How does music’s harmonic language work? What principles influence harmonic choices in different styles of music, and what do Amy Beach’s compositions, Rihanna’s songs, and Chopin’s etudes have in common? How do composers and musicians manage the intricate relationship between harmony and melody? In this course, we’ll develop a deeper understanding of conventions of tonal harmony in music from popular and classical traditions, among others.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? A provisional answer from the field of sound studies is: no, the falling tree produces vibration, but does not make a sound absent a listening, hearing human subject. Take another step, and we arrive at ethnomusicologist John Blacking’s time-honored (but not unproblematic) definition of music as “humanly organized sound” and “soundly organized humanity.” In this course, we linger at the intersections of sound and music, listening and hearing to learn about the human.

(Offered as MUSI 221 and EUST 221) Monks living in monastic seclusion, troubadours serving their ladies and fighting wars, mad princes writing complicated polyphonic music, male castrato singers celebrated as the pop-stars of opera houses are just a few of the fascinating characters who participated in music making from the Middle Ages until the middle of the eighteenth century in Europe. The music they produced is frequently called "early music," a falsely unifying label that hides the kaleidoscopic nature of this fantastic repertory, ranging from monophonic chant to opera.

(Offered as MUSI 126 and BLST 134 [US]) This course examines the cultural origins of hip hop and how this small, minority, Bronx-based subculture expanded into one of the most influential styles of music in the world. This year, the course will focus more on the music’s political potential, analyzing how hip hop artists have wielded their music’s popularity to highlight systemic inequalities and enact social change.

Through composition, analysis, listening practice, and performance, we will build a solid working understanding of many principles of melody and harmony common in Western musical traditions. The course aims to develop comfort and dexterity in engaging with music via listening, analysis, and creative work. Assignments include harmonizing melodies, writing short melodies and accompaniments, and composing in several forms from classical minuets to Broadway-style 32-bar AABA form.

This course is intended for students with little or no background in music who would like to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of how music works. Students will be introduced to the technical details of music such as musical notation, intervals, basic harmony, meter and rhythm. Familiarity with basic music theory will enable students to read and perform at sight as well as provide an introduction to the composition of melodies with chordal accompaniment.

This course will introduce students to important concepts in effective academic writing by thinking about and thinking through popular music. Our complex relationships to popular music confront us with a host of challenging social, cultural, political, and ethical issues. How do we use music to construct, maintain, or challenge private and public identities? How are race, gender, class, sexuality, and the nation constructed through popular music? What is the role of music in our everyday lives?

This course aims to instill an appreciation of various types of music mainly from the so-called classical tradition of Western music from  eleventh-century Gregorian chant through twentieth-century genres such as the American musical, minimalism, and jazz (the blues, swing, bebop, and cool jazz). Additionally, our chronological survey will include genres such as the symphony, the concerto, program music, piano music (Romantic character pieces and ragtime), and opera. In addition to works by long-canonized composers (e.g.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

An introduction to general topology: the topology of Euclidean, metric and abstract spaces, with emphasis on such notions as continuous mappings, compactness, connectedness, completeness, separable spaces, separation axioms, and metrizable spaces. Additional topics may be selected to illustrate applications of topology in analysis or to introduce the student briefly to algebraic topology. Four class hours per week. Offered in alternate years.