Weekly meetings for exploration and coaching of varied repertory for duos and small ensembles. May be repeated for credit. Open to instrumental students. Instructor permission required.

Weekly meetings for exploration and coaching of varied repertory for duos and small ensembles. May be repeated for credit. Open to instrumental students. Instructor permission required.

Prerequisite: a course in composition. May be repeated for credit. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required.

In this seminar, we consider various kinds of writing--from daily journalism and popular criticism to academic monographs and scholarly essays--that concern the broad history of music. Via regular writing assignments and group discussions of substance and style, students have opportunities to improve the mechanics, tone and range of their written prose. Required of senior majors; open to others with instructor permission. Enrollment limited to 12. Juniors and seniors only. Instructor permission required.

What counts as music? Who decides? Can anyone make music? This course raises these and other questions by focusing on experimental music. We explore the history and practice of experimental music, focusing on text, graphic, and other forms of notation. We also look at the history of experimental music in performance, and make our own in-class performances of several key pieces. Through our reading and practice, we ask questions about musical authority, skill, and even failure, and the role of institutions in shaping our musical ideas.

In this course, we will learn to use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as an efficient tool to approach accuracy in lyric diction. Choral and solo singers must frequently perform music in languages that they do not speak, and therefore often struggle to sing with accurate pronunciation. IPA is a set of orthographic characters, almost entirely based on the Roman alphabet, that standardizes phonetics across most major languages. Corequisite: MUS 952, MUS 953 or individual voice performance lessons. Enrollment limited to 20.

Music and theatre are both time-based arts that involve bodies in motion in front of an audience. Though they may be considered separate disciplines, the full extent of what they share often makes them wonderfully indistinguishable. This course probes the intersections of music and theatre through a survey of genres, works, artists, and practitioners.

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.