Music 102 - FIRST NIGHTS

This course serves as an introduction to the history of Western music by studying in detail the first performances of a small number of singularly important works in the Western tradition including Orfeo (Monteverdi), Messiah (Handel), the Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), the Symphonie fantastique (Berlioz), and Le Sacre du printemps (Stravinsky). Using Thomas Kelly’s textbook First Nights (which treats these five compositions), we analyze musical monuments as aesthetic objects and consider their relation to such issues as exoticism, politics and religious belief, as well as the status of this canon in the early 21st century.