Music and its Afterlives

This course is open to all students who are interested in thinking about music and its history. We will examine how music has been captured, preserved, and transmitted over time, from medieval manuscripts to digital recordings. Through hands-on work with primary sources, we will investigate what we can know about the musical past. We will engage key questions in music historiography, including whose music is remembered, how notational and recording technologies shape what survives, and what is gained or lost when sound is translated into symbol. Drawing on musicology, archival studies, and media history, we will develop skills in analyzing historical sources and understanding music as both a historical subject and a methodological problem.