Fall 2002

Music 101. Research & Methods in Music. Professor Fauser.

Music 110. Analysis of 18th/19th Century Music. Professor Neal.

This course offers an intensive study of musical form and analysis, using a broad range of methodologies and across a variety of musical genres. Repertoire from the period 1685 – 1900 will be examined. Emphasis on twentieth-century theoretical methods and schools of thought will accompany practical analytic exercises. Several short, analytic projects, as well as contribution to class discussion and analyses are expected.

Music 248. Proseminar in Music Theory. Professor Neff and Professor Warburton.

The seminar will focus on four twentieth-century works: Arnold Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, in F Sharp Minor, Op. 10, Charles Ives's Concord Sonata, Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 2, and George Rochberg's String Quartet No. 4. We will study these works by engaging classic structural aspects, their theoretical and analytic reception, the abandonment of or return to tonality, pre-compositional activity and notation of sketch materials. Next, we will read literature about these works situated in other venues: literary criticism, visual art, composer biogragphy, gender studies, and cultural history. Discussion will center on the comparison of the diverse kinds of commentaries and their value for understanding the works at hand.

Music 250. Proseminar in Ethnomusicology: Critical Theory/Critical Thinking. Professor Weiss.

Marx, Williams, Derrida, Foucault, Bordieu, de Certeau, Levi-Strauss, Ricoeur, Spivak, these are just a few of the many thinkers, theorists, and philosophers whose names we throw around with a certain abandon as we endeavor to embed our own arguments in contemporary critical theory and intellectual debate. We do this occasionally without an understanding of what is actually meant by terms such as hegemony, practice, habitus, discourse, deconstruction, poststructuralism, postcoloniality, feminist theory etc., let alone how they might be related to or used in studies of music and music cultures. Often our knowledge is based on secondary interpretations of ideas rather than through our own reading of the original texts. In this course we will read the thinkers themselves and then read a variety of musicological and ethnomusicological works that have been inspired by these ideas directly and/or indirectly. Students should expect discussion, debate, disagreement, confusion, sudden bursts of clarity, etc., as normal events in class. As it will be a proseminar, no final paper will be required of students, although weekly preparation of readings, contribution to class discussion, and occasional written assignments will be expected.

Music 337. Seminar in Musicology. Professor Joshua Rifkin (vising professor).

The seminar topic will be Petrucci's second book of Josquin Masses. Students interested should already begin to familiarize themselves with the pieces (six of them), their sources, and the Josquin literature in general.