Courses Offered in Spring 2012 (100AY 2S)

1. Source studies: audio, notational, written
2. Writing and presentation skills: style and format
3. Computational Skills: Word, EndNote, On-line Databases, Sonic Visualizer.
Every one should pursue an individual term project in tempo or edition studies.

1. Reading, Writing & Presentation: sources, arguments, format and style.
2. Computational Skills: Word, Endnote, On-line Databases.
Every one should pursue an individual term project either in literature review or book review writing.

The Seminar in Performance Practice (or, Performing Practice) is an introductory course on all aspects of the way in which music is and has been performed, with special emphasis on the importance of a historical awareness as a pre-requisite for modern performers. In this comprehensive study, there is no limitation on the kinds of approach to solving interpretational problems, and the basis of the course is to help students reach for a true understanding of the work he or she performs.
The study will require a wide range of reading from historical treatises, critical writings, to present-day discussion on interpretation issues. Actual music will be used for performance studies, and where possible, discography will aid our perspective on the original instrument sound and the various interpretive styles. Students are encouraged, last but not least, to gain first hand experience if at all possible, on some period instruments for important references.

European fascination with East Asia grew enormously during the 18th century, leaving a notable imprint upon the culture and music of the period. This seminar explores musical Chinoiserie and other related phenomena in the Age of the Enlightenment. The first half of the semester will be devoted to becoming closely familiar with specific musical works of the era which provide evidence for how Europeans musically constructed their own conceptions of the “Far” East, including Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les indes galantes (1735), Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Le cinesi (1754), and Antonio Salieri’s Cublai, Gran Kan de’ Tartari (1786). Then, in the second half of the semester, we will draw upon the foundation of knowledge gained during the first half in order to engage the challenge of theorizing the encounter of disparate cultures in a manner that goes beyond banal notions of mixture, fusion, and the like. Among the concepts which will inform this theoretical component of the course are hybridity, assimilation, exoticism, ambivalence, and masquerade/disguise, drawn from essential writings in the fields of cultural studies and postcolonial studies.

A writing seminar where individual projects are presented and discussed, complemented by readings in theoretical and methodological literature on musicological research and writing. The aim is to help each other to be a more experienced and critical writer of academic paper, abstracts, program notes etc.