Spring 2001

Music 244. Proseminar in Music Theory: The Nineteenth-century Tone Poem. Professor Finson.

We will study the tone poem through selected instances of the genre throughout the nineteenth century, beginning with Mendelssohn's concert overtures, extending through Liszt, Franck, and Saint-Seans to Strauss and Mahler. We will use these pieces to examine the aesthetics of orchestral music from early nineteenth-century idealism to the rift between "absolute" and "program" music after mid century. Reading (a limited amount in German and French), class projects, discussion, term paper.

Music 248. Proseminar in Music Theory: Music and Secular Spirituality. Professor Covach.

This seminar explores music's role in expressing, representing, or otherwise prompting spiritual concerns. Each student will choose a repertory to study within the following constraints: 1) the music considered should not be liturgical; 2) the repertory should be within the western tradition, but could be drawn from popular styles; 3) and the music can be shown to be influenced or motivated by some (at least somewhat) systematic approach to spiritual issues. The central questions will involve: 1) how music engages spiritual questions in a context that remains, strictly speaking, outside of the institutional framework of the Christian Church (though world faiths such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Confucianism may well prove very influential or foundational to the music); and 2) how musical analysis can detect such engagement. In the first half of the course I will lecture on the topics I have explored in my own work, including the music of Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Hauer, Stravinsky, Messaien, and various styles of rock music (Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Who, Beatles). The second half of the semester will be given over to the exploration and discussion of the music chosen by the seminar students. The course will require a 15-20 page paper and in-class presentations.

Music 337. Seminar in Musicology: Fourteenth-century Italy. Professor Nádas.

The repertories and styles of fourteenth-century Italy, beginning with music at the courts of Milan, Verona and Padova in the first half of the century, and continuing with the works of famous Trecento composers, in particular, Landini, Ciconia and Zachara. Topics to be covered include the Rossi, Squarcialupi and San Lorenzo manuscripts, Italian and French notational systems, performance practices, and the exciting musical language of fin-de-siecle lyric form, motets and Mass movements within the historical context of the Great Schism. Class presentations and a research paper.