First-Year Seminars 110MZ - Music and Childhood

Unlike many other categories of identity, childhood is both universal and temporary. That simultaneous omnipresence and transience makes it easy to overlook the role played by children in the history of music. This course surveys significant instances of children as creators, performers, consumers, and subjects of music: from Mozart to Michael Jackson, playgrounds to orphanages, street musicians and choristers to the prodigies of TikTok. We will trace the enlisting of children, childhood, and the childlike across a range of musical traditions and pedagogical, aesthetic, commercial, and cultural-political agendas. Students will also contextualize their own memories of childhood musicking.

Mount Holyoke first-year students only, by placement.