Fall 2006 Seminars

Music 830. History of Music Theory between 1600 and 1935. Professor Woerner.

This course focuses on major theorists and important issues within the history of music theory between 1600 and 1935. The basis for our discussion of each topic will be the close reading of selected parts of theoretical texts. We will reconstruct the key arguments, and enrich our understanding by situating the topics in question within their cultural and philosophical frameworks. Therefore, our approach is not restricted to technical issues of music theory and composition, but also includes issues of aesthetics and of historical and other environments. Coursework: Weekly close reading of selected texts; several short presentations in class as basis for further discussion; one written paper.

Music 850. Music, Gender, Sexuality. Professor Fauser.

In this proseminar we will explore literature addressing the by now ubiquitous topics of gender and sexuality in music. It will be a reading-intensive course in which you will familiarize yourselves with the theories and discourses of women’s studies, feminist literature, gender and queer studies, and theories of performativity, including—in the field of musicology—the writings of Philip Brett, Marcia Citron, Suzanne Cusick, Bruce Holsinger, Susan McClary, Mitchell Morris, Martha Mockus, and Ruth Solie. The readings will offer a historical perspective on the discussions while incorporating current literature on these topics.

Music 930. Form, Structure, and Meaning in Contemporary Songwriting. Professor Neal.

From the 1960s to the present, teams of professional songwriters have worked in the core of the popular music industry in a tradition of composition and craftsmanship that balances adherence to formulaic structures with innovation. From the Brill Building in the 1960s to Music Row in the 1990s, these musicians have written songs that simultaneously define distinct musical styles and provide threads of formal continuity across those diverse styles, all while working within formal constraints determined implicitly by fans’ reception. We will begin by examining the music industry’s business relationships and production models that support this craft. Through critical examination of the trade literature on songwriting (including authors Perricone, Webb, Leikin, Blume, Braheny, and Citron) combined with musical, and cultural analysis of key songwriters’ output (borrowing from methodologies of Berry, Everett, Moore, Burns, Rogers, and Middleton), we will explore formal and structural models of song structure and those models’ connections to perceived cultural meaning in those songs. The course will require weekly assignments and in-class presentations plus one analytic research paper.

Music 950. The Politics of Musical Aesthetics Graduate Seminar in Musicology. Professor Bonds.

The controversies that raged in mid-nineteenth-century Germany over the nature of music and musical beauty were routinely described at the time in political terms, with Wagner leading the musical “left” and Hanslick the “right.” As these labels suggest, the origins and implications of this debate go beyond purely musical issues. This seminar will examine the source texts of this confrontation, giving special attention to the deeper connections (and frictions) between art and society, between aesthetics and political ideologies. We will focus primarily on such mid-century figures as Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Brendel, Hanslick, and A. B. Marx but will also review the work of more recent scholars, including Dahlhaus, Goehr, Bowie, Chua, and Hoeckner. In their individual projects, students will have the option of examining issues from other times and places as well, e.g., attitudes toward formalism during the Cold War, the aesthetics of socialist realism, the politics of twelve-tone composition.