Gwyneth Bravo

This seminar examines texts and contexts of Czech-Jewish-German musical and artistic culture that flourished in Prague between the World Wars, when a new generation of avant-garde composers and artists reshaped the city’s artistic cultures. Facing postwar political and social uncertainties and impacted by the rise of National Socialism after 1933, many artists were forced into exile, while others were deported to the Czech transit and concentration camp Theresienstadt. Facing illness and death, the prisoners at Theresienstadt forged an underground cultural life that included concerts, lectures, and art exhibits. The seminar engages with developments in Theresienstadt between 1942 and 1944 through the work of composers Haas, Klein, Krasa, and Ullmann, as well as other visual artists and writers imprisoned there. Using journals and a camera, students will explore the physical sites and cultural spaces of Prague and Theresienstadt, as a unique window onto the ideas and experiences of 20th-century modernism.

Do new media change the way we think and perceive the world around us? What does it mean to live in an era after film has reshaped our capacity for documentation and visual expression? In order to explore such fundamental questions, this course focuses on artistic developments during the Weimar period (1918-1933), when Berlin became a vibrant cultural center after World War I. As the emergence of German film provided new aesthetic principles of artistic production and reception, traditional art forms such as literature, theatre, painting, photography, and music were reframed by a new "cinematic imagination." Engaging with the work of cultural theorists who first witnessed the impact of film, photography, radio, and gramophone, the course also explores recent interdisciplinary scholarship in media studies to understand how new technologies shape social and political concerns. A hands-on film project allows students to explore Abu Dhabi's urban cityscapes to create a remake of Walter Ruttman's 1927 film Berlin: Symphony of a City. How can this reflection on modernity and modernization in 1920s Berlin help us understand the cinematic imagination's mediation of urban spaces today?

How can music provide a framework for understanding conflict, as well as protest and peace movements, across a wide range of historical and cultural contexts from the twentieth century to the present? This seminar examines the role that diverse musical traditions and practices play in shaping the complex sociological rituals of war. Whether hearing John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance" as the anthem of the peace and protest movement against the Vietnam War during the 1960s or engaging with music as a basis for cultural and heritage preservation in post-conflict contexts, this seminar draws on scholarship from musicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and sociology, among other fields, to explore music as a contested practice during times of conflict.

What is war? Why do wars exist? What are the differences between wars in the past and those being waged today and how have the conditions of conflict changed throughout history? Is there an art of war? These questions are central to the purview of this course, which examines artistic responses to war across a wide range of historical and cultural contexts from antiquity to the present. The course explores how the arts, particularly music and musical practices, play a critical role in accompanying the sociological rituals of war from the military marches part of deployment, to the laments and requiems that figure centrally in processes of mourning in the aftermath of conflict. Drawing on histories and philosophies of war, students will engage with issues related to propaganda, censorship, detention, internment, torture, heroism, sacrifice, bravery, justice, history, memory, and death and with reference to work by Homer, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Shostakovitch, Britten, Picasso, Dix, Mishima, Wiesel, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and John Lennon, among others.

Prerequisite: Must be an NYUAD student and have not completed the CCOL Core requirement.

This course introduces students to readings and lectures on current topics in the fields of music studies and musicology with a focus on historiography, which is the study of the way history has been written. Within this broad framework, the course will engage with the study of music and its history under a number of different guises, including the historical study of music, addressing both research methodologies as well as the historical narratives used to tell the different "stories" about music history. While the course is organized thematically - providing an examination of music at its intersection with issues related to gender and sexuality, social justice and conflict, race, popular music, as well as media and technology - it is structured historically, providing a forum for an examination of music and musical practices across a wide range of historical and cultural situations from ancient times to the present. Engaging with diverse readings, this course provides a broad critical framework for the exploration of the field of music studies as a discipline that integrates the central concerns of different approaches to musicological and historical research.

2 credits

A diverse array of ensembles is offered each semester. Participants develop skills in active musicianship: performance, listening, communication, and collaboration. Ensembles are offered at beginner, intermediate, and advanced performance levels. Ensemble formations include, for example, NYUAD Vocal Ensemble, A Capella group, or chamber music ensembles. Please contact the instructor or Head of the Music Program for details.

2 credits

Individual Instruction in Music is designed for students willing to develop their skills in one or more musical instruments, vocal performance, or wanting to learn compositional techniques and strategies to help them create musical work under supervision.

How does the encounter with mortality both define human experience and serve as an impetus for aesthetic response? Can musical texts memorialize and immortalize the dying and the dead? From its inception, Western opera has registered changing cultural attitudes towards death. Exploring the myths, legends, and ancient histories that shaped the stories and plots of early operas, the seminar also engages with histories and philosophies of modernity to examine works shaped by the cataclysmic events of the 20th century. Radical changes in the historical conditions of death have resonated far beyond the battlefield, shaping fundamental questions about the meaning of the self, time, and history. How has opera registered these changes and participated in these shifts? Can musical work like an opera provide a map for examining uncharted places beyond the thresholds of human experience? Can opera's music, language and images address the historical challenges of representing death on stage? Drawing on scholarship from diverse fields, the seminar examines operatic works from the 17th century to the present with a special focus on the arias and songs of this genre's dying protagonists.

This course introduces students to readings and lectures on current topics in the fields of music studies and musicology with a focus on historiography, which is the study of the way history has been written. Within this broad framework, the course will engage with the study of music and its history under a number of different guises, including the historical study of music, addressing both research methodologies as well as the historical narratives used to tell the different "stories" about music history. While the course is organized thematically providing an examination of music at its intersection with issues related to gender and sexuality, social justice and conflict, race, popular music, as well as media and technology it is structured historically, providing a forum for an examination of music and musical practices across a wide range of historical and cultural situations from ancient times to the present. This course introduces additional readings, providing students with a framework for the development of their own research within the field of music studies as a basis for field work and independent research.

Prerequisite: MUSIC-UH 1005

The Music Program Capstone Seminar is the space where students deepen their proposed Capstone project proposals in either track for the major. This consists of weekly meetings with the Capstone advisor, complemented by a series of periodic lectures given by each full-time faculty member in the Music Program. The lecture topics relate to issues found pertinent to the development of a solid, well-grounded and rigorous project and accompanying paper. Towards the end of the semester, students are required to formally present the projects to be completed in the following semester.

Prerequisite: Must be a declared Music major and Senior standing.

The Music Practice Capstone Project provides seniors with the opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor and to produce a senior thesis project. Projects may range from an original artistic practice to a theoretical, historical or ethnographic research project. This course is where the project proposal developed and presented in the Music Capstone Seminar is finally accomplished, presented publicly, and defended before a jury.

Prerequisite: MUSIC-UH 4000

(Formerly MUSIC-AD 410)
The capstone experience in Music Studies provides seniors with the opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor and to conduct extensive research on a topic of their choice. The program consists of a capstone seminar, taken in the first semester of the senior year, and a year-long individualized thesis tutorial. During the capstone seminar, Music Studies students will refine a thesis topic of their choice, develop a bibliography, read broadly in background works, and undertake research and/or creative work. In the tutorial, students will work on a one-on-one basis with a faculty mentor to hone their research and produce successive drafts of a capstone project. The capstone experience will culminate in the public presentation of the work and defense before a faculty panel.

Prerequisite: Must be a declared Music major

The Music Studies Capstone Project provides seniors with the opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor and to produce a senior thesis project. Music Studies projects may include theoretical, historical, and ethnographic approaches to music scholarship. This course is where the capstone prospectus developed and presented in the Music Program Capstone Seminar is finally accomplished, presented publicly, and defended before a jury.

Prerequisite: MUSIC-UH 4010