MUS 561: Music Cognition Lab
Under the direction of a faculty member, and in collaboration with an interdisciplinary group of students, visitors, and postdocs, the student carries out a one-semester research project chosen jointly by the student and the faculty. Open to any graduate student in Music, this course provides a hands-on opportunity to learn the tools, skills, methods, and perspectives of music cognition research.
MUS 545: Contexts of Composition: Performing Electronic Music
Strategies for performing electronic music live. We go through different technical and philosophic approaches to performing electronic music and walk through different scenarios such as playing through a small PA stereo vs multichannel performances.
MUS 542: Instrumentation and Performance
Collaborations with varied ensembles and performers from around the world and here at Princeton, presented in concert on the Princeton Sound Kitchen concert series.
MUS 534: Ends and Means: Issues in Composition
This seminar explores the historical and current repertoire for string quartet, accumulates a set of best practices, and applies them to regular sketching assignments to be read by a visiting string quartet. The culmination is a concert in the following semester made of string quartet music produced by the members of the class.
MUS 532: Composition
Emphasis is placed upon the individual student’s original work and upon the study and discussion of pieces pertinent to that work.
MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: What Makes Music Good? Aesthetics, Value, and Taste
This seminar considers various arguments for what constitutes good music. Emphasis is placed on modern aesthetic theory and its legacies, elaborations, and critiques.
MUS 525: Topics in Music from 1400 to 1600: Changing Styles in Sacred Music, 1420-1560
A hands-on encounter with sacred music of the Renaissance, covering the 160-year period 1400-1560. In the Renaissance, the word “music” was synonymous with counterpoint. What wasn’t counterpoint was either Gregorian chant or else a confused din of sounds. Like the word “language” can be synonymous with English in remote parts of the world, and other tongues sound like mere grunting. But within the English language, and within the art of counterpoint, there are vast worlds of meaning and expression to explore. We will be travelling a journey that leads us past some of the most glorious music in history.
MUS 521: Topics in Global Music Theory
What is “global” about global music theory? What does this subfield promise for the wider discipline of music studies, for the traditions making up the global musicscape, and for the people behind those musics? This course examines the key questions, methods, and stakes of global music theory through the lens of recent scholarly discourse, with coverage on topics including translation practices, music theory pedagogy, and the perennial debate between universality and cultural relativism. To contextualize the emergence of this subfield, we also discuss relevant literature in world music analysis and comparative musicology.
MUS 501: Musicology as a Profession
This seminar seeks to enhance and refine the skills required for the successful preparation of the general examination in musicology and the oral defense. The seminar also takes up, in hands-on fashion, archival research methods, digital research (including AI tools), interview methods, the writing of the dissertation prospectus, grant applications, conference abstracts and proposals, articles, reviews, and the broader publication process. The seminar is interactive, based on weekly assignments that address both the requirements of Princeton’s graduate program and the challenges of the entire profession.
MUS 560: Music Cognition Lab
Under the direction of a faculty member, and in collaboration with an interdisciplinary group of students, visitors, and postdocs, the student carries out a one-semester research project chosen jointly by the student and the faculty. Open to any graduate student in Music, this course provides a hands-on opportunity to learn the tools, skills, methods, and perspectives of music cognition research.
MUS 541: Seminar in Music Composition
Composing for improvisers. In this class we explore composing open-form pieces for both skilled and unskilled improvisers. The class is mostly practical, with regular composition exercises, leading to a concert in the spring. We also study existing compositions that make effective use of improvisation.
MUS 545: Contexts of Composition: Idiosyncratic Instruments
A forum for exploring instrument design and the development of instruments for specific composition or music-making contexts. An Idiosyncratic Instrument might be a prepared conventional instrument, a Max for Live Ableton device, a sensor-based dance interface, an instrument in just-intonation scordatura, a modular synthesizer patch, and so on. We look at a range of examples and relevant readings/music. While we won’t be directly teaching programming in the seminar, composers interested in fulfilling their language requirement with a programming language could find this a good context for building a project to do so.
MUS 534: Ends and Means: Issues in Composition
This seminar is taught in collaboration with SO Percussion Princeton University’s Ensemble in Residence. Participants are asked to explore various approaches to composing for percussion in a series of exercises that are read by SO and discussed by the entire seminar. As the semester draws to a close participants begin work on original compositions which are performed by SO later in the Spring term.
MUS 531: Composition
Emphasis is placed upon the individual student’s original work and upon the study and discussion of pieces pertinent to that work.
MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: History of Music Listening in the West
A sampling of views from the history of music listening: Appreciation of music requires understanding. The sweetness of musical sound is incomprehensible. Musical sound is mere vibration of air. Musical sound has mind-altering powers; it is unsafe without edifying text. Music, when freed from text, can reach transcendence. Without text, music is agreeable at best. Music has meaning. Music depicts. Music expresses. Music dies with the final chord, and is a reminder of death. Musical sound carries life-giving spirit; it animates. How do we make historical and philosophical sense of all this? That will be the challenge we face in this seminar.
MUS 527: Seminar in Musicology: Animal Music
This seminar considers various responses to the question: Do animals make music? We approach the question in an interdisciplinary manner, and from three broad perspectives: from the perspective of composers, from the perspective of the history of science, and from the vantage of contemporary animal behavior science. The seminar aims to give participants a solid, if not exactly comprehensive, view of the field. We examine composers such as Messiaen, Respighi, Pamela Z, and David Dunn, and the writings of ornithologists and cetologists past and present.
MUS 520: Topics in Music from 1600 to 1800: Women and Music in Seicento Venice: Barbara Strozzi
The seminar focuses on the seventeenth-century composer and Barbara Strozzi, whose eight published volumes of music fully exploit the expressive potential of mid-seventeenth century music. The adopted (and perhaps illegitimate) daughter of Giulio Strozzi, Barbara was renowned as a singer for her performances in Venetian academic circles associated with her father. MUS 520 explores Strozzi’s music and life in early modern Venice; her relationship to other composers and “exceptional” female artists; early modern academies and contemporary views about gender and sexuality; performance practice and editing.
MUS 561: Music Cognition Lab
Under the direction of a faculty member, and in collaboration with an interdisciplinary group of students, visitors, and postdocs, the student carries out a one-semester research project chosen jointly by the student and the faculty. Open to any graduate student in Music, this course provides a hands-on opportunity to learn the tools, skills, methods, and perspectives of music cognition research.
MUS 537: Points of Focus in 20th-Century Music
Seminar on extended just intonation and various nonstandard temperaments. We will review the necessary mathematics involved in interval calculations and cent-ratio conversion. Two notational systems will be introduced: Ben Johnston and HEJI (Extended Helmholtz-Ellis Just Intonation). We will learn how to set up microtonal notation/playback system in Dorico and compose music inspired by our expanded awareness of pitch resources. We will investigate limits of precision that can be expected in performance. In addition to composition and ear-training, we will also conduct in-depth analyses.
MUS 542: Instrumentation and Performance
Collaborations with varied ensembles and performers from around the world and here at Princeton, presented in concert on the Princeton Sound Kitchen concert series.
MUS 545: Contexts of Composition: Composing Fast
In this class we think about what it means to develop a musical style: the techniques and habits that make us who we are. To force us to think about this issue, we try the experiment of composing very, very quickly — in real time or close to it. We also study a few examples of earlier composers who developed distinctive musical styles.
MUS 534: Ends and Means: Issues in Composition
Seminar examines music as a response to culture. We analyze music from around the world that stands as guides for the social and political ethos of their time, and examines the methodologies that contributed to their becoming iconic echo-locators of history. From West-African Highlife and American protest songs, to folkloric music of Haiti and Brazilian Tropicália, we examine the crossroads of musical form, function and identity. We analyze music-making through an inclusive lens of sonic ecology, and compose music that is explicitly reflective of our time. Course serves as a forum for discussion, collaboration, and discovery.
MUS 532: Composition
Emphasis is placed upon the individual student’s original work and upon the study and discussion of pieces pertinent to that work.
MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: Introduction to Textual Criticism
Introduction to textual criticism, as method and as theory. The focus is not primarily on the reconstruction of Urtexts, but rather on the workings of textual culture at different times and different places. The conventional stemmatic approach seems to work well for Renaissance polyphony. Yet it breaks down in the transmission of, for example, organum purum, Vitry’s Ars nova, Docta sanctorum, and the work of editors in printing houses. This invites critical reflection on issues like authorial revision, units of transmission, orality, corruption and contamination, editorial change, standards of scribal professionalism, and so on.