Musical Ethnography
MUSIC-GA 2166, Section 001
Instructor: David Samuels
Thursdays 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Course Description: Pragmatic instruction in field and laboratory research and analytical methods in ethnomusicology. Emphasizes the urban field site. Topics include research design, fieldwork, participant observation, field notes, interviews and oral histories, survey instruments, textual analysis, audiovisual methods, archiving, urban ethnomusicology, applied ethnomusicology, performance as methodology and epistemology, and the ethics and politics of cultural representation. Students conceive, design, and carry out a limited research project over the course of the semester.
Sem/Tech of Music Composition
MUSIC-GA 2162, Section 001
Instructors: Louis Karchin & Elizabeth Hoffman
Tuesdays 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
Course Description: Examination of techniques of music composition as they are applied to the creation of musical works. Compositional practice is studied and evaluated both from the standpoint of craft and aesthetics. Students create compositions, and works are performed in public concerts.
Special Studies: Fused Images in Text and Performance
MUSIC-GA 2198, Section 001
Instructor: Michael Beckerman
Tuesdays 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Course Description: When studying song, film, ballet and opera we often speak about “the music” and then something else--words, moving images, dancers, staging. In these constructs, the word “and” implies that these conjoined entities are actually discrete and can be studied separately. But words in a song do not function like words in spoken language, let alone like silent words on the page. When what we call musical sound is introduced into multimedia artworks such as film, sound installation, ballet or opera, it makes even less sense to study the components separately. And yet there are scant resources, theoretical or otherwise, to allow us to gain insight just how such things work.
This course draws on perspectives found in the cognitive sciences, philosophy, and other analytical systems to explore what I am calling “fused images” in the hope of coming up with new designs to approach them. Because wholes, in this world, are always more than the mere sums of their parts, it is essential to test models that allow us to treat fused images as they are, without giving in to the temptation to divide them into easily manageable segments. How these fused images are understood by those who encounter them is also an important part of our inquiry. While this course is putatively offered in the Musicology area, students will be able to choose repertoire and subject matter from their own areas of interest.
Special Studies: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Music
MUSIC-GA 2199, Section 001
Instructor: Maureen Mahon
Wednesdays 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Course Description: TBD
Reading and Research
MUSIC-GA 3119, Section 001
Independent study with a faculty supervisor. Must have the approval of the director of graduate studies and the proposed supervisor.
Reading and Research
MUSIC-GA 3119, Section 002
Independent study with a faculty supervisor. Must have the approval of the director of graduate studies and the proposed supervisor.