MUS 204: Musical Instruments, Sound, Perception, and Creativity
Musical instruments reside at the intersection of varied topics: sound, perception, embodiment, music theory, social values, and more; how has their design influenced the development of music and how might they be reinvented to spur new ideas? We will explore these questions through readings, listening, analysis, labs, and composition. Specific topics include: harmony and the keyboard; tuning and temperament; preparing the piano, digital and analog. More generally, we will consider the productive tension between qualitative and quantitative understandings of musical concepts.
MUS 312: Jazz Theory through Improvisation and Composition II
This course intends to expose the student to the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic concepts of the modal jazz approach in an effort to formulate a basis for self-expression as improvisers and composers. The course includes analysis of representative works by various jazz masters and will place a strong emphasis on student projects in composition. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: 105 or instructor’s permission.
MUS 105: Music Theory through Performance and Composition
Music 105 is the first of a two-semester course on introductory music theory of Western classical music. We will study various ways a diatonic scale is used to structure melodic and harmonic directions, and further, to govern phrases and musical forms. After an in-depth review of the rudiments– scales, intervals, chords–we will proceed to examining counterpoint, harmonic function, and phrase structure. The course is designed to help you develop your understanding of music, analyze existing musical works, and compose your own.
MUS 205: Species Counterpoint
To lay the foundation for a thorough understanding of the principles of linear structure and voice-leading through the study of 16th-century counterpoint. Includes weekly composition and transcription exercises. Students will produce a 4-5 voice Mass movement as a final project, which will be presented in a public reading session.
MUS 223: The Ballet
A history of ballet from its origins in the French courts through its development into a large-scale theatrical spectacle in the 19th century and its modernist re- and de-formation. Emphasis will be placed on seminal dancers, choreographers, and composers, nationalist tradition, and socio-political context.
MUS 234: Music of the Baroque
A consideration of baroque music in early modern Europe, and its circulation across the globe through colonization and exploration. Beginning with the birth of opera and ending with the legacy of J. S. Bach, other topics include performance practices through the ages, the castrato, the reception of antiquity, the representation of gender, nationality, race, and class in theatrical music. Classes will include virtual visits from prominent scholars and performers; breakout groups; some short asynchronous lectures.
MUS 259: Projects in West African Mande Drumming
A performance course in West African drumming with a focus on music from the Mandé Empire (Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Senegal.) Taught by master drummer Olivier Tarpaga, the course provides hands-on experience on the Djembe drum. Students will acquire performance experience, skills and techniques on the Djembe Kan, and develop an appreciation for the integrity of drumming in the daily life of West Africa.
MUS 261: Introduction to Jazz Arranging, Composition and Harmony
In this course, we’ll examine how horizontal activity (melody) in multiple voices generates vertical structure (harmony), and how horizontal and vertical activity combine to yield musical architecture (form). We’ll explore the building blocks of melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and form using practical examples, exercises, transcriptions, and composition/arranging projects as a means to internalize concepts. We’ll examine representative works by important jazz composers and arrangers, and develop strategies for writing idiomatically for jazz ensembles of up to 9 musicians.
MUS 300: Junior Seminar
This course introduces students to key methodological, technical, creative, and disciplinary issues entailed in the study and making of music. Co-taught by a composer and a musicologist, the class will involve making, writing about, and analyzing music. The seminar is also intended as a space for music concentrators to convene and collaborate.
MUS 306: Understanding Tonality
In this course we will try to understand the complex phenomenon of “tonality.” We will theorize about harmony, voice leading, and scales, studying works by Gesualdo, Beethoven, Wagner, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Reich, and contemporary jazz musicians.
MUS 310: Advanced Workshop in Musical Composition
This course is aimed at nurturing the compositional interests and aspirations of the individual participants. The class will include students of different backgrounds and interests. While each student will be working on projects of their own design there will occasionally be a listening and/or reading assignment of mutual interest. Since live acoustic presentation of work is not possible at this time, incorporating self recording on instrument(s), Logic Pro (editing software), Sibelius (notation program) will be important parts of the creative process and their use as well as their products will be discussed.
MUS 103: Introduction to Music
MUS 103 is an introduction to Western art music, featuring works from around 800 to the mid-20th century. The course explains the basic elements of Western music, introducing them in the order in which they developed in history- rhythm, pitch, melody, harmony, form- and the historically significant styles and genres of composition.
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 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 228: Sound/Material/Mind
Sound is at once ephemeral in air, concrete in material, and conceptualized in the mind.
This unique quality makes sound ideal for examining the relationship of our internal
experience to physicality. In this course, students will reconsider sound as material
through projects exploring physical technologies of sound-making along with listening
and viewings of related arts and artists, readings and writings in theories of sound, new
media, and phenomenology. This class offers a hybrid experience-an engagement with
art-making and seminar, reconsidering our relationship to the body, physical material, and sound embodied in the world.
MUS 312: Jazz Theory through Improvisation and Composition II
This course intends to expose the student to the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic concepts of the modal jazz approach in an effort to formulate a basis for self-expression as improvisers and composers. The course includes analysis of representative works by various jazz masters and will place a strong emphasis on student projects in composition. Two 90-minute classes. Prerequisite: 105 or instructor’s permission.
MUS 316: Computer and Electronic Music Composition
A composition workshop class, in the context of the traditional sound studio. Emphasis will be on the student’s creative work, composing both “fixed media” works and live electronic/laptop music..
MUS 319: Composition and Improvisation
In this class we will consider a variety of strategies for combining improvisation and notated music, drawing on both contemporary concert music and jazz. We will look at the works of musicians such as Lutoslawski, Shostakovich, Coltrane, Stockhausen, and others, and will consider how technology might allow us to expand our musical possibilities (e.g. using iPads to facilitate harmonic coordination). The ultimate goal will be to imagine hybrid musics drawing on both classical and jazz traditions.
MUS 323: Studies of Orchestral Music: Orchestration and Instrumentation
An examination of the technical and expressive characteristics of the individual instruments of the orchestra and approaches to combining them. Participants will compose and arrange for guest instrumentalists (via zoom). Notation programs (such as Sibelius) will be used to approximate ensemble and orchestral arrangements with special attention given to the ways in which such notation programs can be both helpful and misleading.
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. All musical styles/genres, notated and non-notated are welcome.
MUS 331: Schematic Thought and the Musical Imagination
How did musicians like Mozart churn out a seemingly endless stream of imaginative compositions? This question drove a revolutionary rethinking of music theory in the 21st century, creating a new discipline of music studies called schema theory. With the aid of cognitive science, schema theorists ask how musicians learn the skills they need to succeed in a competitive marketplace. This class explores what schemas are and their impact on the music we create and consume. Through reading, listening, and compositional exercises, we will explore the schematic basis of two disparate musical styles: 18th-century court music and 20th-century salsa.
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, whether in person or online. Several short projects during the semester, final composition at the end of the semester.
MUS 212: Improvisation and Interpretation in African American Folk-Based Music
Whether through work songs, field hollers, spirituals, ragtime, blues, jazz, soul music, or gospel music, the African American folk music tradition is a distinct reflection of the African American experience throughout the history of America. It is the individualized approach to storytelling, the societal and cultural influences upon the artist, and the function of the music for both the artist and community that has cultivated a legacy of core musical elements, values, and performance practice that exist within these diverse styles. This course will explore these characteristics through historical inquiry and practical application.
MUS 225: Instrumental Music: The Symphony from Haydn to Stravinsky
Consideration of the symphony from the eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, in terms of musical procedures and cultural significance. Repertory studied includes symphonic voices beyond the traditional symphonic canon. The course is designed primarily for non-concentrators, and the ability to follow musical notation is helpful. The focus is on listening. Supplemental readings reinforce technical discussion and broaden historical context introduced in lectures.