This course engages global music theories from the perspective of ethnomusicology and analytic approaches drawn from sound studies. The music we analyze will come from popular, folk, and classical traditions around the world, including West African drumming, Caribbean dance genres, East Asian court and religious traditions, American roots music, classical traditions from the Arab world and Indian subcontinent, and several global popular styles.
Whether it’s a rapper lyrically flowing over a looped breakbeat or a Bach fugue’s imitative melodic lines helping determine the piece’s structure, most of the music we interact with on a daily basis involves the careful interplay of two or more musical elements. Putting musical lines in conversation creates grooves, harmonies, and complex timbral sonorities. But how do musicians and listeners make sense of the relationship between simultaneously sounding musical ideas?
The Amherst College Concert Choir is the premier performing and touring ensemble at Amherst College. Singers will learn to refine aural and vocal skills while singing challenging music from all genres and styles in this chamber setting. Participation in the Glee Club is a co-requisite for Concert Choir. Meets twice a week for 90 minutes and once a week for 30 minutes. Lecturer Arianne Abela. Fall and Spring Semester.
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Many young musicians find the close collaboration and artistic give-and-take of chamber music to be uniquely rewarding. Possible chamber music configurations include but are not limited to string quartets, piano trios, woodwind and brass quintets, and other ensembles with piano. Both self-formed and instructor-suggested groups are feasible, and enrollees are permitted to select repertoire from an array of choices recommended by the instructor.
The Amherst Symphony Orchestra is open by audition to all students regardless of major. It rehearses twice a week from 7-930pm on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and performs three concerts per semester. Membership ranges in size from fifty to eighty. Repertoire includes overtures, concertos, symphonies and tone poems by canonic composers from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern periods in addition to works by a diversity of historically underrepresented artists.
Participation in a jazz combo involves 2 coached sessions per week and a minimum of 3 performances each semester. Players are placed in groups according to their ease with the skill of improvisation. Repertoire is taken from traditional, standard jazz resources as well as more popular music and original compositions. Though prior experience is helpful, we can find a place for virtually all who wish to be a part of this vibrant program. Establised in 2021-2022, Jazz@Friedmann Room provides a club-like atmosphere for our students to share their musical progress.
The Amherst College Jazz Ensemble meets a minimum of 2X per week in rehearsals and gives a minimum of three performances each semester. Membership is possible for those who perform on traditional jazz instrumentation (saxophones, brass, piano, guitar, bass, drums, vibes) as well as vocalists. An exciting opportunity each year is the chance to give a world premiere of a piece composed especially for the membership of the jazz ensemble. This always current piece goes along with other repertoire that is chosen from the last 100 years of jazz.
(Offered as MUSI 225 and FAMS 375) Jazz occupies a special role in the development of American film. From The Jazz Singer (1927), the first American film that included synchronized sound, to the sprawling Jazz: A Documentary (2001) from Ken Burns, filmic representations of jazz speak to fundamental ways that Americans negotiate difference and imagine national identity. This course examines the relationship between jazz and American culture through three modalities: improvisation, narrativity, and representation. How might jazz improvisation influence the construction of film?
Through composition, analysis, listening practice, and performance, we will build a solid working understanding of many principles of music 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, creative representation and listening projects, and annotated analysis. On several occasions we will use our instruments and voices to bring musical examples to life in the classroom.
