Afro-Cuban Music of the 20th Century
MUSIC-UA 111, Section 001
Instructor: Yunior Terry
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Course Description: This course will introduce students to Cuban music, from traditional popular music to the more contemporary sounds of Havana today. The course will take a close look at the major events and factors that shaped the arts and culture in Cuba historically and the influences that led to the unique sound of Cuban music and its aesthetics. An understanding of Cuban music requires familiarity with clave, and we will analyze the 6/8 clave, rumba clave and son clave. Through exercises of clapping and singing, and by using hand percussion instruments students will develop an understanding of beat, syncopation, and melodic counterpoint. In addition, we will explore some of the more well-documented genres like Danzon, Son, Rumba, Mambo, Cha-cha-cha, Bolero, and arrive at Timba. Class work will include readings, DVD's, contemporary recordings, and field trips to experience first-hand Cuban music performed live in NYC. No previous instrumental training is required but, of course, is helpful.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Culture
The Art of Listening
MUSIC-UA 3, Section 001
Instructor: TBA
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
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 can be counted toward the Music minor and major as an elective.
Elements of Music
MUSIC-UA 20, Section 001
Instructor: TBA
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM (LEC)
Mondays 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM (LAB) or Wednesdays 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM (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 can be counted toward the Music minor as a theory course or the major as an elective.
Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
Ensemble: Vocal
MUSIC-UA 505, Section 001
Instructor: Alice Teyssier
Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM
Course Description: This ensemble will gather interested students into an open, supportive community space for collective vocalizing and music-making. Students will be invited to propose repertoires, as well as engage with works from a variety of eras, styles and approaches. In addition to tutti projects, solos and small groups will break apart from within the class and will share their work for one another’s feedback. Several performance opportunities will be provided for participants, including an end-of-semester showcase performance.
A brief virtual audition is required to enroll. Please contact the instructor, Alice Teyssier, at at141@nyu.edu to schedule.
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Ensemble IV: The Afro-Cuban Creative Jazz Ensemble
MUSIC-UA 508, Section 001
Instructor: Yunior Terry
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:55 PM - 7:25 PM
Course Description: The Afro Cuban ensemble will focus on the different popular styles and genres of the rich Cuban repertoire. Focusing on the best-known composers and traditional forms to get an understanding of the nuances and complexity of the music. (Open to all)
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Jazz
MUSIC-UA 18, Section 005
Instructor: Martin Daughtry
Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM (SEM)
Fridays 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM (RCT)
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 the listed RCT section.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Culture; Sonic Art
Music Theory I
MUSIC-UA 201, Section 001
Instructor: TBA
Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30 AM- 10:45 AM (SEM)
Mondays 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM (LAB) or Wednesdays 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM (LAB)
Course 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.
Students registering for this class should be able to identify key signatures, lead intervals, and identify the difference between major chords and at least three different minor scales.
Music Major Requirement. Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
All students must pass an entrance test in order to remain enrolled in this class. Please register for the class and an administrator will reach out to you regarding the test. If you have any questions, email fas.music@nyu.edu.
Music Theory II
MUSIC-UA 202, Section 001
Instructor: TBA
Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM (SEM)
Mondays 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM (LAB) or Wednesdays 8:00 AM - 9:15 AM (LAB)
Course Description: Chromatic harmony as developed and practiced by composers of the 19th century and beyond. Introduction to score reading and principles of musical analysis applied to larger musical structures. Continuation of species counterpoint and an introduction to invertible counterpoint and fugue.
Music Major Requirement. Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
All students must pass an entrance test in order to remain enrolled in this class. Please register for the class and an administrator will reach out to you regarding the test. If you have any questions, email fas.music@nyu.edu.
Special Topics Seminar: Re-Thinking Instruments
MUSIC-UA 901, Section 001
Instructor: Fanny Gribenski
Mondays 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Course Description: In recent years, the “material” turn within the humanities has brought along many new and exciting ways to think about musical instruments. Long the purview of the specialized field of “organology,” musical instruments have become a rich site for conversations between scholars of various disciplines, including music and sound studies, media studies, museum studies, history of science, science and technology studies, anthropology, environmental history, and Indigenous studies. Drawing on this growing collection of scholarship, combined with regular visits to different music venues, museums, and instrument workshops across the city, this class will explore some of the most innovative questions that surround musical instruments today, including: What can instruments teach us about sound and music that other material sources (whether archives, scores, or interviews) cannot? What are some of the emerging methodologies being used to approach the study of instruments? And how do these new insights on musical instruments translate across diverse professional practices, including curation, performance, and composition?
Area of Study: Sonic Art; Music, History, & Culture
Special Topics Seminar: Drama Queens: Opera, Gender and the Poetics of Excess
MUSIC-UA 901, Section 009
Instructor: Eugenio Refini
Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM
Course Description: What is a drama queen? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a drama queen is “a person who is prone to exaggeratedly dramatic behaviour” and “a person who thrives on being the centre of attention.” While drama queens certainly exist among us in real life, the world of opera is indeed one of their ideal environments. Echoing back to their tragic fates, the powerful voices of Dido, Medea, Violetta, and Tosca never ceased to affect their empathetic public. In fact, excess and overreactions are two main features of the operatic experience both on stage and in the audience. By focusing on the ways in which operatic characters are brought to life, the course explores the social, political, and gender dynamics that inform the melodramatic imagination. Along with a broad introduction to the development of the operatic genre and the opera libretto from 1600 to 1900, the course will provide students with a theoretical background across literature and musical culture, reception, voice/sound and gender studies. Case studies include highlights from operas by Monteverdi, Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini as well as readings from works by authors such as Balzac, Tolstoy, D’Annunzio, and theoretical writings by Abel, Butler, Dolar, Koestenbaum, among others. Students will have the opportunity to attend screenings and live performances. No musical skills required. This course will be taught in English.
SAME AS ITAL-UA 180: Drama Queens: Opera, Gender and the Poetics of Excess
Area of Study: Music, History, and Culture
Special Topics Seminar: Early Music in Sounds and Songs
MUSIC-UA 901, Section 009
Instructor: Ariane Bottex-Ferragne
Tuesdays & Thursdays 4:55 PM - 6:10 PM
Course Description: War cries, bird songs, city noises, nonsense poetry, love laments, divine invocations: this class will cover a thousand years of such sounds and songs from the pre-modern world (from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution). While offering a survey of the basic idioms, genres and forms of early Western music (troubadour and trouvère, plainchant, madrigal, early opera, etc.), this class will question how textual, musical and spatial textures were used to create artistic dialogues and render a wealth of sonic experiences. Course taught in English. No previous knowledge of music is required.
SAME AS FREN-UA 865-001
Area of Study: Music, History, and Culture
Words & Music
MUSIC-UA 140, Section 001
Instructor: David Samuels
Wednesdays 11:00 AM - 1:30 PM
Course Description: Is writing about music really like dancing about architecture? In this class we will explore the question of effective writing about music and sound in three ways: reading and analyzing outstanding and effective writing about music by others; by thinking and learning about approaches to writing; and by conducting independent research projects.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Culture
Internship
MUSIC-UA 981, Section 001
Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies Required
Independent Study
MUSIC-UA 997, Section 001
2 or 4 credits
Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies Required
Independent Study
MUSIC-UA 998, Section 001 and Section 002
2 or 4 credits
Permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies Required