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Fall semester 2009
Note: The Faculty Council on Graduate Studies has ruled that all
Musicology courses at the 500 level or above, except MUSICOL 503 and
509, will count towards the coursework alternative to the Music History
Preliminary Examination. Your department may have particular
requirements for Musicology courses. Check with your advisor.
Special Course: Western Music, 1850-1900 (MUSICOL 405/505), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiley
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 505.
This course investigates the state of the opera and orchestral music in the period, together with
selected additional genres and post-romanticism. Among the operas considered are Wagner’s Die
Walküre, Verdi’s Aïda, Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, and Tchaikovsky’s Evgenii Onegin; among
the orchestral works, symphonies by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler. Grading factors: two
midterm examinations and a final (MUSICOL 405); students who elect MUSICOL 505 will be
expected to write an analytical paper on a substantial piece composed in this period, locating its
structure and style in relation to norms of the period. Students are encouraged, in consultation
with the instructor, to choose their paper topics early. Prerequisites are an undergraduate music
history and music theory survey.
Special Course: The Classical String Quartet (MUSICOL 406/506), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Whiting
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 506.
The course surveys the development of a genre that helped to define the so-called classical era as
a music-historical epoch. While due attention will be given to the relevant historical and social
contexts, the chief matter of the course will be music produced in and around Vienna, by Haydn
(from Op. 17 on), Mozart, and Beethoven (through Op. 74, a quartet composed in the year of
Haydn's death). Our analytical frameworks will range from Ratner and Rosen to Caplin and
Hepokoski/Darcy. Three analytical papers will be assigned (two for undergraduates), plus a final
examination. In-class performance will be encouraged. Undergraduates who enroll in this course
should have completed the core musicology and theory sequences.
Special Course: Music of Tchaikovsky (MUSICOL 407/507), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiley
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 507.
This course examines the life and principal works of Pyotr Il’ich Tchaikovsky. The biographical
component will bring forward new insights into the composer’s life based on recent and ongoing
research in Russia, after establishing a context for the challenge of being a composer in Russia in
the 1860s and 1870s. A selection of major compositions will be discussed in class, including but
not limited to the operas Evgenii Onegin and The Queen of Spades, other theatre works, a
number of symphonies, chamber pieces (First Quartet, Sextet ‘Souvenir of Florence’), and other
works. Students electing MUSICOL 507 will write a substantial paper on a composition by
Tchaikovsky not studied in lecture, placing it in the context of his milieu and his other works. Other grading factors will be examinations—one (possibly two) midterms and a final.
Special Course: Music of Motown (MUSICOL 408.001/508.001), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Clague
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 508.001.
This course celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Berry Gordy, Jr.’s Motown Records with a
survey of the people, artists, and songs that helped transform American popular music in the
1960s, bringing African American sounds into the pop mainstream. We will review Gordy’s
business strategies and explore both chart topping hits and lesser-known gems coming out of the “snakepit”—Motown’s West Grand Boulevard recording studio built in a converted garage. We
will study groups ranging from the Satintones to the Jackson 5 and artists from Barrett Strong to
Marvin Gaye. Along the way you’ll hear a bunch of great music and examine how Motown
grappled with and contributed to the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, we’ll examine the decline
of Motown following its turn to Hollywood film (Lady Sings the Blues, The Wiz, etc.) and
departure from Detroit. Coursework includes tune diagrams, exams, and a research paper;
activities include a visit to Motown’s “Hitsville” studio in Detroit and guest speakers who
worked at Motown. Readings will include the autobiographies of Motown artists as well as
general histories of the label. Join the class and find out “What’s Goin’ On” with Motown!
Special Course: Film Music (MUSICOL 408.002/508.002), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wierzbicki
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 508.002.
This course is an introductory survey of the history and aesthetics of film music as exemplified
in Hollywood and European productions from the late 1890s to the present day. Topics for
discussion will include—but will not be limited to—the dramatic function of music as an
element of cinematic diegesis and as non-diegetic underscore, the codification of musical
iconography in the standard cinematic genres, the symbolic use of pre-existing music in film
scores, and the evolving musical styles of Hollywood composers. Special attention will be
focused on the scores of Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, David Raksin, and
Dmitri Tiomkin and on the use of music in the films of such directors as Alfred Hitchcock,
Stanley Kubrick, and Terrence Malick. In addition to lecture material, class sessions will involve
the viewing and discussion of numerous film clips. Assignments will include readings, brief
reports on the music in specified films viewed outside of class, and a final paper (2,000 words
minimum) on the role of music in an instructor-approved film of the student's choice.
History of the Symphony (MUSICOL 411/511), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Geary
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 511.
This course traces the history of the symphony from its origins in the first half of the eighteenth
century up to the present. Highlighting significant developments in the genre over time, we will
consider works by, among others, Sammartini, Beethoven, Berlioz, Mahler, and several
twentieth-century composers. We will also explore the many social and cultural forces that
helped to shape this most familiar of orchestral forms. Topics to be addressed include the
changing nature of the listening audience, the formation of a canon in Western music, the
emergence of a musical infrastructure capable of supporting civic and municipal orchestras, and
shifting aesthetic values during the time period in question. Assignments will involve listening
and score analysis, supplemented by readings on reserve or in a course packet. Grading will be
based on class participation, a research paper to be completed in consultation with the instructor,
and both a midterm and final exam. Undergraduates who enroll in this course should have
completed the core musicology and theory sequences.
History of Jazz (MUSICOL 417/517), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Garrett
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 517.
This course surveys the historical growth and development of the various kinds of music that
have been called "jazz" in the United States. Structured as a chronological overview, the course
places the musical conventions, significant performers, and key aesthetic shifts of jazz in
cultural, technological, and social context. Students will learn not only to identify the differences
between a wide range of jazz styles but also to analyze and interpret the meanings of these
differences. In the process, the course aims to help students build skills for listening to, describing, analyzing, and writing about jazz. Assignments involve reading, listening, brief
written assignments, two papers, and two exams.
Music in the Twentieth Century (MUSICOL 423/523), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Fulcher
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 523.
This course traces the evolution of “modernist” music form the late nineteenth through the
twentieth centuries. It begins by examining the question of modernism in music, and then
considers when and how it emerged in both Europe and the Unites States, studying selected
movements, composers, and works in detail. It concludes with a consideration of the question of
“post-modernism” in music, as well as of other current directions and their relation to earlier
tendencies in twentieth-century music. The course includes lectures, reading, and discussion, as
well as a mid-term and a final exam, consisting of both essay and listening portions.
Music and Language (MUSICOL 426/526), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Lam
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 526.
This course examines the relationships between music and language, broadly defined. It will be
divided into two parts. The first reads representative studies on the topic; the second examines
specific issues through a repertory of musical compositions selected from Asian and Western
cultures. For their term projects, students are encouraged to probe music and language issues in
their own performance or study repertories.
History of U.S. Music (MUSICOL 450/550), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Clague
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 550.
This course surveys musical activity in what is now the United States of America, from the
1500s to the present. It also examines the functions of music in American life, and endeavors to
place students into the role of historians to encourage a critical engagement with facts and their
interpretation. Recognizing that courses on American classical music, jazz, rock and roll, musical
theatre, and African American music are taught in the School, and that many American genres
are part of virtually every student's experience, the instructor has designed this course with the
hope of illuminating connections among these and other kinds of American music, as well as
links among the musical traditions of Europe, Africa, and North and South America. By looking
at the whole of American music history in a single course, we can observe continuities and
disjunctions that might otherwise go unnoticed. This course will use UM emeritus professor
Richard Crawford’s America’s Musical Life: A History. Taking performance, rather than composition, as its primary focus, the book examines five centuries of music making on the North
American continent.
Course work will include reading, close listening, writing, discussion, a class recital, and
projects, including an oral history interview for the LivingMusic website of the School’s
American Music Institute. Students will present their interpretive work in short papers and select
from a range of options for a final, original research project to be presented in a poster format on
the last day of class. There will be two exams.
Music in Culture (MUSICOL 458/558), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Ho
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 558.
In this course, culture is broadly conceived. We are interested in the life of music in diverse
situations. Musical expression may manifest itself as sheer creative outpouring, religious
experience, or gendered identity. It may evolve as an agent of change in social history, or it may
exercise its power in healing therapy, amongst others. Through wide exposure, the course aims to provide the possibilities for thinking about music in and as culture. Classes will consist of
lectures and discussion. Shared reading responses, a review comparing two books, a short mid-term paper, and a final paper will determine the overall course grade.
Music of Asia II (MUSICOL 467/567), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Ho
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 567.
This course introduces the student to the primary musical genres and traditions of West, South,
and Southeast Asia. Students will be exposed to a variety of musical genres and performance
contexts—folk, classical, tribal, religious, courtly, and popular. Issues ranging from composition
and improvisation to preservation and dissemination will be addressed, as appropriate. The
course goal is to familiarize students with the outstanding vocal and instrumental styles and
forms of the region. Grading is based on three listening tests, one concert or CD-review, mid-term and final examinations.
Renaissance Music (MUSICOL 478/578), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Mengozzi
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 578.
This course focuses on European music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Our goal is to
develop a critical and historical understanding of the musical life of that period. To achieve this
purpose we will not only take a close look at musical works, genres, styles, forms, composers,
but we will also study the political, religious, and social institutions that contributed to creating
the flourishing musical culture of the "Renaissance." Readings will be drawn from the textbook
and other scholarly sources. The assignments will aim at developing music analytic skills and at
exploring issues of performance practice.
Introduction to Graduate Studies (MUSICOL 501), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Fulcher
Graduate students only.
This course is intended to develop the research skills as well as the methodological and theoretical perspectives that students will need in their subsequent graduate studies in musicology. It
begins by surveying the development of musicology in its different national contexts, and then
turns to more recent directions in both American and European musicology and ethnomusicology. Requirements include weekly presentations and readings as well as two substantial
papers, one focused on the evolution of the field itself, and the other a subject of the student's
choosing, employing methodologies or techniques we have discussed.
Music Bibliography (MUSICOL 503), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Reynolds
Emphasis will be upon learning to locate and evaluate various tools of music research. The
course also includes the study of editing music to scholarly standards and recent developments in
on-line searching for music materials. Some assignments will permit students to focus on their
own specialties.
Teaching an Introduction to Music (MUSICOL 509), 2 cr. hrs. Prof. Borders
Graduate students only.
Teaching practicum, observation, and foundations will be covered in this course, which is
required of graduate students in musicology and those enrolled in the musicology certificate
program. Oral presentations, sample syllabi, written and oral reports, and other required papers
will be evaluated for grading purposes.
Introduction to Ethnomusicology (MUSICOL 547), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Lam
Graduate students only.
This course examines current theories and practices of ethnomusicology. The first five weeks of
the course will survey representative studies published in the last ten years. The rest of the course
will examine specific topics and/or issues critically and in detail. Students will do two term
projects: each will produce a comprehensive and annotated bibliography on a musical culture or
topic of his/her choice; each will write a theoretical/analytical paper on a specific music activity
or expression.
Special Course: Music and Nationalism: A Global Perspective (MUSICOL 605), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Castro
Graduate students only.
This graduate seminar examines nationalism in different global contexts along with musical
expressions that contribute to the construction of national identity. The focus is on music outside
the Western art music canon. The course also deals with varied and connected concepts related to
nationalism, including postcolonialism, globalization, and representation. Students are expected
to participate extensively in classroom discussions of theoretical articles and musical ethnographies and to write a seminar paper that synthesizes ideas from the course.
Early 19th-Century Styles: Reassessing Mendelssohn: Music, Life, and Legacy (MUSICOL
645), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Geary
Graduate students only.
The bicentennial year of Mendelssohn’s birth seems an appropriate time to take a fresh look at
the life, music, and legacy of this often misunderstood and sometimes maligned composer. One
of Germany’s most influential and beloved musicians at the time of his death in 1847,
Mendelssohn soon came to be thought of by many as an overly refined, sentimental, and
somewhat effeminate composer whose music seemed superficial in comparison to the more profound, more “masculine” music of composers such as Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms. This
view was to a large extent shaped by Wagner himself, who in 1850 unleashed a vicious anti-Semitic attack on Mendelssohn and other Jewish musicians as a way of excluding them from the
highest ranks of German composers.
This seminar aims to reassess Mendelssohn in light of his posthumous reception, exploring
the influential role that he played in shaping nineteenth-century German musical life as a
composer, conductor, and performer. The portrait that results will reveal a musician who was
front and center in the development of an infrastructure for art music that not only defined the
culture of its time but that still largely exists today. Thus, in his role as music director of the
Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, Mendelssohn’s programming reflected the rise of a new
historical consciousness and contributed to the growing sense of a European musical canon
weighted heavily toward the Austro-Germanic tradition. In his own music, Mendelssohn
employed aspects of a forward-looking Romanticism while appropriating elements of earlier
musical styles, resulting in a reconciliation of past and present that has troubled many observers
over the years.
These and other facets of Mendelssohn’s personal and professional life, including his importance for the nineteenth-century Bach revival and his embrace of a self-consciously Protestant
identity in the wake of his conversion from Judaism, will be brought to bear upon a consideration
of his role in defining a German national and cultural identity. Drawing on a spate of recent
scholarship, this course will also trace the path of Mendelssohn’s reception from the time of his death to the present, exploring such topics as Wagner’s anti-Semitic attack, the suppression of
Mendelssohn under the Nazis, and contemporary debates surrounding the composer’s Jewish
identity.
In addition to participating in class discussions, students will be expected to complete a
substantive research paper and give a brief oral presentation on a topic to be determined in
consultation with the instructor.
Winter semester 2009
Note 1: Graduate students should elect at the 500-level or above.
Note 2: The Faculty Council on Graduate Studies has ruled that all
Musicology courses at the 500 level or above, except MUSICOL 503 and
509, will count towards the coursework alternative to the Music History
Preliminary Examination. Your department may have particular
requirements for Musicology courses. Check with your advisor.
Special Course: The French Operatic Tradition from Lully to Milhaud (MUSICOL 405/505), 3 cr. hrs.
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 505. Prof. Fulcher
This course traces the emergence and development of those aspects of musical dramaturgy and style that have characterized French opera from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It considers the role of institutions, state support, and specific political developments, as well as examining the major figures who helped define or redefine the principle French ―serious‖ operatic genres. It will also trace the interaction of French opera with other national operatic traditions and examine the rise of alternative or competing genres, such as opéra-comique, opéra-bouffe, and the théâtre lyrique.
Special Course: Kunqu, the Classical Opera of Globalized China (MUSICOL 405/505), 3 cr. hrs.
Graduate Students elect MUSICOL 505. Prof. Lam
This course is a unique opportunity for students to learn the history, theories, and performance skills of kunqu, the classical opera of China. In the first nine weeks, Professor Lam will lecture on history and theories of kunqu, providing students a broad understanding of the genre, its performance tradition, and contemporary significance. In the last six weeks of the course, Madame Zhang Xunpeng of Shanghai, a National and Representative Successor and Educator of Kunqu, an Intangible Heritage of Chinese Art, will give students singing, dancing, and acting lessons. At the end of the term, students will give a concert of kunqu music and dance with Madame Zhan Xunpeng, and submit reports/analytical essays on their learning experiences. Enrollment will be capped at 15 students. (This special course is supported by special grants from the Senior Vice Provost's Office, Center for World Performance Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, and the Dean's Office, the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.)
Special Course: Topics in Ethnomusicology ( MUSICOL 406/506.), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Ho
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 506.
A critical mass of studies in ethnomusicology contributing to the ambitions of the humanities, social and natural sciences is now available. These monographs display great breadth, inter-disciplinary fluidity, and a large number of methodological postures. This course is a study of studies. We will debate, define, and shape ethnomusicology through readings and listening. Students will be graded on class participation, shared reading responses, two short papers comparing two books, and a final paper.
Special Course: The Symphony in the 19th Century (MUSICOL 407/507), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiley
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 507
The Symphony in the 19th Century‘ is a survey, offered for three credits, rooted in the Germanic repertoire from Beethoven to Mahler but with appropriate digressions into contributions of composers from France, Russia, and other nations. Among these latter, works by Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak will be included. Analysis of the music will form the basis for understanding larger developments in German music, and how these affect composers in other countries. The prerequisites for the course are a completed music history and music theory sequence, including the ability to read orchestral score and a working knowledge of sonata-allegro and other patterns typically found in symphonies. Grading factors will be two hour examinations and a final. Students enrolled in MH 507 will be expected to write an analytical paper on a symphony not discussed in class.
Special Course: Contemporary Popular Music (MUSICOL 408), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Garrett
Designed as an upper-level undergraduate seminar, this course examines various analytical approaches to understanding contemporary popular music. Focusing on key musical developments over the last three decades, from MTV to the iPod, from guitar heroes to Guitar Hero, the course explores a range of critical issues in popular music studies, including aesthetics, authenticity, consumerism, genre, media, ownership, spectacle, technology, and identity. Course requirements include intensive reading, listening, discussion, weekly assignments, and a research paper.
History of Opera, 19th-20th Centuries (MUSICOL 414/514), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Musca
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 514.
This course traces significant developments in opera during the 19th and 20th centuries. Emphasis will be placed upon the manner in which identity is constructed through both the exploitation of operatic convention and specific national style traits. Classes will focus on cultural-critical issues as well as close analysis of scores and productions. Grading will be based on attendance and participation (20%); two exams lasting one hour each (25% each); and a substantial paper on a topic of the student's choice (30%), There will be weekly reading and listening assignments, posted on CTools.
Music of the Classic Era (MUSICOL 421/521), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Whiting
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 521.
This course surveys vocal and instrumental music in Europe from the style galant of the 1730s to "second-period" Beethoven. Readings will be drawn from Philip G. Downs, Classical Music (the course textbook) and Neal Zaslaw, ed., The Classical Era. Listening assignments and annotated scores will be posted on CTools. Grades will be assigned on the basis of daily participation, three analytical exercises of 7-10 pages each, and a final examination.
Music of Latin America and the Caribbean (MUSICOL 464/564), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Castro
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 564.
This upper division undergraduate and graduate-level course will survey the varied musical traditions of Central and South America and the Caribbean islands. No previous musical experience is required, but knowledge of music is helpful. Readings and class discussions will engage students with research approaches and theoretical topics rather than merely introduce musical genres.
Music in Culture (MUSICOL 558), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Ho
This course examines the diverse ways in which music expresses itself as a form of humanly produced activity. Stemming from half-century old debates on the notions of music in culture and culture in music, we are interested in the particular power that music retains to express and demonstrate the complexities of human life. What kind of information does music provide, and in what way is our knowledge of human life enhanced through this resource? What particular, non-verbally expressed data is revealed to us through the singular, prized quality of musical activity as a non-verbal form of communication? What can we learn that is less apparent through language verbalization? We will approach these issues with readings that, while attending seriously to music, also open up the world of music making. This is primarily a reading and discussion class. We will also listen to music and view films. Grading is based on class participation, shared reading responses, one paper discussing class material, and a final paper of a student field project on a community of choice.
Special Course: Singing, Singers, Patrons, and Productions in Early Modern Contexts (MUSICOL 605),
3 cr. hrs. Prof. Stein
This seminar is devoted to exploring the intersections between the history of the singing profession and the history of musical theater, with particular attention to the ways in which singers, patrons, public and private institutions, and the market-place shaped the production of musical theater and opera in the early modern period. Our work seeks to better understand systems of production as well as the variability and complexity of relationships among patrons or producers and singers and composers.
We will learn about singers‘ lives and how they sang, and pursue readings into methodology, theories of patronage and production, the economics of the arts, and the politics of the arts in early modern society. Following an initial period of general work with published case studies, our reportorial focus will be on Italian and Spanish opera from the late seventeenth century (including works by Alessandro Scarlatti for Naples), Handel‘s opera productions for London, and a mid-eighteenth-century opera seria production. Students will be introduced to various kinds of primary sources---archival documents, early printed libretti, theatrical manuscripts, musical scores, images, and so on. The work of the course will include reading, listening, and score study (for those in music), as well as study of visual images and texts. Each student will complete a term project or a series of shorter research papers that may be connected to a performance. Attendance and class participation are required. The course is open to scholars and performers. The enrollment limit is twelve.
History of Music Theory I (MUSICOL 621/THEORY 621), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Borders
This seminar will treat key issues that Western music theorists addressed from Antiquity through the late Renaissance. It will examine how certain theoretical topics weave like threads through the fabric of music history—here thickly, there thinly—and how and when new issues arise, in part due to changes in musical style. (Toward the end of the term, for example, we will see how the history of theory comes nearly full circle with concomitant rediscoveries of Greek texts.) We will note similarities and differences among different theorists‘ ideas and approaches, along with modern scholarly understandings of them. When feasible we shall also consider the relevance of theory to practice and composition by examining music from the same or earlier period. Grades will depend on participation, ten weekly in-class reports (each with a short writing component), and a fifteen- to twenty-five-page term paper (30% of the final grade), Enrollment is limited to graduate students.
Studies in 20th-Century Music: “Music and Modernist Movements” (MUSICOL 647),
3 cr. hrs. Prof. Fulcher
Why did important 20th-century composers choose to become involved in those modernist movements that embraced several arts and espoused boarder aesthetic, cultural, spiritual or political-ideological goals? This seminar examines those principles, beliefs, texts, and works associated with the major modernist movements of the 20th century, including Symbolism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Minimalism. It will consider not why composers became attracted to these movements, but how they translated the principles or values of each into terms of musical technique and style. Just as important will be an examination of those collaborative or theatrical works associated with these movements and the role of specific composers within them.
Fall semester 2008
Special Course: Topics in 19th-Century Opera (MUSICOL 405/505), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiley
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 505.
This is a survey of 19th-century European opera, organized by country and time, and with consideration given to principles of theatricality as well as musical style in the repertoires. Selected collections of opera will form the basis of lectures distinguishing nation and time period, with a major work from each collection singled out for closer scrutiny. Works so designated are: La Juive, The Flying Dutchman, La traviata, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, The Queen of Spades, and Otello. Grading factors are (1) two hour and a final examination in essay format, and (2) quizzes on synopses and listening assignments, and a paper for students who enroll in MUSICOL 505, comprising a musico-dramatic analysis of an opera not among those considered in class.
Special Course: Topics in Ethnomusicology (MUSICOL 405/506), 3 cr. hrs. Staff
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 506.
Special Course: Music of the American Avant-Garde (MUSICOL 407/507), 3 cr. hrs.
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 506. Prof. Wierzbicki
This class will focus on the American avant-garde tradition that flourished in the middle of the 20th century but whose roots arguably date back more than 200 years and whose influence still resonates today. Along with their European counterparts, composers whose work will be discussed include Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Terry Riley, Harry Partch, Conclon Nancarrow, George Antheil, Max Neuhaus, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, David Tudor, Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, and La Monte Young. The centerpiece of the discussion, however, will be the innovative music and ideas of the American composer-philosopher John Cage.
History of the Symphony (MUSICOL 411/511), 3 cr. hrs. Staff
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 511.
History of Opera (17th-18th Centuries) (MUSICOL 413/513), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Stein
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 513.
This course is devoted to the study of opera in the first two centuries of its existence, from its beginnings just before 1600 to nearly the end of the 18th century. Opera is to be studied critically as music, as theater, as spectacle, as performance medium, and as cultural expression. Special aspects of this course include lectures on operatic eroticism, singers of baroque opera, opera's arrival in the Americas, and the financing and staging of early opera. While some of the lectures and listening assignments will be organized around excerpts, others will be designed to focus on whole operas, their music and musical dramaturgy, historical significance, economics, modes of production, and reception in performance. Composers to be studied include Peri, Caccini, Da Gagliano, Monteverdi, Cavalli, Lully, Purcell, Hidalgo, A. Scarlatti, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Rameau, Gluck,
Salieri, Sarti, Piccinni, Mozart, and Haydn. The assignments in this course will be primarily listening assignments, supplemented by score study, readings from the course-pack or materials on reserve and on C-Tools, and some in-class performances. Grades will be based on written work (three short papers), and class participation.
History of Jazz (MUSICOL 417/517), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Garrett
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 517.
This course surveys the historical growth and development of the various kinds of music that have been called "jazz" in the United States. Structured as a chronological overview, the course places the musical conventions, significant performers, and key aesthetic shifts of jazz in cultural, technological, and social context. Students will learn not only to identify the differences between a wide range of jazz styles but also to analyze and interpret the meanings of these differences. In the process, the course aims to help students build skills for listening to, describing, analyzing, and writing about jazz. Assignments involve reading, listening, brief written assignments, two papers, and two exams.
19th-Century Music (MUSICOL 422/522), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiley
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 522.
Western Music 1800-1850. The period is viewed through major developments of musical style in works by major European composers. The emphasis will be on music. After a brief review of classical sonata-allegro form, Beethoven’s music will be studied, followed by a review of cultural changes after the Napoleonic wars that opened the way to new directions in German music initiated by Franz Schubert and carrying forward into the so-called romantic generation. Opera will be considered separately, in terms of old repertoire making transitions (Italy and France) or new repertoires taking root (Germany and Russia). Among the works studied are Beethoven’s first ‘Razumovsky’ Quartet and ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, Schubert’s String Quartet in A-minor, Liszt’s First Piano Concerto, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. Grading factors will be two midterm and final examinations, and, for those electing MUSICOL 522, an analytical paper on a composition not considered in lecture.
20th-Century Music (MUSICOL 423/523), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Fulcher
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 523.
This course both traces and analyzes the evolution of music in the twentieth century, examining major stylistic developments against the background of shifting or competing aesthetic, ideological, social, and political currents. Central to the course is a consideration of “modernism,” and whether it is synonymous with twentieth-century music, but the course will also interrogate how to define modernism’s beginnings in music as well as its different stages of progression, including postmodernism. The class will consist of formal lectures as well as class discussions of readings and of specific musical works. There will be two large writing assignments as well as two major listening exams.
The Art Song (MUSICOL 424/524), 3 cr. hrs. Staff
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 524.
Music in the United States (MUSICOL 450/550), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Clague
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 550.
The goals of the course are (1) to survey musical activity in what is now the United States of America, from the 1500s and extending to the present; (2) to examine the function of music in American life; and (3) by placing students into the role of historians, to encourage a critical engagement with facts and their interpretation. Recognizing that courses on American classical music, jazz, rock and roll, musical theatre, and African American music are already taught in the School of Music, and that many American genres are part of virtually every student's experience, the instructor has designed this course with the hope of illuminating connections among these and other kinds of American music, as well as links among the musical traditions of Europe, Africa, and North America. By looking at the whole of American music history in a single course, we can observe continuities and disjunctions that might otherwise go unnoticed. This course will use UM emeritus professor Richard Crawford’s trade book, America’s Musical Life: A History. Taking performance, rather than composition, as its primary focus, the book examines five centuries of music making on the North American continent. Course work will include reading, close listening, writing, discussion, a class recital, and projects, including an oral history interview for the LivingMusic website of the School’s American Music Institute. Students will present their interpretative work in short papers and select from a range of options for a final, original research project to be presented in a poster format on the last day of class. There will be two exams.
Renaissance Music (MUSICOL 478/578), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Mengozzi
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 578.
The course focuses on European music of the 15th and 16th centuries. Its goal is to lead students to develop a critical and historical understanding of the musical life of this period and of the placement of this repertory into the contexts of Renaissance culture and of Western music history. To achieve this purpose we will not only take a close look at musical works, genres, styles, forms, composers, etc., but we will also study the political, religious and social institutions that contributed to creating such a flourishing musical culture. Issues of performance practice (such as ornamentation, improvisation, and musica ficta) will be central to the course.
Introduction to Graduate Studies (MUSICOL 501), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Fulcher
This pro-seminar is intended to prepare both musicologists and ethnomusicologists for graduate work in their fields and, as such, will concentrate on both practical and substantive, or methodological issues. It traces the evolution of both fields, chronologically as well as by nation, examining the seminal texts within their historical and intellectual contexts. After tracing the evolution of the questions and methodologies in both areas, it examines contemporary theoretical currents as well as their application in specific scholarly works. In order to develop research as well as writing skills it includes extensive bibliographic work as well as a series of papers intended to foster not only technical skills but a greater knowledge of the methodologies as well as the issues in both musicology and ethnomusicology.
Music Bibliography (MUSICOL 503), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Reynolds
Teaching an Introduction to Music (MUSICOL 509), 2 cr. hrs. Prof. Stein
Open to all graduate students in music. This is a pedagogy course, and doctoral students may elect it to satisfy their pedagogy requirement. The goal of the course is to help students develop good classroom skills and strategies for teaching introductory courses in music to non-music students (teaching active listening skills to less experienced listeners). Students will be asked to engage with music of all kinds, write short prose exercises about music, and give class presentations on a weekly basis.
Special Course: The Ethnography of World Music (MUSICOL 605), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Castro
Ethnography is one of the primary pursuits of the fields of ethnomusicology and anthropology. This course examines ethnography as a multifaceted methodology for research, the subsequent problem of textualizing those experiences, and how ethnomusicologists deal with issues specific to the subject of music. The class will involve heavy amounts of reading as well as exercises in writing creatively. Students in this class should have strong musical experience prior to enrolling.
Studies in Medieval Music: Music in Christian Liturgies through 1750
(MUSICOL 604), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Borders
This seminar will examine the development of Christian liturgies from earliest records through the maturity of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, examining the place of music in worship services from late antiquity into early modernity. In addition to reading and listening assignments, which will be discussed in class, students should expect to write two substantial papers on mutually agreed-upon topics. Knowledge of Latin and modern European languages would be a plus, but is not essential to success in this class.
Studies in Music of the U.S.: Music in Detroit (MUSICOL 650), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Clague
While the story of Motown and its founder Berry Gordy has been told repeatedly, Detroit’s musical history still hides a treasure trove of great music and fascinating tales waiting to be discovered. Much remains to be explored concerning Detroit’s classical, blues, jazz, rock, and techno/electronic scenes. For example, the histories of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and the Detroit International Jazz Festival have yet to be written and even some aspects of Motown remain unaddressed. All but untouched by scholars is the Ann Arbor Bentley Historical Library’s collection of the papers of John and Leni Sinclair, who managed rock’s prototype punk band—Detroit’s MC5. The Detroit Public Library’s music collection also offers a prime site for original work on local soundscapes, especially the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. While UM will bring some of Detroit’s music history to Ann Arbor in the form of class visitors, this seminar will also require travel to Detroit. Each student in this intensive research course will take on an original research project connected to Detroit’s music history and the class will make several organized field trips to the city, the first of which will be to attend the Labor Day weekend jazz festival (Aug. 29 & Sept. 1—just prior to the start of classes). Research results will be published on the web as part of a Detroit Music History website.
Seminar in Ethnomusicology (MUSICOL 748), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Lam
This seminar will examine musical globalization, emphasizing basic dichotomies: continuity and change, localism and cosmopolitanism, national/cultural and ethnic/individual identities, and so forth. The first part of the seminar will read current studies critically and extensively. The second part will focus on case studies and students' term projects.
Winter semester 2008
Special Course: Les Six and Jeune France in Inter-War Paris (MUSICOL 405/505), 3 cr. hrs.
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 505. Prof. Fulcher
This course will explore two successive generations of composers in inter-war France, examining their musical styles and innovations within their broader aesthetic, cultural, and political contexts. It will begin with the group "Les Six," which emerged in the early 1920s and included Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, and Louis Durey. The course will then move on to consider the very different political, cultural, and musical context of the 1930s in Europe as the background against which to understand the formation and new spiritual goals of the group "Jeune France," which included most prominently Olivier Messiaen and André Jolivet. There will be weekly lectures, discussions of readings and reports as well as essay and listening tests.
Special Course: Beethoven and the Sonata II ( MUSICOL 406/506), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Whiting
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 506.
The premise of the course is that Beethoven's keyboard sonatas, solo and accompanied, form a body of work worth studying as a whole (as opposed to the usual practice of isolating the solo sonatas), The course will therefore treat nearly all of Beethoven's chamber music involving piano, from the piano quartets of 1785 to the last solo sonata, Op. 111. The winter semester will pick up where the fall semester left off (hopefully ca. Op. 28), Emphasis will fall on the analysis and interpretation of finished works (rather than on compositional genesis), The main textbook will be Charles Rosen, Beethoven's Piano Sonatas: A Short Companion, to be supplemented by Lewis Lockwood, Beethoven: The Music and the Life, James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, Elements of Sonata Theory (on reserve), and the instructor's ongoing translation of Jürgen Uhde's Beethovens Klaviermusik (available on CTools), among other readings. Grades will be based on in-class participation (performance will be encouraged), analytical essays (two for undergraduates, three for grad students), and (if need be) a final examination. The course is designed for undergraduates and graduates in music; undergraduates must have completed the music history core.
Special Course: The Music of Johannes Brahms (MUSICOL 407/507), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiley
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 507.
This 3-credit course is a selected survey of the music of Brahms, taking into account the genres to which he made significant contributions, together with the trajectory of his general style from youth to old age, and occasional context in the form of comparisons with the music of his contemporaries. Preparation for class involves study of the music in advance of lectures, including an understanding of the words of texted pieces. There will be two midterm examinations and a final examination, at which attendance is required—prospective students should confirm, in advance, their availability on examination dates. In addition, graduate students electing the course will be assigned to analyze a work of Brahms, the choice of which will involve conferral with the instructor, in a paper of 10-15 pages.
Special Course: Instrumental Music of the Renaissance (MUSICOL 408/508), 3 cr. hrs.
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 508. Prof. Mengozzi
This course will concentrate on the repertory and performance practices of instrumental ensembles in the period 1450-1600, particularly wind bands. We will also study the repertory for solo instruments, such as lute and keyboard. Readings and assignments will deal with topics such as improvisation, tuning, arrangements of vocal music, manuscript and printed sources of instrumental music. A number of instruments from the Stearns Collection (copies of original instruments) will be available to those students who wish to take a hands-on approach to the subject. It is hoped that in-class performances on these instruments will be a routine part of the course. There are no pre-requisites for this class apart from having completed the MUSICOLogy 139-240 core sequence.
History of Opera 19th-20th Centuries ( MUSICOL 414/514), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Geary
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 514.
This course provides an overview of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western operatic repertoire by considering roughly two dozen operas from Rossini to Philip Glass. Its aim is to highlight significant developments in the genre by exploring these operas within a broad musical, cultural, and historical framework. At the center of this exploration will be basic questions surrounding the relationship between music and drama as well as the manner in which this relationship has been approached by composers at different times and coming from diverse national or regional operatic traditions. Grading for this course will be based on class participation, two exams, and a research paper to be undertaken in consultation with the instructor.
Topics in Baroque Music (MUSICOL 420/520), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Stein
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 520.
This course is designed as an overview of selected topics in music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (roughly 1570-1750), but it is not designed as a strict survey of Baroque music. Particular emphasis will be given to the invention and definition of musical genres, the relationship of music to text, and the place and function of music (secular and sacred, vocal and instrumental, for court, chamber, church, and theater) in early modern society. In addition to studying music by such composers as Monteverdi, Schütz, Lully, Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel, and J. S. Bach, we will also include a special unit on music from Spain and its Latin American colonies in the 17th and early 18th centuries. This course also introduces students to writings about music, musical sources, aesthetic theories of the period, and some issues of performing practice. Music will be considered as cultural and artistic expression in its historical framework. The work of this course consists of listening, score study, and reading. We will discuss the music in class, in some detail. Class attendance is required. Grades will be based on written work and class participation. MUSICOLogy 420 may be used as an upper-level writing course, with permission of the instructor.
Music in the United States (MUSICOL 450/550), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Clague
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 550.
Music in the United States is a lecture-discussion class open to both undergraduates and graduate students. The goal of the course is three-fold: it offers an overview of musical activity in what is now the United States of America, from the 1500s to the present; secondly, this survey examines the function of music in American life; finally, the course endeavors to place students into the role of historians to encourage a critical engagement with primary materials and their interpretation. Recognizing that courses on American classical music, jazz, rock and roll, musical theatre, and African American music are already taught in the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and that many American genres are part of virtually every student's experience, the instructor has designed this course with the hope of illuminating connections among these and other kinds of American music, as well as links among the musical traditions of Europe, Africa, Latin America, and North America. By looking at the whole of American music history in a single course, we can observe continuities and disjunctions that might otherwise go unnoticed. This course will use UM emeritus professor Richard Crawford’s textbook, An Introduction to America’s Music, and its accompanying CD set. Taking performance, rather than composition, as its primary focus, the book examines five centuries of music making on the North American continent. We will supplement the book with a set of primary source readings that will serve as a springboard for discussion. Course work will include reading, close listening, musical and cultural analysis, discussion, class performances, and group projects, including an oral history interview for the Living Music website of the School’s American Music Institute. Students will present their interpretive work in short papers and select from a range of options for a final, original research project.
Medieval Music (MUSICOL 477/577), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Borders
Graduate students elect MUSICOL 577.
This lecture / discussion course will examine devotional and secular music composed and performed between 700-1400 C.E. It will be organized around the five most important sites of medieval musical activity—the monastery, the castle, the cathedral, the urban fair, and the palace. Students will be asked to prepare for lectures and follow-up discussions by completing assigned reading (on reserved and on the web) and listening assignments (on-line and on reserve). They should expect two 15-20-page papers (topics to be developed with the instructor) and two essay examinations at mid-term and final. This course is intended for upper division music undergraduates (400 level) and music graduate students (500 level); familiarity with modern musical notation will be assumed.
Special Course: Arts, Patrons, Courts in Early Modern Culture (MUSICOL 505.002/605), 3 cr. hrs.
meets together with HISTART 689.003 and ROMLANG 500) Prof. Stein
Note: enrollment limited to twelve.
This course is a seminar devoted to exploring the role of private patrons, institutional patronage, and the commercial market-place in the production of works of music and art. It is designed for graduate students interested in reading and writing about the patronage and production of music, the visual arts, architecture, and theater in the early modern period, as well as studying pieces of music and works of art. The course is open to scholars and performers. We will explore the role of individual patrons and institutional patronage, public and private, in early modern societies, through careful case-studies of patrons, producers, artists, and performers, male and female, in selected times and places. Our work seeks to better understand systems of production as well as the variability and complexity of relationships between patrons/producers and artists/composers/performers in Europe and Latin America in the period roughly 1500-1750.
Our first set of readings will include groundbreaking patronage studies from our several disciplines, as well as readings concerned with methodology, theories of patronage and production, the economics of the arts, and the politics of the arts in early modern society. Following this initial period of general readings, the course will be organized around particular times and places (along with relevant musical, theatrical, and artistic repertories), with readings from successful case studies. Students will be introduced to and have the chance to work with various kinds of primary sources---archival documents (inventories, notarial documents, household accounts, private letters, etc.), printed texts, theatrical manuscripts, musical scores, images, and so on. Our understanding will be enriched by several guest presentations by MEMS faculty on their own case studies. Our work will focus on Florence (and possibly other Northern Italian centers), Rome, Naples, Versailles and Paris, Madrid, Lima, and London, with possible study of other sites, depending on student interest and linguistic preparation. The work of the course will include assigned readings, listening (and score study for those in music), study of visual images, literary texts, and so on. Attendance and class participation are required.
Special Course: Approaches to Cultural History and The Cultural History of Music
(MUSICOL 506/606), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Fulcher
How does one write the history of a musical, artistic, or other cultural object? What are the historical premises, intellectual goals, and theoretical foundations that underlie such studies? More specifically, how do we integrate the diachronic and synchronic dimensions, or the internal developments with the language or field with forces extraneous to it from other cultural areas or from social and political developments around it? This seminar, which will be primarily a reading and discussion course, will begin by considering these questions from the perspective of the great cultural historians of the past—from the 19th to the early 20th century, and will then trace the more recent developments in the field—the influence of the "Annales school," of symbolic anthropology, of the "linguistic turn"--and other currents that have had an impact on such studies in the past several decades. It will then turn to the examination of how these developments have been reflected in MUSICOLogy and ethnoMUSICOLogy in recent years, particularly as MUSICOLogy has once again attempted to reintegrate music into the larger "cultural landscape," premised upon the belief that music can both illuminate this context and can itself be further illuminated by it.
Introduction to Ethnomusicology (MUSICOL 547), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Lam
This course will examine ethnomusicology issues and methodology in two stages. The first will survey seminal publications of the discipline. The second will focus on current debates on music as a discourse. Students will be required to critically read a substantial amount of ethnomusicological publications.
Studies in the Music of the U.S.: "American Music and National Identity" (MUSICOL 650), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Garrett
This seminar centers on the topic of national identity as applied to and expressed by music of the United States. The course covers a wide spectrum of music-making, ranging from Amy Beach and Charles Ives to George Clinton and Los Lobos. Students will gain familiarity with scholarship on musical nationalism and learn to apply these varied methods. While the course centers on American music, its theoretical scope is designed to be useful for specialists in other musical traditions. Coursework includes reading, listening, short response papers, class discussion, and a research paper.
Seminar in Ethnomusicology: “Music, Ecstasy and the Brain” MUSICOL 748, 3 cr. hrs.
Prof. Becker
This course will explore the phenomenon of musical ecstasy from the perspectives of cultural context, musical structures, the phenomenology of ecstasy, and the neurophysiology of ecstasy. The course will include readings from neuroscience, ethnomusicology, psychology, and anthropology as well as readings on the specific rituals to be discussed. The specific rituals that will be included in the syllabus are 1) Sufi Muslim ceremonies from Pakistan and North India, 2) a Hindu ceremony from Bali, Indonesia, and 3) a Pentecostal Christian liturgy from Michigan. Students interested in the intersection between music, emotion and neuroscience are particularly welcome. Students will be graded on class participation, weekly papers, listening quizzes, and a final paper.
Colloquium in Ethnomusicology (MUSICOL 760), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Becker
In the winter semester, this course is focused on current issues in the discipline of Ethnomusicology. Each week we read a current article or book chapter and discuss the content and the issues raised in each reading. There are no papers or exams, but students are expected to participate actively in discussions. This course is required for graduate students in Ethnomusicology. Other students with some background and a keen interest in the intellectual issues of the field are also welcome by permission of instructor.
Vietnamese Music Ensemble SEAS [South East Asian Studies] 450, 2 cr. hrs. Dr. Phong
Dr. Nguyen Thuyet Phong, Instructor
This is a special one-semester ensemble course offered through the Center for World Performance Studies and hosted by the Department of Musicology. It is designed to teach beginning students the basics of performing Vietnamese traditional and folk music. Students will learn to play any of three instruments, the dan bau (monochord), dan tranh (seventeen-stringed zither) and dan nguyet (moon-shaped lute), both individually and as part of an ensemble. No experience with Vietnamese music or language is required and students of all disciplines are welcome to join.
MUSICOLOGY COURSES FOR NON-MUSIC MAJORS AND LS&A MUSIC CONCENTRATORS
Special Course: Music in Medieval Culture (MUSICOL 131), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Borders
Some scholars argue that music not only influences our perceptions of the contemporary world, but also serves to construct it through social messages the music encodes. This lecture / discussion class seeks to adapt this way of thinking to the music and social rituals of the Middle Ages. Focusing on five sites of medieval musical activity—the monastery, the castle, the cathedral, the urban fair, and the palace–participants will examine the music as well as medieval and modern discourses surrounding it. Students will be asked to prepare for discussions by completing reading, web-based visual, and on-line listening assignments. They should expect two 12-15-page papers and two essay examinations at mid-term and final. This introductory course is intended for non-music majors; familiarity with modern musical notation is not expected.
Special Course: “Revolutionary” Opera ( MUSICOL 305), 3 cr. hrs. Prof. Wiebe
Visiting Prof. Heather Wiebe (hwiebe@umich.edu)
This course looks at 19th-century opera through the lens of political revolution. From Beethoven’s Fidelio to Verdi’s Don Carlos, the 19th-century operatic stage was full of political intrigue, and peopled by tyrants, enslaved communities, and insurgent heroes. We will look closely at a small group of operas in the context of French, German, and Italian revolutionary politics, thinking carefully about the links between the operatic stage and the world of political action. Readings will include sources on individual operas as well as more general historical and literary studies. Under the broad theme of revolution, we will address topics such as gender and the revolutionary hero, representations of kingship, citizenship, landscape, nostalgia, and constructions of the crowd. The course will also provide an introduction to 19th-century operatic forms and conventions. Evaluation will be based on participation and three short papers. (This course is for non-music majors and fulfills the third-year writing requirement for music concentrators in LSA.)
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