MUSIC-UA 3
Instructor: Gordon Beeferman
Mondays and Wednesdays 3:30pm to 4:45pm
Course Description: Students acquire a basic vocabulary of musical terms, concepts, and listening skills in order to describe their responses to musical experiences. Considers the structure and style of influential works in the Western art music repertoire, popular music, or other musical cultures, with attention to the wider social, political, and artistic context.
Course does not count toward the Music major. Course can be counted toward the Music minor as an elective.
MUSIC-UA 18
Instructor: Martin Daughtry
Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30pm to 4:45pm (Lecture)
Fridays 9:30am to 10:45am (LAB)
Fridays 11am to 12:15pm (LAB)
Fridays 12:30pm to 1:45pm (LAB)
Fridays 2pm to 3:15pm (LAB)
Course Description: Over the course of the past hundred years, jazz has been framed variously as an erotic display, a symbol of modernity, an essential expression of the African American soul, the sound of the Black avant garde, "America's classical music," a form of musical cosmopolitanism, a decadent type of bourgeois entertainment, a virtuosic art form, a revolting noise, a radical performance of democracy and freedom, and elevator music. Jazz is, in other words, complicated—its densely textured sound world is entwined with a complex social history. This course immerses you in the sounds of jazz, focusing largely on music made in New York City, the undisputed global capital of the genre. During our regular class and recitation sessions, as well as at a number of evening gatherings, we will listen to recordings, compare notes on the music, work with archival sources, meet musicians, attend concerts, and read a broad array of jazz scholarship and journalism. We will dig into the history of jazz in and beyond the city, and also explore the strange and delightful new shapes jazz is taking in the 21st century. By the end of the term, your understanding of jazz and your understanding of New York will be forever changed.
Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
MUSIC-UA 20, Section 001
Instructor: TBA
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11am to 12:15pm (Lecture)
Mondays 9:30am to 10:45am (LAB)
Wednesdays 2pm to 3:15pm (LAB)
Course Description: Explores the underlying principles and inner workings of the tonal system, a system that has guided all of Western music from the years 1600 to 1900. It includes a discussion of historical background and evolution. Focuses on concepts and notation of key, scale, tonality, and rhythm. Related skills in sight-singing, dictation, and keyboard harmony are stressed in the recitation sections.
Course does not count toward the Music major. Course can be counted toward the Music minor.
Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
Anthropology of Music: Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology
MUSIC-UA 153, Section 001
Instructor: Maureen Mahon
Mondays and Wednesdays 11am to 12:15pm
Course Description: Fieldwork, the process of conducting research through conversations, interviews, and experiences with people, is a primary research method for ethnomusicologists and cultural anthropologists. This course will introduce students to the premises and practices of ethnographic fieldwork, and give them an opportunity to undertake their own music-centered fieldwork project. We will read essays, critical commentaries, and ethnographies written by experienced fieldworkers, in order to learn about ways to choose research sites and research questions, meet and work with research collaborators (formerly known as “informants”), conduct research and document findings, and analyze and present data. We will pay particular attention to the ethical dimensions of fieldwork, the challenges and responsibilities associated with writing about fieldwork, the impact of the fieldworker’s identity on the research process, and the challenges of researching and writing about music and music-making.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Cultures
MUSIC-UA 182, Section 001
Instructor: Michael Moloney
Mondays and Wednesdays 12:30pm to 1:45pm
Course Description: Provides a comprehensive introduction to the traditional and contemporary music of the Celtic areas of Western Europe: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and Galicia. Recordings and live performances present the extraordinary range of singing styles and the musical instruments employed in each culture, including harps, bagpipes, and a variety of other wind, free reed, keyboard, and stringed instruments. Forms and musical styles are explored in depth, along with a study of their origin, evolution, and cultural links.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Cultures
MUSIC-UA 201
Instructor: Moon Young Ha
Mondays and Wednesdays 12:30pm to 1:45pm (Lecture)
Mondays 9:30am to 10:45am (LAB)
Wednesdays 11am to 12:15pm (LAB)
Description: Students study principles of tonal music composition including 18th and 19th century harmonic, formal, and contrapuntal practices. Exercises in four-part voice-leading and species counterpoint are supplemented by analyses of music from around the world and from a variety of genres, including concert and popular music. Weekly lab sections are devoted to skills in musicianship and are required throughout the sequence.
Music Major Requirement. Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
MUSIC-UA 203
Instructor: Joel Rust
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30am to 10:45am (Lecture)
Mondays 11am to 12:15pm (LAB)
Description: Analysis of music of the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, and the creation of imitative compositional models based on works studied as well as on principles acquired earlier in the sequence. Additional topics will include whole-tone and octatonic scale systems, atonality, serialism, and an introduction to post-modern and spectral techniques. Weekly lab sections are devoted to skills in musicianship and are required throughout the sequence.
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Prerequisite: Music Theory I and II; Students must also register for the listed LAB section.
Ensemble: Ensemble of Makers (vocal, instrumental, compositional)
MUSIC-UA 505
Instructor: Alice Teyssier
Tuesdays 2pm to 4:30pm
Course Description: In this course, students will learn ways of making, rehearsing, recording and curating. Students will have the opportunity to collaborate with each other as well as with composition and computer music students at The New School to assemble a large-scale multimedia work (composed of original and pre-composed works of the students' choice), to be shared at the end of the semester. This creative outlet will hone students' technological skills and raise timely issues around authorship, listening, co-creating and performing. All voices, instruments and training levels welcome. Any questions may be posed to Prof Teyssier (teyssier@nyu.edu).
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Special Topics Seminar: Computer Music Theory and Techniques
MUSIC-UA 901, Section 001
Instructor: Jaime Oliver
Mondays and Wednesdays 11am to 12:15pm
Description: This course introduces students to the general theory of digital sound signals, and the techniques to synthesize and transform them. The main objective of the course is to create the skills that allow students to design and program computer music applications, compositions, and art works. The open source programming language Pure Data (Pd) is introduced and taught extensively, though these techniques can be programmed in any programming language/environment. Broadly, the course includes the following topics: sampling theorem and sine waves; samples, reading/writing arrays; additive synthesis; filters and subtractive synthesis; frequency shifting, and amplitude and frequency modulation; delays, pitch-shifting, and reverb; and brief introductions, to video and graphics in GEM, MIDI interfacing, and physical computing. At the end of this course, the student should be able to use Pd to replicate classic devices such as synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, and effects processors, as well as design their own interactive music systems.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Cultures
MUSIC-UA 980
Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies Required
MUSIC-UA 997, Section 001 and Section 002
2 or 4 credits
Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies Required