The Art of Listening (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 3, Section 001
Instructor: Gordon Beeferman
Course Assistant: Zeke Levine
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30am to 10:45am
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.
Elements of Music (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 20, Section 001
Instructor: Moon Young Ha
Teaching Assistant: Michael Rose
Mondays and Wednesdays 2pm to 3:15pm (Lecture)
Mondays 12:30pm to 1:45pm (LAB) or Wednesdays 3:30pm to 4:45pm (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 as a theory course.
Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
Topics in 20th Century Music: Afro-Cuban Music of the 20th Century (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 111, Section 001
Instructor: Yunior Terry
Tuesdays and Thursdays 5pm to 6:15pm
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 Cultures or Sonic Art
Anthropology of Music: Music of Africa (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 153, Section 001
Instructor: Christine Dang
Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30pm to 4:45pm
Course Description: This course explores sounds and politics of music-making in postcolonial Africa. Drawing on sources in literature, history, and cultural studies—in addition to analysis of recordings and films—we study the ways African individuals and communities use music to represent their beliefs and practices and to respond to the institutions dominating their societies.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Cultures
Aural Perception (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 193, Section 001
Instructor: Alice Teyssier
Teaching Assistant: Annie Garlid
Tuesdays and Thursdays 11am to 12:15pm (SEM)
Fridays 11am to 12:15pm (RCT) or Fridays 12:30pm to 1:45pm (RCT)
Course Description: This course considers the enormous transformative potential of the act of performance, in continually reifying the work of art in the contemporary perspectives, logics and sociopolitical circumstances of its time. While a book or a painting remain in some ways objects unto themselves, a work of music or drama passes through the bodies, minds and consciousness of its performer, imbuing the work with new, ever-expanding human experiences. Students will concern themselves with uncovering layers of meaning—aesthetic and poietic—within the longer legacy of a work and its interpretations. Course readings, viewings, listenings and guests will help connect historical music with our contemporary values while also taking the long overdue step of incorporating the idiosyncratic identities of performers into musicological study.
Music Major Requirement. Students must also register for one of the two listed RCT sections.
Music Theory I (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 201
Instructor: Joel Rust
Teaching Assistant: Vasiliki Krimitza
Mondays and Wednesdays 09:30am to 10:45am (Seminar)
Mondays 3:30pm to 4:45pm (LAB) or Wednesdays 12:30pm to 1:45pm (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.
Music Major Requirement. Students must also register for one of the two listed LAB sections.
Music Theory II (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 202
Instructor: Elizabeth Hoffman
Teaching Assistant: Michael Seltenreich
Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30am to 10:45am (Seminar)
Mondays 12:30pm to 1:45pm (LAB) or Wednesdays 3:30pm to 4:45pm (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.
Performance and Analysis (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 206
Instructors: Louis Karchin and Alice Teyssier
Tuesdays 2pm to 4:30pm
Course Description: Students will study and learn to perform works from various periods of music, with a focus on interpretation and analysis. The works may be studied as individual or group projects (solo pieces or chamber music), and regular coachings will be supplemented with sessions delving into analysis of the music. A brief audition is required to establish proficiency on an instrument, and students should contact the music department to set up an audition time. May be repeated for credit. For spring 2021: students may submit a brief sound file or video of their playing to Prof. Alice Teyssier (teyssier@nyu.edu) or Prof. Louis Karchin (lsk1@nyu.edu).
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Principles of Composition (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 307
Instructor: Friedrich Kern
Thursdays 2pm to 4:30pm
Course Description: Explores various compositional techniques, with an emphasis on modern-day writing procedures. Students write music regularly and receive suggestions from the instructor intended to foster the development of their individual compositional voices. Students also study specific musical scores corresponding to their areas of interest. PREREQUISITE: MUSIC THEORY I
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Special Topics Seminar: Sound and the Environment (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 901, Section 003
Instructor: J. Martin Daughtry
Tuesdays and Thursdays 2pm to 3:15pm
Description: Environmental concerns loom large in 2021. From the California wildfires to the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, from air pollution in Delhi to water shortages in the American Southwest, from climate refugees in Central America to a growing wave of species extinctions globally, climate change, ecological stress, and unlivable habitats are no longer abstract future concerns; increasingly, they are concrete lived experiences. What might music studies, with its emphasis on sound and listening, contribute to our understanding of the fragile environments in which we are enmeshed? Can climate change be heard? Are plants capable of listening? Can music save the world? Or is it helping to hasten the end of it? In this seminar, we will read work on sound and the environment, listen to a broad array of environmentally-themed sound art, talk with scholars and artists, and work on creative projects that explore the intersection of sound, music, and environment.
Area of Study: Music, History, and Cultures or Sonic Art
Special Topics Seminar: Making Music and Sound Art in the World Today (ONLINE)
MUSIC-UA 901, Section 004
Instructor: Jaime Oliver
Mondays and Wednesdays 11am to 12:15pm
Description: In this course, we will think and theorize how music and sound art engage with their time and place. We will explore how sonic arts works can engage with the environment, politics, their own media, and how this engagement has transformed the art form. The final project for this course is a work of music or sound art broadly construed.
Area of Study: Sonic Art
Internship
MUSIC-UA 981
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