Graduate Courses
Archives of previous course offerings
Fall 2008
MUSIC 223: MUSIC RENAISSANCE
The Motet in the Late Renaissance
Kerry McCarthy. W 4:25-6:55PM, Biddle 069
This seminar is dedicated to motets from the post-Josquin generation through the beginnings of the seconda prattica. We will study the sixteenth-century motet in light of contemporary influences: new ideals of text-setting, the continuing evolution of musical language, the rise of music printing, and the sharpening of ideological conflicts. We will look at a wide variety of music, along with relevant primary and secondary sources. Topics for study include compositional process, definitions of genre, ritual and social function, national and international styles, interplay between the Latin motet and vernacular music, and questions of performance practice. Students are encouraged to make their own reseach interests a part of the class.
MUSIC 226: Nineteenth-Century Women Composers
Larry Todd. M 4:25-6:55PM, Biddle 069
A proseminar devoted to nineteenth-century women composers, including but not necessarily limited to Louise Reichardt, Fanny Hensel, Josephine Lang, Clara Schumann, Louise Farrenc, Cecile Chaminade, and Amy Beach. Students will be encouraged to explore representative examples of smaller and larger forms--e.g., songs and piano character pieces, chamber, orchestra and choral works--and to consider the contexts in which this music was composed, performed, and received.
MUSIC 227: An Introduction to Jazz Scholarship
Thomas Brothers. T 4:25-6:55PM, Biddle 069
In this class we will read in a variety of areas of recent jazz scholarship, from early jazz in New Orleans thorugh the Civil Rights era. We will also work collectively on a transcription project. Grade based on weekly assignments, class participation, transcription project, and term paper.
MUSIC 228: Collegium Musicum
Tom Moore. M 7:15-10:00PM, Biddle 101
The Duke Collegium Musicum is an organization of undergraduate and graduate students and other interested members of the Duke community devoted to the performance of music for small groups of voices and/or instruments. Its repertory includes (but is not limited to) Gregorian chant, Renaissance motets and madrigals, and Baroque sonatas and cantatas. The Collegium is open to all members of the Duke community with an interest in performing music that is both unusual and exciting. The ability to read music is necessary, and the Music Department owns a number of period instruments (from gambas to sackbuts) that can be made available to qualified participants.
MUSIC 295S: Music for Large Ensembles
Scott Lindroth. Th 4:25PM-5:40PM, Biddle 069
This course is for graduate students and will focus on analysis of instrumentation in contemporary orchestra and chamber ensemble repertory. We will establish a point of reference through the study of selected eighteenth- and nineteenth-century orchestral works before moving on to works by Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ligeti, Andriessen, Adams, Lutoslawski, Torke, and others. Topics include comparison of orchestration in Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven; Brahms and Mahler; Stravinsky and Debussy, including a comparison of the original and revised versions of Stravinsky's ballets; a study of orchestral transcriptions of piano music; and instrumentation in recent compositions. We will consider modernist notions of structural orchestration, the unity of composition and orchestration, and the role of timbre as an independent musical entity subject to transformation and development. In addition, students will prepare orchestration assignments to be read by the Duke Wind Symphony and the Duke Symphony Orchestra. Visiting instrumentalists will discuss idiomatic writing on their instruments as well as read short orchestration or composition projects by students in class.