Music in Western Cultures

In this course we will develop skills for assessing music’s social, economic, and political importance in Western societies. Through a series of units focusing on various aspects of music (such as composition, performance, dissemination, and reception) and on various eras from ancient Greece to the present, students will engage with the principal questions and methods of historical musicology. Students will learn to interpret musical works’ formal, stylistic, and performative characteristics through close engagement with scores and recordings, and draw connections between musical works and the institutions and wider socio-cultural conditions that have shaped and continue to shape music-making. (MUSC 0101) 3 hrs. lect.