Fundamentals of conducting: gestures, rehearsal techniques, study of representative short scores, and practice leading primarily choral ensembles. Videotaping, class recital.

Every culture in the world has some form of music, but why did music evolve, and what function does it serve? In this course, we will explore the cognitive and neural processes that underlie music perception and production to ask the following questions: Does music have universal features that cross cultures? How does music convey emotion? What do infants know about music? Is music specifically human? And finally, what are the parallels between music and language?