Chamber Music Ensembles
Exploration and coaching of varied repertory for duos and small ensembles. May be repeated for credit. Open to instrumental students. Instructor permission required.
Intro to Composition
Basic techniques of composition, including melody, simple two-part writing and instrumentation. Analysis of representative literature. No previous composition experience required. Prerequisite: MUS 110 or equivalent.
Colq:Music&Democracy
How have social justice movements used music to mobilize people to fight for equality and rights? How have anti-democratic movements used music for reactionary ends? What is the role of music in sustaining—or eroding—democracies? This class examines a range of U.S. and global case studies, including Black Lives Matter, the abortion wars, global protest movements, and music and urban redevelopment.
T-Power of Black Music
The course focuses on the musics of Africa and the African diaspora through the lens of ethnomusicology. Concentrating on selected countries, including Benin, Brazil, Cuba, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United States, it examines the musical performance of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality and the role of music in social and political movements. The course examines the global dimensions and resonances of Africanist musical aesthetics as enabled historically and sustained through ongoing transatlantic exchanges between Africa and the African diaspora.
Colq: Music & the Moving Body
This course considers connections between human movement and music from the perspective of performance, analysis, history and cognition. Discussions include music and gesture, music performance, the role of the body in listening, and the co-constitutive relationship between music and dance. Students develop a deeper awareness of music’s fundamentally embodied nature and learn about a variety of different ways in which movement-music interaction has historically shaped artistic practices.
Music Theory I
This course focuses on connecting music theory concepts to musical experience. Ever wondered why certain harmonies seem to grab you by the ears? How do chord progressions work? This course provides an introduction to diatonic harmony in a range of tonal styles, including classical music and popular music. Students learn to apply technical theory knowledge flexibly and creatively to analysis, composition, and performance. Discussions include harmonic function, voicing and voice leading, dissonance treatment, non-chord tones, texture, cadences, and phrase structure.
Music Theory I
This course focuses on connecting music theory concepts to musical experience. Ever wondered why certain harmonies seem to grab you by the ears? How do chord progressions work? This course provides an introduction to diatonic harmony in a range of tonal styles, including classical music and popular music. Students learn to apply technical theory knowledge flexibly and creatively to analysis, composition, and performance. Discussions include harmonic function, voicing and voice leading, dissonance treatment, non-chord tones, texture, cadences, and phrase structure.
Music Theory I
This course focuses on connecting music theory concepts to musical experience. Ever wondered why certain harmonies seem to grab you by the ears? How do chord progressions work? This course provides an introduction to diatonic harmony in a range of tonal styles, including classical music and popular music. Students learn to apply technical theory knowledge flexibly and creatively to analysis, composition, and performance. Discussions include harmonic function, voicing and voice leading, dissonance treatment, non-chord tones, texture, cadences, and phrase structure.
Making Music History
This class is an introduction to music history that combines a close study of music from the Western classical tradition with research methodology and an orientation to the discipline of musicology. Organized by genres and concepts, the class looks at classical music as both a repertoire and an object of cultural study. In addition to covering a range of works, the course addresses their production, performance and reception through a study of their social and political context, and raises questions of power, representation and patronage.
Colq: T-Fundamentals
Topics of MUS 100 especially designed for those with no previous background in music. They emphasize class discussion and written work, which consists of either music or critical prose as appropriate to the topic. Open to all students, but particularly recommended for first-year students and sophomores. An introduction to music notation and to principles of musical organization, including scales, keys, rhythm and meter. Limited to beginners and those who did not place into MUS 110. Enrollment limited to 20.