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UNC, Library of Congress launch summer music fellowships Three graduate students in musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will research the music of composer Samuel Barber during World War II, the National Negro Opera Company and the 1975 musical “Chicago” with new summer fellowships at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
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Fall 2005

by admin-oasis — last modified 2007-05-14 16:11

Music 248, Sec. 1. Fifty Years of American Music Theory. Professor Neff.

The first half of this seminar will offer readings in classic texts of American music theory: Babbitt on the theory of music theory, Babbitt, Martino, and Winham on twelve-tone theory; Weisse, Sessions, Katz, Forte, and Schachter on Schenkerian analysis; Kramer and Rowell on theories of musical time; Lewin and Clifton on theory and phenomenology; and Maus and Guck on musical analysis, metaphor, and narrative. The second will focus on recent critical evaluation of these classic texts: McClary and Hisama on Schenker and feminist theory; Uno and Johnson on the analysis of non-canonic repertory in art music; Schmalfeldt and Caplin on form theory and Schenker; Krims and Schmidt on close analysis; Cohn on Neo-Riemannian theory. The seminar will comment on the current state of the field as well as give shape the historiography of music-theoretical thought in America .

Music 249, Sec. 1. The American Symphony in the Nineteenth Century. Professor Bonds.

The American symphony in the nineteenth century is a rich yet virtually unexplored repertory. In the United States as in Europe, the symphony was the instrumental genre most likely to incorporate nationalistic elements. But because the genre was so thoroughly dominated by German-speaking composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms), American symphonists faced special challenges in creating a national tradition. In this seminar, we will examine representative symphonies by such composers as Anthony Philip Heinrich (Columbiad: Grand American National Chivalrous Symphony, 1837; Manitou Mysteries, or The Voice of the Great Spirit: Gran sinfonia misteriosa-indiana, 1845), Louis Moreau Gottschalk (La Nuit des tropiques: Symphony No. 1, 1859; À Montevideo: Symphonie romantique pour grand orchestre, 1868), George Frederick Bristow (six symphonies, 1848-93, including one entitled Niagara), John Knowles Paine (two symphonies, 1875-79), George Whitefield Chadwick (three symphonies, 1882-1894), Amy Beach (“Gaelic” Symphony, 1896), and Charles Ives (five symphonies and fragments of a sixth, 1898-1916). In addition to analyzing these works (and, as necessary, preparing editions), we will consider the social, political, aesthetic, and cultural implications of this repertory and its place in the history of American music in the nineteenth century.

Music 337, Sec. 1. “Laments.” Professor MacNeil.

Musical settings of laments in the early-modern era form a ritualized expression of sorrow and pain that focuses attention on the confrontation of personal emotion and its contextualization within society and history. In this seminar, we will study musical expressions of emotion—and especially painful emotion—in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in order to develop an understanding of music's ritual functions and of the individual's capacity to express personal anguish and loss within the socialized frameworks of early-modern Europe . Related areas of study that will be touched on in the course of the semester include Aristotelian and Cartesian philosophies of representation, music and the body, metamorphosis, and the ritualization of violence and desire.  

Students will be expected to participate in class discussion, to make presentations in class on assigned repertory, and to submit a final paper of approx. 20-30 pages on a topic of their choice within the theme of the seminar.

Music 338, Sec. 1. Ethnomusicology and Popular Music. Professor Garcia.

Much of ethnomusicology before the 1970s dealt with the music and culture of “folk” or small and relatively isolated societies. In fact American and ethnic studies scholars were responsible for producing some of ethnomusicology’s seminal studies on popular music. By the early 1980s interest in theorizing popular culture and music spread among scholars in cultural studies, media studies, and other related disciplines. Soon after, ethnomusicologists began in earnest to study the popular music not only of non-Western cultures but of urban areas in the West. In this seminar we will explore some of the more important theoretical perspectives on popular music and culture, including those of the Frankfurt and Birmingham Schools. In addition we will study the analytical, interpretive, and methodological approaches employed by Charles Keil, Manuel Peña, Peter Manuel, Christopher Waterman, Lise Waxer, and others in their work on the popular music of African Americans in Chicago, Tejanos, North Indians, Nigerians, and Colombians.

Students will be expected to assess and critique the perspectives, approaches, and methods of these popular music/culture theorists and ethnomusicologists on the basis of his/her own analysis of primary sources, namely, commercial recordings and oral histories that form part of the Southern Folklife Collection at Wilson Library.

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