This course explores five different areas of analysis for polyphonic music ca. 1450-1525: 1) paraphrase of plainchant; 2) word-music relations; 3) modality; 4) texture; 5) pace, variety and design. Our focus throughout the semester will be Josquin’s legendary Missa Pange Lingua. Each student will be assigned two other composers to work with. (For example Compere, Ockeghem, Busnois, Dufay, Isaac, Obrecht, Martini, Weerbecke).
Grading is based on weekly assignments and two analytical papers. Each student may choose two of the areas we are concentrating on, one for each paper. Paper 1 (paraphrase or word-music relations) is due at midterm and paper 2 (mode or texture; or one of the first two areas that you did not write on for paper 1) is due one week after the final class meeting. These papers should be based on extensive investigation of a coherent repertory, informed by recent scholarship; they are not readings of a single piece.
Music 790
Seminar History of Music
Thursdays 3:05-5:35pm
Professor Jacqueline Waeber
Representations of sound, voice and music in film
Cinema remains a privileged locus for conveying a conception of music primarily indebted to Western philosophical discourses on musical experience (through listening, or performance) in the wake of the Kantian sublime, from music’s ineffability to musical formalism. Aim of this seminar is to unveil the connections between the aural dimension of cinema and philosophies of music, language, and the voice, through a series of essential readings (notably Eisler/Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, Rudolf Arnheim, Robert Bresson…). In so doing, we also intend to pinpoint a current divide between film sound theory and “film music” scholarship by addressing the following points:
—cinematic representations of music, and the aural;
—the music-as-language trope, and film music as “semiotic fallacy”;
—storytelling and voice-over and their interrelation with music scoring.
—music and/as gender.
Music 690
Composition Seminar
Wednesdays 3:05-5:35pm
Professor Scott Lindroth
Music 555
Music in the 19th Century
Tuesdays 3:05-5:35pm
Professor Larry Todd
Orchestral Music from Haydn to Liszt
In depth study of representative symphonic works spanning the careers of Haydn through the early symphonic poems of Liszt, a period of roughly one hundred years (ca. 1759-1850s). Topics to include compositional process, orchestration, formal and tonal organization, generic identity, and extra-musical influences. Composers to include Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohnn, Fanny Hensel, Berlioz, Robert Schumann and Liszt.
Department of Music