MUS 209B: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts
STC 209 examines ‘transformations’ within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.
MUS 209A: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts
STC 209 examines ‘transformations’ within and between visuals, sound, structure and movement as art and engineering forms. The course explores generative art and design that leverages parallels and interplay between design processes in engineering and the arts. Students will learn to work as artist-engineers, and will create ambitious open-ended design projects exploring these themes. Taught by faculty from CST, COS, MUS, CEE along with visiting artists, and guest faculty from the Lewis Center for the Arts.
MUS 365: Practices and Principles of Rhythm
This class is centered on the exploration of rhythmic practices and organizational principles in a wide variety of musical contexts: West African Drumming, European Classical Music, Caribbean Traditional Music, American Pop Music, Jazz and Contemporary Experimental
Music. The course will toggle between two major components: 1 – “Hands-On” performance practice 2 – Analysis and comparison of organizational principles of rhythm in a variety of musical traditions.
MUS 338: Music in the Global Middle Ages
Moving from Baghdad to Paris, Jerusalem to Addis Ababa, Iceland to Dunhuang, this course examines the musical cultures of some of the most vibrant centers of the Middle Ages. We consider what it means to study medieval music “globally,” focusing on key moments of cultural contact (trade, pilgrimage, conflict), while remaining attuned to the particularities of specific places. Emphasis is on the physical traces of premodern music, and we encounter the distant musical past in a variety of materials and formats (paper manuscripts, papyrus fragments, parchment rolls, stone steles), meeting weekly in Special Collections.
MUS 344: The Ceremony is You
An exploration of ritual and ceremony as creative, interdisciplinary spaces imbued with intention and connected to personal and cultural histories. A broadening and deepening of knowledge around historical and contemporary ritual, ceremonial, and community-building practices of queer and trans artist communities from around the world, with a deeper focus on the extraordinary history of the queer trans shamans of early 20th century Korea.
MUS 348: Xulgaria: Music, Theatre and Contemporary Ritual Practice
This class will mount a developmental performance of the musical story-work “Xulgaria” inside an intensive ensemble setting. We will research classic Greek choruses and the Eleusinian Mystery rites and explore diaphonic singing. We will use multidisciplinary practices- theatre, experimental movement, symbol-making and more- to explore global mythologies of the “underworld” and devise performance and ritual that can provide a community container for discussing issues around mental health and healing. Performance experience is not required. All who are interested are encouraged to apply, as well as singers, instrumentalists and creatives.
MUS 329: The Composer/Performer
MUS 329 explores connections between composition and performance in group and solo contexts. Student will find his/her optimal and personal balance among concerns including but not limited to: abstract compositional technique and practical performance values; organization and spontaneity, surface and structure, strengths and obligations, material and effect, aural and visual. Class activities include analysis, study of compositional techniques, performing, improvisation, collaboration.
MUS 330: Composing for Film
Composing for Film is a hands-on, practical introduction to film scoring. The course is designed to help the students develop the skills required in a contemporary professional setting by modeling the assignments after a realistic scoring process. We will take a brief look at the rudiments of film scoring, then dive right into the main focus of the course – the electronic and compositional tools and techniques. All examples are drawn from media music from the 21st century.
MUS 308: Contemporary Music through Composition and Performance
Enrolled students will form a flexible composer/performer collective that will workshop new music being written over the course of the semester. By participating in a synergistic musical community, students will learn from each other through experimentation and collaborative refinement. In addition to exploring contemporary performance practice and composition techniques, a broad range of existing repertoire will be investigated to provide creative inspiration and analytical insight.
MUS 316: Computer and Electronic Music Composition
A composition workshop class, in the context of the modern sound studio and electronic music production. Emphasis will be on the student’s creative work, composing both electronic and electroacoustic pieces to be presented in class.
MUS 263: Arranging and Composing for Large Jazz Ensemble
In this course, we’ll explore key concepts in arranging, orchestrating, and composing for large jazz ensemble through close study of representative works by important composers and arrangers, including Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, Gil Evans, Carla Bley, and others, and develop strategies for writing idiomatically for large jazz ensembles of between 13-20 musicians. The final project is an original arrangement or composition for large ensemble, recorded by professional musicians.
MUS 264: Urban Blues and the Golden Age of Rock
A survey of American popular music in the 1920s to 1960s. We will start with the early history of three major streams of music: Country & Western, Rhythm & Blues, and Popular music. The critical year in that history was 1954, when the streams fused into a volatile mixture that detonated with the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll. From the beginning this was a story about race, politics, money, generational divides. The songs themselves will guide us on our path. And this course aims to guide our ears to a deeper understanding and appreciation of them.
MUS 306: Understanding Tonality
Music 306 will explore advanced tonal procedures from standard triadic harmony (modal and functional) to chromatic voice leading, nondiatonic scales and modes, and “playing outside.” We will study music by composers like Gesualdo, Strozzi, Chopin, Hensel, Wagner, Debussy, Clarke, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Coltrane, and Tyner. The text is my book A Geometry of Music (Oxford, 2011), supplemented by newer work extending those ideas.
MUS 259: Projects in West African Mande Drumming
A performance course in West African drumming with a focus on music from the
Manding/Mali Empire. Taught by master drummer Olivier Tarpaga, the course provides
hands-on experience on the Djansa rhythm. Students will acquire performance
experience, skills and techniques on the Djansa rhythm, and develop an appreciation for
the integrity of drumming in the daily life of West Africa.
MUS 262: Jazz History: Many Sounds, Many Voices
This course will examine the musical, historical, and cultural aspects of jazz throughout its entire history, looking at the 20th century as the breeding ground for jazz in America and beyond. During this more than one hundred year period, jazz morphed and fractured into many different styles and voices, all of which will be considered. In addition to the readings, the course will place an emphasis on listening to jazz recordings, and developing an analytical language to understand these recordings. A central goal is to understand where jazz was, is, and will be in the future, examining the musicians and the music keeping jazz alive.
MUS 235: Operatic Cultures in Dialogue: An Introduction to Sinitic and Italian Opera
What makes a beautiful voice? How does spoken and sung language relate across cultural spaces? How are musical and bodily gestures codified differently across music theatrical traditions? This course takes a deep dive into these questions through a comparative exploration of two global manifestations of opera: Italian opera and Sinitic (Chinese-language) xiqu. We will consider such topics as gender and sexuality; nationalism and identity; scenic design, gesture and choreography; transmission and global circulation. Students will have the opportunity to attend at least one performance at the Metropolitan Opera or other venues in the area.
MUS 242: Music After Modernism, 1945 to the Present
A survey of concert music from the middle of the twentieth century through the present day. During this time, Eurocentric models gave way to a dizzyingly diverse array of styles and attitudes, calling the very identity of concert music into question. Topics include high modernism; experimental explorations; noise and silence; technology; spirituality; music for film and dance; interculturalism and cultural appropriation; commodification; acoustic ecology; politics; and identity and diversity. We ask, where does concert music ‘fit’ in today’s cultural landscape? What is its nature, and where do its boundaries lie? And whose music is it?
MUS 216: Music Production: Principles and Practices
An introduction to working with digital sound, from capture (microphone techniques), through processing (Digital Audio Workstations and mixing/signal processing techniques), to reproduction (speakers/headphones). Listening and ear training for sound production will be a central theme, with the aim of improving our ability to connect control parameters with perceptual experience. Broader questions about the relationships between production tools and the creative process will also be considered. Approach will be genre-agnostic, and principles and practices should be relevant regardless of aesthetic.
MUS 221: History of Western Choral Music
A survey of vocal literature (excluding opera) from the fifteenth century to the present day. Lectures focus on representative works that illustrate historical developments in musical style, vocal texture, and text-music relationships; attention is also given to choral music’s role as an institution of social engagement, an expression of collective identity, and the societal ability to rejoice, celebrate, critique, and mourn on an impersonal level.
MUS 210: Beginning Workshop in Musical Composition
A workshop that fosters individual students’ composing within a community of peers. We’ll consider familiar musical styles, and we will open our ears as well to non-traditional instruments, collaborative and improvisatory approaches, and technological opportunities. The focus is not on music theory ‘rules’ but on each student’s musical imagination, explored through the tools available to us, individually and collectively. Group work and discussion are central. Several short “sketches” during the semester, final composition at the end of the semester.
MUS 217: The Musical – Past, Present, and Future
What is a musical and why should we care? As performers, writers, designers, theater fanatics, or simply pop culture consumers, we are touched by musicals every day. Reaching millions of people, this uniquely collaborative and expansive form continuously shapes our world. Students will explore the history of the American musical and develop tools to analyze musicals and their reception. They will investigate music theater through artist conversations, trips to see musicals, and expanding scholarship in the field. The class will culminate with visions of the future of the musical presented via student-written, collaborative mini-musicals.
MUS 106: Music Theory through Performance and Composition
A deep dive into Harmony and Modality in three speeds: fast (chorale); slower (classical, rock, instrumental baroque, romantic lieder) and slow (new modality, minimalism). We will consider these speeds of harmonic motion, and their effect on the resulting music, both theoretically and creatively through exercises and model composition. Attention will be paid to voice-leading, especially in the fastest harmonic context of chorales. The course is designed to help you develop your understanding of harmony in music, analyze existing musical works, and compose your own harmonically rooted music.
MUS 346: Performing Myth in Early Modern Europe
In early modern Europe, mythology provided the stimulus for a host of performances in theaters, palaces, and different media involving song, stone, gardens, and even water. This course will consider the performance of mythology in early modern Europe. What are the gendered implications of the myths in which women turn into plants, trees, flowers, and animals, and how were they presented in media? How is the trope of the abandoned transformed into song and painting? We’ll explore the interactions between artists, poets, and musicians and the ways in which opera – a brand new medium in the early 17th century -brought the ancient world to life.
MPP 214: Projects in Vocal Performance: Vocal Music of Les Six
Vocal instructors Barbara Rearick and Ronald Cappon invite you to explore the songs of the six composers of Post World War I France known as Les Six. These composers were part of a movement aiming to breathe new life into music quintessentially French in character, free of GermanicTeutonicism, musical Impressionism, and dry musical academicism. The course is for up to 10 singers and 3 pianists, capping at 13 and participation is based on audition.