. British authorities in the 1930s banned American crooners from the BBC as a threat to national morale, while German leaders forbade the "degenerate music" of composers like Kurt Weill, Hans Eisler, and Arnold Schoenberg. Shostakovich learned to work within a repressive system, and (cynically?) produced his Fifth Symphony as "a response to just criticism." This course will examine historical perceptions of music as dangerous and how it has been used as a tool to persuade and to control.
SCCC 367J – Music as Propaganda
Throughout history, authority figures have made use of the power of music to influence people’s ideas and behavior. Pythagoras described how he used music to prevent crime in ancient Greece, for example, and Aristotle worried that the wrong type of music would make a listener into the wrong type of person. Their ideas were embraced in the middle ages and the Renaissance. In the sixteenth century, religious reformers made music a focal point, and carefully controlled the use of song in churches and schools. Closer to our own time and place, plantation owners often banned the songs of the African-American slaves, fearing the music would provoke rebellion. And in our own century, music has functioned as political propaganda and inspired censorship on many levels.
This class will examine the power of music to influence ideas by looking at specific historical instances where authorities have embraced song as propaganda, or censored it as a danger to society. The semester will begin with ancient and medieval examples, eventually progressing into more recent times. We will deal with issues of censorship during the Second World War and the Cold War, the fears surrounding the rise of rock music, advertising as musical propaganda, and the continued anxiety about the music of the young, including rock, rap, and hip-hop. The course will also address issues of class and popular culture, and how they affect perceptions of "dangerous" music.
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