Fall 2001

Music 249. Proseminar in Musicology: The Fugal Finale. Professor Bonds.

The fugal finale is a movement type that transcends both historical periods and genres, both vocal and instrumental. This seminar will reconstruct the history of this tradition and consider both its technical and aesthetic dimensions, including issues of intertextuality, hybridity (e.g., the integration of fugue and sonata form, as in Mozart's K. 387 and 551), and cyclical coherence. Representative works to be considered incluce string quartets by Haydn (opp. 20/2, 20/4, 20/5, 50/4), Mozart (K. 168, 173, 387), Beethoven (opp. 59/3, 130), and Verdi; a quintet by Brahms (op. 88); symphonies by Haydn (nos. 3,40,70), Mozart (K. 551), and Bruckner (no. 5); sonatas by Beethoven (opp. 102/2, 106, 110); a set of variations by Brahms (op. 24); and a variety of choral works, including Mass (e.g. Bach's Mass in B minor), oratorio (e. g. Handel's Messiah), and opera (Verdi's Falstaff).

Music 337. Seminar in Musicology: Music at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Professor Fauser.

Debussy's visit to the 1889 Exposition Universelle has become famous as an inspirational turning-point in the history of French, if not Western, 'modern' music. But the 1889 exhibition had wider ramifications for music in France that is generally acknowledged. Musical performances and political aspirations at this World Fair contributed to the patriotic and colonialist projects of a nation which was at the point of breaking out of its international isolation to join new European political alliances while reviving its economy after two decades of decline. The 1889 Exposition Universelle was, more than any other French World fair, defined through its political context, given the fact that it celebrated the centenary of the French Revolution. It aimed to be--in the words of the 1889 Guide bleu--a 'gigantic encyclopaedia, in which nothing was forgotten.' Furthermore, the fair created a microcosm within the macrocosm of Paris, a city which at that time truly justified Walter Benjamin's designation of 'Capital of the Nineteenth Century'. The Exposition Universelle thus offers a fascinating case-study not only for the study of music and its consumption within a specific cultural environment, but also for the assessment of recent methodologies as tools for musicological study, including micro-history, cultural studies, gender studies, urban anthropoloy and colonial studies.

Music 337. Seminar in Musicology: Permeable Boundaries. Professor Weiss.

Why do we value purity above hybridity? When confronted with an obvious hybrid - musical, culinary, vegetable, human - why do we feel compelled to identify the various constituent elements? Why do we feel it is important to preserve the traditional (read pure) in the context of the "modern" (read hybrid)?

While reading some of the critical discourse on hybridity and difference,in this course we will explore the musical results of cultural interactions in several locations and periods. Some of these may include: European fascination with / fear of Asia during the colonial period and orientalism; touristic performance cultures in Asia; the nexus between African popular musics, postcoloniality, and global world beat; the codification of musical systems in India and Java during the colonial period. Themes of appropriation, representation and identity will be explored. Students will write research papers on topics relevant to their own interests in which one or more of the seminar themes can be addressed.