MUS 545: Contexts of Composition: Musical Instruments, Sound, Perception, and Creativity
Through a series of hands-on labs, we look at a range of topics relevant to how we make and conceive of music, including pitch perception, instrument design, log/linear relationships, spectral analysis, synthesis, resonance, physical modeling, and more.
MUS 548: Creative Practice in Cultural Perspective: Cultivating a Humane Arts Practice
The creative arts are often idealized for their virtue and transcendence, for their ability to enrich and inspire us. However, the canon we still study was made possible by various forms of dominance, including racism, misogyny, and imperialism, and even now, artists experience bias and exclusion in our professional community. We cultivate creative thinking about a more just and sustainable arts world, as we live through the pandemic and imagine what lies ahead. Cultivating community within the seminar, we ask, what would a truly humane arts practice look like? Can we even imagine it?
MUS 513: Topics in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Music: Abstraction
This semester explores the origins and exploitation of the concept of abstraction in music from circa 1910. There is some discussion of the articulation of the term in the visual arts (Kandinsky, Klee), but the seminar centers on the syntax of the modern, late modern, and after modern periods in 20th century music history. Repertoire discussed includes Schoenberg, Babbitt, and Feldman, and both ‘dissonant’ and ‘consonant’ abstraction.
MUS 524: Collisions
This seminar examines the role of key controversies and debates within music studies over the past few decades. What leads to scholarly confrontation, and what comes out of it? How do bouts of discord shape the field? What makes some scholarly clashes more productive than others? What does the field look like when mapped around its points of highest contention? Readings trace key debates up to their moments of conflagration and out to their eventual consequences. We also consider what might be worth fighting about now and in the future.
MUS 525: Topics in Music from 1400 to 1600: Polyphonic Mass Composition in Europe,1440-1540
Chronological survey of the changing styles of Mass composition in the period 1450-1550,
beginning with the anonymous English Missa Caput and Petrus de Domarto’s Missa Spiritus
almus, and concluding with the Missa Ecce quam bonum by Jacobus Clemens non Papa.
Focus is almost entirely on scores.
MUS 527: Seminar in Musicology
Seminar in musicology consists of two distinct six-week modules, one focusing on Music and Digital Culture (with guest speakers) and a second focusing on Francesco Cavalli’s opera La Calisto (1652), considering as well the virtual production being produced this semester by MUS 219 (taught by Wendy Heller). Both units will be continued in the spring semester in MUS 528.
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 534: Ends and Means: Issues in Composition
Our focus is on writing new works for percussion quartet, with a level and depth of engagement which resembles So’s process of commissioning major new works. The spring course challenges composers to consider aspects of percussion writing which are peculiar to percussion chamber music, as well as writing etudes for instruments they are less likely to be familiar with such as steel drums. After the semester course, S works individually with each composer to workshop and premiere a new 8-12′ long work for percussion quartet.
MUS 545: Contexts of Composition: Composing concertos: the individual and the group
This seminar is a follow up to composing for Orchestra and covers some of the same issues of writing for a large conducted ensemble, but now that ensemble shares the stage with a soloist or small group of soloists and the focus is on the relationships between and among the many and the few.
MUS 514: Topics in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Music: The Ballets Russes and Ballets Súedois
Examination of works produced by Ballets Russes and Ballets Suédois, with emphasis on dialogue between music and dance in these works, the rivalry between the two companies between 1920 and 1925 (the years the Ballets Suédois operated), and their general contribution to French modernism. Discussions address canonic ballets and their transformations, “deceased” ballets and the potential for reviving them, and “living” ballets (those that have stayed more or less intact since their premieres. History has treated the Ballets Russes repertoire better than that of the Ballets Suédois: Petrushka is accessible as a ballet; La Boîte à Joujoux is not.
MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: Digital Culture; Early Modern Women and Song
A continuation of MUS 527, this seminar is divided into two modules. The first, taught by Global Scholar Georgina Born (Oxford University) focuses on anthropological and sociological aspects of digital technology; the second module, taught by Wendy Heller, focuses on the composer Barbara Strozzi in the context of seventeenth-century Venice.
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 534: Ends and Means: Issues in Composition
The seminar includes the following topics: classical piano literature; mechanics and physics of the piano; the precursors of the piano; tuning; the pianists; fingerings, phrasing, and pedals; prepared piano; notation; digital piano and bitKlavier; and contemporary piano literature. We rethink the instrument as a source of vast potential rather than a symbol of obsolescence.
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: Process and Intuition
We consider the interaction between compositional intuition and the use of processes, systems and mechanisms, combining analysis, theory, and composition.
MUS 510: Extramural Research Internship
MUS510 is for students in the department who wish to gain experience of central importance to their area of study by working outside of the University capacity. For composition students, this might include working with theater companies, dance troupes, or other relevant organizations. For musicology students this might include archival research or performance. Course objectives and content are determined by student’s adviser in consultation with the external institution. Students submit monthly progress reports including goals and progress to date, and any evaluations received from host institution or published reviews of the final product.
MUS 512: Topics in Medieval Music: Guillaume de Machaut and the Ars Nova
The Ars Nova of the early 14th c. is a heavily contested in musical scholarship. Among pressing questions are: (1) the almost complete disappearance of musical sources in 1310-1350; (2) the connection between Ars Nova and Ars Antiqua: continuity or rupture? (3) the mysterious figure of Jacobus of Liège, (4) the date of his treatise Speculum musicae, (5) the meaning of the Papal bull Docta sanctorum, (6) the emergence of counterpoint. In the midst of all this, (7) Machaut steps forward, around 1350, with a substantial musical repertoire in a fully-developed new style. Nothing here makes sense. Or does it?
MUS 510: Extramural Research Internship
MUS510 is for students in the department who wish to gain experience of central importance to their area of study by working outside of the University capacity. For composition students, this might include working with theater companies, dance troupes, or other relevant organizations. For musicology students this might include archival research or performance. Course objectives and content are determined by student’s adviser in consultation with the external institution. Students submit monthly progress reports including goals and progress to date, and any evaluations received from host institution or published reviews of the final product.
MUS 513: Topics in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Music: Shostakovich and His World
Analysis of the music, career, and cultural context of Dmitri Shostakovich, the leading Soviet composer and the musician most associated with the Stalinist era. The seminar considers the range of influences on his early style, his political misfortunes in the 1930s and 1940s, his pivot from theatrical composition to symphonies and string quartets, the literary sources of his songs, and the challenges of interpreting post-tonal music.
MUS 527: Seminar in Musicology
An Introduction to Ethnomusicology: This seminar introduces participants to the academic study of ethnomusicology by considering and evaluating the last decade of Alan P. Merriam Prize winners.
MUS 528: Seminar in Musicology: Professional Development
This seminar explores the professional context of work in music studies.
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 534: Ends and Means: Issues in Composition
This seminar focuses on composing for the electric guitar in general and more specifically for the Dither guitar quartet. Dither makes several visits during the course of the term to rehearse sketches and ultimately perform finished works.
MUS 548: Creative Practice in Cultural Perspective: Crossing Cultural Boundaries in the Arts
Appreciation or appropriation? Admiration or exploitation? Does the artist have the necessary expertise? Did they ask permission? This seminar considers questions raised by the crossing of artistic-cultural borders. We consider examples not only of music, but also of music video, opera, fiction, film, and television¿all taking into account participants¿ own interests and concerns. Pushing beyond familiar colloquial ¿scripts,¿ such as the assertion that respectful intentions negate power imbalances, we explore questions of identity, ownership, representation, and authenticity.