Global Arc

A study of the integration of music, language, and drama through close reading of the seven completed operas of Mozart's maturity. One three-hour class-seminar. Prerequisite: one year of music theory or instructor's permission.

A survey of Beethoven's works, touching in addition upon his life, the music of his contemporaries, and his influence upon later composers. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: a year of theory (105/106) or instructor's permission.

An introduction to Richard Wagner's operas, to Wagner as a revolutionary presence in 19th-century musical and aesthetic thought, to Wagner's theoretical and polemical prose writings, and contemporary writings about him. Three hours. Prerequisite: a year of theory or instructor's permission. Ability to read German helpful but not necessary.

A detailed survey of Russian national and international composers. Topics of discussion and analysis will include magic opera, realism, orientalism, the relationship between composers and poets of the Russian Symbolist era, the World of Art movement and the Ballets Russes, Soviet film music, Soviet arts doctrine, and musical aesthetics (especially as they pertain to authorship and identity). Prerequisites: 105 or permission of instructor. Two 90-minute classes.

This course will help students to develop new approaches as an improviser via transcribing solos of various jazz icons and analyzing their melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic content. We will also implement analytical tools from modern classical music (not typical used in jazz) and discuss how these techniques can be reverse-engineered to create fresh ideas and new modalities in how we organize improvisational scenarios.

We will study Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas with a special emphasis on the later ones. The class is centered on theoretical analysis that requires an advanced knowledge of tonal syntax.

Songs and Songwriting will offer undergraduates the opportunity to study songs and songcraft in an intense, supportive small-group workshop. Songs are mysterious musical forms. They can be as simple as nursery rhymes or as complicated as miniature symphonies. They are inherently multidisciplinary, engaging one's ear for language as much as for music. They demand a knack for melody as well as an architectural sense of form and proportion. They rely on timeworn formulas and cliches, but there is no blueprint for writing them; a great song always catches you off guard.

This course presents a cross-disciplinary and multi-modal approach to African music, dance, and culture. Co-taught by a master drummer and choreographer (Tarpaga) and an ethnomusicologist (Steingo), students will explore African and African diasporic performance arts through readings, discussions, listening, film analysis, music performance, and composition.

Composers and film-makers explore the role of music within Film and moving image work. A look at historic examples, scoring styles and techniques, and the choices that directors and composers make, focusing particularly on films from the silent era, films without dialogue, documentaries, experimental (animation) films and finally narrative films. Composers will be encouraged to respond creatively by composing the score for a short film, or composing one to three cues (around five minutes of music) to a given score. Non-composers will be encouraged to write about a music cue or score that they find especially interesting.

An introduction to the varieties of musical experience in 19th-century America through the Civil War, paying particular attention to popular music, classical music, hymns, and African American traditions. The course will relate these experiences to contemporaneous literature, painting, sociocultural, political, and racial conditions. Two 90-minute classes.