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Fall 2008
“Truly, I live in dark times”: Hanns
Eisler’s Aesthetics of Resistance
Professor Stefan Litwin
As one of the most provocative figures of 20th century music, Hanns
Eisler made it his mission to combat ignorance and social injustice
through his work. A student of Arnold Schoenberg, he employed a wide
gamut of musical styles and compositional methods while judging their
relevance from a distinctly political perspective. Probably best known
for his collaboration with poet Bertolt Brecht, Eisler produced a large
and diverse oeuvre encompassing almost every musical genre. Wishing to
activate the listener’s capacity to reason, Eisler avoided exaggerated
emotionalism and instead wrote music of astounding clarity, wit, and
technical mastery. During the course of the semester, we will analyze
some of his most representative works and trace his musical
development. We will also discuss pertinent biographical material and
the ever-changing socio-geographic context Eisler was forced to live in
during times of tremendous social upheaval.
MUSC 850: Proseminar in Musicology
Foreigners and Their Music in 15th-Century
Italy
Professor John Nádas
A study of secular and sacred polyphonic repertories introduced into Italy by singers and composers from France, the Low Countries, and England, representing central features of the musical language of Western Europe in the Quattrocento. The seminar will focus on formative cultural and professional ties to Italian patrons and institutions, covering musical styles in the works of composers active from the decades of the Great Schism to the competitive pomp and ceremony of later institutions in Ferrara, Milan, Florence, and Rome. Most of the seminar’s work will be taken up with careful consideration of issues of cultural interactions raised in recent publications -- with an emphasis on primary sources, genres, and analytical issues -- concerning selected songs, motets, and masses composed in Italy (or brought to Italy) by Du Fay and his French and English contemporaries. The work of David Fallows, Alejandro Planchart, Bonnie Blackburn, Andrew Kirkman, Rob Wegman, Margaret Bent, and Lewis Lockwood will serve as a starting point, to be augmented with further readings and analyses. Class projects, individual presentations, and a seminar paper.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
Professor Mark Evan Bonds
No other work in the orchestral repertory has elicited more commentary and debate than the Ninth Symphony. This seminar will examine the Ninth from a variety of perspectives, with particular attention to changing patterns of criticism, analysis, and historical scholarship over the past 185 years. In addition to analyzing the work in some detail, we will consider its genesis, sources and editions, performance and reception histories, influence, and appropriations.
MUSC 970: Seminar in Ethnomusicology
Mountain Musics: Performance, Place, and Identity in the Southern Appalachians
Professor Philip Vandermeer
The sociologist Wilma Dunaway writes that “Outsiders have had a long-running love affair with Southern Appalachia.” This is particularly true of musicians and musical scholars who have yearned to discover, document, and learn historically “authentic” types of performance. Within the context of this seminar we will examine various communities and their performance traditions, interrogating the mythologies about authenticity and identity that have accrued through previous writing and scholarship, and analyzing the social, cultural, and musical constructions that have evolved over the history of this geographic location and cultural designation. Along the way we will be engaging with other fields of study that may fruitfully intersect with traditional music studies: ethnography of performance, cultural geography, ecocriticism, and socio-cultural anthropology. We will be making good use of local information resources, most especially the Southern Folklife Collection. Students in the seminar are meant to be full participants, and will be evaluated on weekly preparation. A final research paper will be required.