Spring 2000

Music 241. Proseminar: Renaissance.
Music 249. Proseminar: Ethnomusicology
(Music 241 and 249 seminars will be combined)

Indigenous Aesthetics: Varietas, Rasa, and the cultural grounding of aesthetic priorities. Professors Gallagher and Weiss.

Indigenous: 1. existing, growing, or produced naturally in a region or location; belonging (to) as native; 2. innate, inherent

The word "aesthetic" derives from the Greek aisthetikos, meaning sensitive, and aisthanesthai, to perceive (Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd College Ed., 1986).

Among the principal concerns in the study of aesthetics are the perception and conceptualization of beauty. Within the Western tradition, particularly since the eighteenth century, this beauty has often been posited as an absolute idea, one closely bound up with a strong notion of the "work" as the primary object of aesthetic interest. Despite attempts by certain scholars to uncouple the evaluative expression "work of art" from "aesthetic object", their synonymy remains operative in much critical and analytical discourse. By focusing on an end product--the work--aesthetic theories predicted upon such views inhibit, to a certain extent, explorations into cultural expressions which may be process-oriented or for which the work is a less stable concept.

In this course we will read widely from the Western literature on aesthetics and delve into practice and aesthetics from cultures as diverse as those of the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea and the Japanese. One of our aims will be to examine the ways in which aesthetic theories (and their underlying assumptions)help to establish, rather than merely reflect, the aesthetic priorities of a culture. Another will be to expand our collection of possibilities for evaluating the "beauty" of something. Two "case studies" will serve as initial points of orientation: the concept of varietas in the writings of the late fifteenth-century theorist/composer Johannes Tinctoris, and the concept of rasa in the Central Javanese tradition of wayang.

Members of the seminar will be asked to prepare readings for each week and to participate actively in class discussions. Assessment will be based on class participation, including several in-class presentations, and a research paper on the aesthetics of a musical culture.

Students are asked to register for either Proseminar 241 (Monday 2-5) or Proseminar 249 (Tuesday 2-5). These two classes will meet simultaneously with both Gallagher and Weiss on Monday from 2:00-5:00 pm. The registration of students in two separate seminars is pro forma only.

Music 242. Proseminar: Baroque Emotion. Professor MacNeil.

Musical settings of laments in the early-modern era form a ritualized expression of sorrow and pain that focusses 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, and the

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. Course materials will be restricted to secondary literature and music available in modern editions or recordings.

Readings will include

the Laments issue of Early Music (vol. 27, August 1999), with articles by Jeanice Brooks, Leofranc Holford-Strevons, Tim Carter, Anne MacNeil and Suzanne Cusick.

Austern, Linda Phyllis. "'The conceit of the minde': Music, Medicine and Mental Process in Early Modern England." Irish Musical Studies 4 (1996): 133-151.

Cusick, Suzanne. "'There was not one lady who failed to shed a tear': Arianna's Lament and the Construction of Modern Womanhood." Early Music 22 (1994): 21-41.

Dobrov, Gregory W. "A Dialogue with Death: Ritual Lament and the Threnos Theotokou of Romanos Melodos." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 35 (1994): 385-405.

Heller, Wendy. "Chastity, Herosim, and Allure: Women in the Opera of Seventeenth-Century Venice." PhD diss, Brandeis University, 1995.

King, Margaret L. The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994.

MacNeil, Anne. "The Divine Madness of Isabella Andreini." Journal of the Royal Musical Association 120/2 (1995): 195-215.

Rehm, Rush. Marriage to Death: The Conflation of Wedding and Funeral Rituals in Greek Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Rosand, Ellen. "Operatic Madness: A Challenge to Convention." In Music and Text: Critical Inquiries. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Sorbom, Goran. "Aristotle on Music as Representation." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52 (1994): 37-46.

Music 248. Proseminar: Music Theory. Arnold Schoenberg on Counterpoint. Professor Neff.

Arnold Schoenberg's legacy contains hundreds of items intended for several books on counterpoint and one specifically on J.S. Bach. Except for the posthumously published Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint, none of these projects came to fruition. The seminar will focus on the materials for an eighteenth-century counterpoint text called Contrapuntal Composition. Topics will include double counterpoint, polymorphic canon, fugue, analysis of Bach's and Reger's music, and further technical issues (e.g. symmetry) raised in the texts of Wilhem Werker and Hugo Riemann, works valued highly by Schoenberg. Special attention will be given to Schoenberg's insistence that the twelve-tone method grew out of Bach's music, specifically Der Kunst der Fuge.