Spring 2004

Music 248. Groups for Contemporary Art Music—Readings in Twentieth-Century Aesthetics, Performance Theory, and Analysis. Professor Neff.

The seminar will engage the role of artists' and composers' societies and the small cabaret as well in promoting the performance and understanding of twentieth-century art music. Readings will focus on the history of each group, their aesthetic and performance values, and, most crucially, their preferred repertory and theoretical and/or analytic writings. Several groups will be considered: Schoenberg's "Society for Musical Performance," Kandinsky's "Blue Rider," Tzara's Café Voltaire; Russolo's-Marinetti's Futurists; New York's League of Composers/ISCM; Wuorinen-Sollberger's Group for Contemporary Music, and Paik's FLUXUS.

Requirements: Two papers (one historic, one analytic), one formal presentation, and participation in informal class discussions.

Music 250. Current Issues in the Ethnography of Music. Professor Vandemeer.

This class will introduce some of the major issues current to the study of ethnomusicology by focusing on specific examples of musical ethnography from around the world. The bulk of the class will involve the analysis of various ethnographic research projects to demonstrate issues within a variety of world musical cultures by scholars using diverse theoretical stances and methodological approaches. In addition, we will: (1) read and discuss shorter articles that help provide a context for the larger studies; (2) view documentaries that provide other types of perspective; and, (3) listen to a wide variety of examples. By the end of the semester, we should have covered many of the current issues relevant to the social scientific study of music. We will also discuss the potential applications of methodologies, analytical practices, and concepts that could inform musical scholarship as a whole, and explain musical systems in the context of globalization and the world system.

Music 337. The Aesthetics of Absolute Music. Professor Bonds.

The idea of an autonomous music, freed from all strictures of representation or meaning, has played a central role in musical aesthetics ever since the end of the late eighteenth century. Critical accounts about what eventually came to be called "absolute" music have much to tell us about changing perceptions of instrumental music, music in general, and the wider place of music within the arts. In this seminar, we will discuss both primary and secondary sources that can help illuminate the aesthetics of absolute music, with particular emphasis on the period between 1790 (Kant's Critique of Judgment) and 1870 (Wagner's essay on Beethoven). Primary sources to be considered will include writings by Kant, Wackenroder, Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, A.B. Marx, Hanslick, Liszt, and Wagner. Secondary literature will include writings by Dahlhaus, Neubauer, Lawrence Kramer, Goehr, Bonds, Chua, and Hoeckner.