This course will explore compositional techniques that grow out of the various traditions of Western art music. Innovations of twentieth-century composers in generating new approaches to melody and scale, rhythm and meter, harmony, instrumentation, and musical structure will be examined. The course will include improvisation as a source of ideas for written compositions and as a primary compositional mode. Instrumental or vocal competence and good music reading ability are desirable. Assignments will include compositions of various lengths and related analytical projects.

Basic principles of harmonic and contrapuntal technique. Emphasis will be on the acquisition of writing skills. This course is the first of the required music theory sequence for majors. Three hours of lecture and two ear-training sections per week.

(Offered as MUSI 222 and EUST 222.)  One of three courses in which the development of Western music is studied in its cultural-historical context. As practical, in-class performance and attendance at public concerts in Amherst and elsewhere will be crucial to our work. Composers to be studied include Beethoven, Rossini, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, Musorgsky, and Brahms. Regular listening assignments will broaden the repertoire we encounter and include a wide sampling of Classical and Romantic music.

Sacred Sound examines the relationship between music and religion in broad comparative perspective. In the context of major world religions, new religious movements, and traditional spiritual practices, we will address fundamental issues concerning sacred sound: How does music enable and enhance the ritual process? How is sound sacred and what are its affects? What happens as sacred sound circulates globally among diverse communities of listeners and in secular spaces?

A course designed to explore jazz harmonic and improvisational practice from both the theoretical and applied standpoint. Students will study common harmonic practice of the jazz idiom, modes and scales, rhythmic practices, and consider their stylistic interpretation. An end-of-semester performance of material(s) studied during the semester will be required of the class. A jazz-based ear-training section will be scheduled outside of the regular class times. Two class meetings per week.

Through analysis, performance, and composition, we will build a solid working understanding of basic principles of melody and harmony common in Western musical traditions. Assignments will include writing short melodies and accompaniments as well as more detailed compositional and improvisational projects. We will use our instruments and voices to bring musical examples to life in the classroom. Two class meetings and one lab session per week.

FALL SEMESTER DESCRIPTION:

(Offered as BLST 204 [A] and MUSI 105.)   This course focuses on twentieth-century African popular music; it examines musical genres from different parts of the continent, investigating their relationships to the historical, political and social dynamics of their respective national and regional origins.  Regional examples like highlife, soukous, chimurenga, and afro-beate will be studied to assess the significance of  popular music as a creative response to social and political developments in colonial and postcolonial Africa.  The course also dis

This course explores the nature of probability and its use in modeling real world phenomena. The course begins with the development of an intuitive feel for probabilistic thinking, based on the simple yet subtle idea of counting. It then evolves toward the rigorous study of discrete and continuous probability spaces, independence, conditional probability, expectation, and variance. Distributions covered include the Bernoulli and Binomial, Hypergeometric, Poisson, Normal, Gamma, Beta, Multinomial, and bivariate Normal. Four class hours per week.

An introduction to analytic functions; complex numbers, derivatives, conformal mappings, integrals. Cauchy’s theorem; power series, singularities, Laurent series, analytic continuation; Riemann surfaces; special functions. Four class hours per week.

Requisite: MATH 211. Fall semester. Professor R. Benedetto.