MUS 244 Music History I: Medieval, Renaissance, And
Baroque
This course offers a survey of sacred and secular music from Antiquity to 1750. Students will examine the origins of many musical conventions that we take for granted, such as meter, musical notation, polyphony, and tonality, and will learn about the composers and theorists responsible for these innovations. The origins and development of many genres, including the cyclic Mass, motet, madrigal, sonata, concerto, and cantata, as well as opera, will be explored. We will also consider the institutions and technological advances that allowed for these developments, including the patronage system and the invention of the printing press. Historical, social, and political factors that shaped the repertory and affected musical life during this period will also be investigated.

MUS 346 Music History III: Post-1900 Music And World Music

The first half of the course examines major trends in twentieth- and twenty-first century Western Art Music and American vernacular music. We will observe a weakening of tonality and functional harmony and explore the alternative systems that composers introduced. The influence of non-Western music, pre-nineteenth-century music, and popular music on Western Art Music will also be explored, as will the ways that nationalism, censorship, politics, and advances in technology shape music from this period. The second half of the course introduces students to the music of some non-Western cultures. Taking a case study approach, we will investigate the music of select cultures from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, focusing on the instruments, methods of organizing music, performance contexts, and the significance and meaning of music-making in each culture. We will examine how music helps to express identity and how transmission and globalization affect music. We will conclude by studying a North American musical tradition outside of the Western Art Music sphere, from an ethnomusicological perspective, exposing students to some of the methodologies and key questions of the field.

MUS 490 Senior Project