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 226: Instrumental Music: The Concerto
An exploration of the concerto genre from its beginnings in the late 17th century to the present. The repertory will be considered in terms of musical procedures, styles, and cultural significance. The repertory studied will include familiar and unfamiliar works, including Vivaldi, Bach, the Chevalier de Saint-George, Mozart, Clara Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Price and others.
MUS 232: Music in the Renaissance
General historical survey of European Art Music in the period 1400-1600, covering such composers as Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Byrd, Palestrina, Lasso, etc.
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 245: 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 259: Projects in West African Mande Drumming
Performance course in West African drumming with focus on music from Mandé Empire (Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Senegal.) Taught by master drummer and exponent of Mogo Kele Foli drumming technique. Course provides hands-on experience on two instruments, Djembe and Dun dun. Students acquire performance experience, skills and techniques on Wassolon and Diansa, and develop appreciation for integrity of drumming in 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 that has kept jazz alive.
MUS 308: Contemporary Music through Composition and Performance
Student composers and performers create new works. We will cover a broad range of performance techniques and compositional approaches through analysis of 20th and 21st works. Focus points will include ways of approaching non-conventional notation, organizing principles based on timbre and gesture, and the role of interpretation and improvisation. Guests will visit throughout the semester to lead demonstrations on extended techniques and idiomatic writing for different families of instruments. Final concert of new works by students.
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 268: Rhythm Tap Dance Lab: Explorations in Black Embodied and Electronic Music
Enrolled students will engage with this course as workshop cast members of a new interdisciplinary piece by Princeton Arts Fellow Michael J. Love and explore methods of rhythm tap dance performance, live electronic music composition, and practice-based research on Black American music (genres such as jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, techno, and house). In-studio class meetings, structured as rehearsals, will be augmented with weekly listening, viewing, and reading assignments. There may also be opportunities for guest artists and respondents. The course will culminate in a work-in-progress showing during the final weeks of the semester.
MUS 229: Music and Language
Music and language offer unique pathways into studying the human mind. This interdisciplinary course explores the parallels and differences between music and language by investigating their functions and structures, as well as the variety found in each across the globe. We will examine how both past experiences and cognitive processes shape perception in real time. Through a variety of interdisciplinary readings, guest lecturers, and hands-on activities, the course aims to highlight current lively debates and provide students with the background and tools needed to study the relationship between music and language from multiple perspectives.
MUS 267: Musical Theater Writing II
This upper level musical theater writing course will delve into the creation of new musical works for the stage, with an emphasis on music as an essential dramatic language. In the first half of the course, students will explore the fundamentals of music composition, including song structure, melody, harmony, and vocal writing. In the second, students will create and workshop 15-minute musicals, harnessing music as a tool to tell stories, illuminate character, and express ideas with impact and resonance. The workshop will culminate in a presentation of these short musicals-in-progress.
MUS 103: Introduction to Western Music
MUS 103 is an introduction to “Western” music, involving works from around 1200 to the present. The course explains basic musical elements — rhythm, pitch, melody, harmony, form — and historically significant styles and genres of composition. The course includes lectures on the symphony, ballet, opera, and jazz.
MUS 106: Music Theory through Performance and Composition
A continuation of Music 105, with an emphasis on the harmonic and formal principles of classical music. MUS 106 casts its net wider than MUS 105, also considering the various guises of tonality and modality in Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Modern and Minimalist music.
MUS 203: The Great Conductors; the Canonic Repertory
Overview of how the great orchestral conductors not the recorded era shaped musical performance practices historically. Special attention will be paid to investigate how women and minority conductors have fared in their careers.
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. Several short projects during the semester, final composition at the end of the semester.
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 261: Introduction to Jazz Arranging, Composition and Harmony
In this course, we’ll explore the building blocks of melody, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, and form using practical examples from the jazz literature, exercises, transcriptions, presentations, 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. 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 310: Advanced Workshop in Musical Composition
A composition course for independent, self-directed composers. Most of the class will be spent working on a single piece. Students will present their work-in-progress to the class weekly or biweekly depending on enrollment. We will have a concert of final projects at the end of the semester, with all student pieces to be performed by So Percussion, the music department’s world-renowned ensemble-in-residence.
MUS 314: Computer and Electronic Music through Programming, Performance, and Composition
An introduction to the fundamentals of computer and electronic music. The music and sound programming language ChucK, developed here at Princeton, will be used in conjunction with Max/MSP, another digital audio language, to study procedural programming, digital signal processing and synthesis, networking, and human-computer interfacing.
MUS 326: Composing Like Beethoven
An exploration of Beethoven’s style through model composition and analysis. We will consider a series of idioms or “schemas” that are central to Beethoven’s style, including specific routines for handling parallel and contrary motion in the classical tradition, favorite sequences, and idioms that defy standard analysis. Students familiarize themselves by writing a series of model composition exercises, starting with small phrases and progressing to an entire sonata-form movement. We will consider how these patterns are embedded in specific Beethoven compositions. We may also explore the use of idioms in classical-style improvisation.
MUS 341: Reimagining Counterpoint
This course will explore various ways of approaching polyphonic composition. In the first half, we will learn how to balance horizontal and vertical aspects of harmony via surveying the rules and techniques associated with Renaissance counterpoint. The second half is dedicated to rethinking the musical materials that define contrapuntal languages, specifically the role of timbre, register, and tuning in the classifications of consonance and dissonance. We seek to uncover the tendencies of 21st-century counterpoint and to reinvigorate the art of linear composition.
MUS 345: Songs and Songwriting
This class will study songs and songcraft in an intense, supportive small-group setting. Songs are mysterious musical forms, inherently multidisciplinary, engaging one’s ear for language as much as for music. We will seek insights from a wide selection of music with a focus on both American vernacular forms (spirituals, folk, contemporary pop, hip hop) and unclassifiable outliers. We will establish a regular working rhythm and mutual interdependence of listening, analyzing, and creating with the ultimate goal being to write better songs.