Special Topics Courses and Seminars Offered by the Musicology Faculty
Academic Year 2006–07
(Times subject to change; see quarterly updates. Course prerequisites below.)

Fall

16-HILT-662 (3 U or 3 G): Genre Topics: Topic in Eighteenth-Century Music (visiting prof., MWF, 9:00-9:50).

16-HILT-663 (3 U or 3 G): Music in Culture Topics: American Music from Colonization to Civil War (mcclung, TH, 11:00-12:20). Surveys music of Native Americans, African Americans, and European Americans under such sundry topics as psalmody, ballads, spirituals, the First New England School, minstrelsy, traveling virtuosi, shape-note hymnody, band music, popular song, and “the Beethoven of America.”

16-HILT-848 (3 G): Music in Culture Advanced Topics: “Wagner and Cinema” (Joe, TH, 2:00-3:20). This course examines Wagner's influence on cinema under four different topics: 1) cinematic elements in Wagner's aesthetics of music drama; 2) cinematic production of his music dramas, beginning with Edwin S. Porter's silent film of Parsifal; 3) Wagner on soundtrack, ranging from the Lohengrin Prelude in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator to “The Ride of Valkyrie” in Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now; 4) and the film directors who also staged Wagner, for instance, Werner Herzog and Patrice Chéreau. Course readings will be selected from Wagner's own writing and various scholarly and journalistic sources, such as Alex Ross's New Yorker article, “The Ring and The Rings,” which discusses the relationship between Wagner's Ring cycle and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings series.

16-HILT-982 (4 G): Seminar in Musicology: Petrucci Prints (Schlagel, W 2:00-4:50). In 1501 Ottaviano Petrucci changed the face of musical culture when he issued the Odhecaton, the first printed volume of polyphony. He remained in business for the next twenty years, printing volumes of French chansons, Italian frottole, and Latin masses and motets. In this seminar we will examine the dynamics of the “incunabula” period of music printing. Topics will range from the repertory itself and Petrucci's role as “arbiter of taste,” to the techniques of music printing, the function of Papal privilege, the competition with Andreas Antico, relationships between print and manuscript transmission, and the commodification of music.

Winter

16-FAM-398H: Honors Special Topics Course: Music, Art, and Thought in Medici Florence, c1430-1600 (Schlagel, TH, 3:30-4:50): From c1430 to c1600, Florence witnessed a remarkable synergy of music, art, and thought financed by the Medici dynasty. Inhabited by such renowned artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, musicians Guillaume DuFay and Heinrich Isaac, and writers Angelo Poliziano and Niccolò Machiavelli, Florence was a vortex of Renaissance humanism. The city also witnessed religious fanaticism and French invasions ravage it for two decades beginning in 1492. In this interdisciplinary course we will study the political, economic, artistic, and cultural forces that gave rise to Florence as a unique center of Renaissance humanism. The course will culminate with a one-week study tour of the city, where modern viewers can witness and experience first-hand an abundance of Medici era art and architecture in situ. Enrollment limited to undergraduate students in the Honors Scholars Program.

16-HILT-662 (3 U or 3 G): Genre Topics: Music and Image in Film (Joe, TH, 11:00-12:20) This course examines various functions of music in film, such as how music confirms or contradicts visual narratives and how music supports the cinematic construction of gender (e.g., in Laura), sexual orientation (e.g., in Philadelphia and Transamerica), or ethnicity (e.g., in The Jazz Singer, the first talkie, and Dances with Wolves). In addition, students will be introduced to major techniques of film music and different aesthetics of selected film music composers, including Friedrich Hollaender, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, and Philip Glass.

16-HILT-663 (3 U or 3 G): Music in Culture Topics: American Music from Reconstruction to Cold War (mcclung, TH, 11:00-12:20). Surveys music of African Americans and European Americans under such sundry topics as the Second New England School, Tin Pan and Shubert Alleys, Blues, Ragtime, Dixieland, Swing, Bebop, “The Boulangerie,” Hillbilly music, Country Western, Bluegrass, and iconoclastic composers such as Ives, Gershwin, Antheil, Cowell, and Partch.

16-HILT-848 (3 G): Music in Culture Advanced Topic: Eighteenth-Century Topic (visiting prof., TH, 11:00-12:20).

16-HILT-982 (4 G): Seminar in Musicology: New Critical Approaches to the Broadway Musical (mcclung, W, 2:00-4:50). The Broadway musical is a bourgeoning area of research within the field of American music. Rather than simply chronicle the genre show-by-show or season-by-season, scholars have begun to probe how the musical has negotiated such issues as gender, class, and sexuality and contributed to the discourse regarding national identify, race, and marginalized “others.” The seminar will survey the various methodologies that scholars are employing: from source study, compositional process, Rezeptionsgeschichte, and musical analysis to deconstruction, semiotics, and social theory. A presentation and term paper of original research will be required of all participants.

Spring

16-HILT-661 (3 U or G): Composer Topics: Eighteenth-Century Composer (visiting prof., MWF, 9:00-9:50).

16-HILT-845 (3G): Nineteenth-Century Advanced Topics: Nineteenth-Century Composer (visiting prof., TH, 2:00-3:20).

16-HILT-842 (3G): Advanced Renaissance Topics: Music in Medici Florence (Schlagel, TH, 11:00-12:20): From c1430 to c1600, Florence witnessed a remarkable synergy of music, art, and thought financed by the Medici dynasty. Inhabited by such renowned artists as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and writers Angelo Poliziano and Niccolò Machiavelli, Florence was a vortex of Renaissance humanism. Concurrent with their accomplishments, Guillaume DuFay and Heinrich Isaac wrote important works for the city of Florence and for the Medici court, and the indigenous canti carnascialeschi flourished. Under the Medici popes in the 1510s and '20s Florence enjoyed strong connections with Rome, the papal chapel, and printer Andrea Antico. With the rise of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany beginning in the 1530s, the Florentine madrigal came to be in hands of Jacques Arcadelt, Costanzo Festa, and Philippe Verdelot. The madrigal comedy took shape in the following decades, and by the end of the century the Florentine camerata produced the first experiments in opera. In this interdisciplinary course we will study the rich musical history of Florence in its political, economic, artistic, and cultural contexts.

16-HILT-982 (4 G): Seminar in Musicology (Nowacki, W 2:00-4:50). The seminar will be devoted to the kind, extent, and distribution of difference in the written tradition of Gregorian chant. Participants will begin by reading received views of the subject and then set about testing them against the empirical evidence in the primary sources (on microfilm and in facsimile). Doing so will require the participants to navigate the medieval manuscripts, read neume notation in several styles of script, and become sufficiently familiar with the melodic tradition to be able to judge what is normal and what is anomalous. The final project will be a research paper reporting original findings.

PRE-REQUISITES 

500- and 600-Level Topics Courses

Undergraduate: Completion of 16-HILT-111–113 and 211–213 or permission of the instructor.

Graduate: Passing grade on the relevant segment of the Music History Placement Exam or relevant segment of Graduate History Review, or permission of the instructor.

800-Level Advanced Topics Courses

Undergraduate: These courses are not open to undergraduates.

Graduate: Successful completion of Graduate Research and Writing (16-HILT-821) AND passing grade on either the relevant segment of the Music History Placement Exam or Graduate History Review, or permission of the instructor.

900-Level Seminars in Musicology

Open to M.M.-Music History and Ph.D.-Musicology students. Students in other doctoral programs by permission of the instructor.