Spring 2010

MUSC 850: Proseminar in Music History
Fourteenth-Century Italy
Prof. John Nádas

The repertories and styles of the Italian Ars Nova, beginning with music at the courts of Milan, Verona, and Padova in the first half of the century, continuing with the works of the most famous late Trecento composers, in particular Landini, Ciconia, and Zachara.  Topics to be covered include the Italian and French notational systems, the Rossi, Squarcialupi, and San Lorenzo manuscript collections, performance practices, and the exciting musical language of fin-de-siècle Italian lyric forms, motets and Mass movements within the context of the Great Schism. Students will read widely and seek to rethink issues raised in recent publications, with an emphasis on a better understanding of primary sources, poetic and musical styles, and modern analytical concerns. Class presentations and a research paper.

MUSC 930: Seminar in Music Theory
Form in Music
Prof. Felix Woerner

The investigation of form in music has a long-standing tradition in musicological research. In the seminar, we will explore issues of musical form from several perspectives. First, we will look at how this study is approached in most recent contributions to formal theory (e.g., William Caplin; James Hepokoski, and Warren Darcy). Secondly, we will explore the development of concepts of form in German music theory from 1850 to 1950. Theoretical writings by Adolph Bernhard Marx, Hugo Riemann, Ernst Kurth, Arnold Schoenberg, and others will serve as a starting point of our investigations. Over the course of the seminar, we will try to understand how form was conceptualized, and how these ideas might relate to broader cultural, philosophical, scientific, and possible compositional developments between the mid nineteenth century and twentieth-century modernism.

MUSC 970: Seminar in Ethnomusicology
Music and Religion
Prof. Marzanna Poplawska

This seminar explores manifold relations between music and religion, offering a variety of perspectives from the point of view of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and religious studies. In the course of the semester we will investigate the nature, role and power of music in various religious rituals and traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, as well as indigenous religions in a variety of cultural settings worldwide. The issues discussed will also include trance and sacred dance, relations between religion and film, religious minorities, identity construction, and intersections of religion and politics, with emphasis on music and its place in the collective and individual agendas. Some other relevant expressive forms such as images and objects of worship may also be a subject of discussion. Several guest speakers from various fields will contribute to this course, sharing their work and expertise.