Courses Offered in Fall 2014 (103AY 1S)

FROM THE BIRTH OF MODERN CONCERT LIFE TO THE EMERGENCE OF ROMANTICISM
Connecting music analysis with source reading, sound with society, composition with culture, this course focuses on the music of the late 18th century: mainly Mozart's operas, Haydn's symphonies, and their later works. Issues discussed include Enlightenment ideas, music as entertainment, edification as well as self-expression, and instrumental music and the construction of meaning.
Participants have to report on their readings, and take two written exams.

Taking concert music, popular music and film music as examples to learn to study music's relationship with the society, the environment, and technology.

Our main tasks are professional and academic writings; the skills involved are critical, bibliographical and communicative. The aim is to train ourselves to be a up-to-date musician-scholar-intellectual, able to make music and make sense of music cleverly and critically. Our course is designed as a cycle of four stages:

1. MUSING: As music is an art of the Muses, it's fitting for us musicians in the academy to start our intellectual journey by musing on our identities and responsibilities. These will be expressed practically in our bios, CVs and programs.
2. RE/SEARCHING: Then we'll learn about thesis-writing with examples of reception studies (especially in composition and performance) on Mahler, Debussy, Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky.
3. SHARING: And we'll meet our "audience" by written and oral presentations, considering the aspects of form and style.
4. RETHINKING: Finally, we'll come to full circle with reviewing and musing again, towards being what we want to be. The journey has just begun...

On the whole, we'll be doing a lot of thinking, reading, talking and writing, in and out of the classroom. Our TAs will arrange with you to hold a weekly group tutorial hour. In addition, please don't hesitate to make an appointment with me at my office hour. Concrete "products" at the end of the semester will be a mini-conference and an anthology of selected written work.

(After the more theoretical first semester we'll be getting more practical with the different sources and resources (notational, audio-visual) in the second semester, but that will be offered as an elective course due to curriculum reform.)

For musicology majors and other students who are interested in independent study, this course will engage historical documents to research into the aesthetics of opera and the historiography of music in the late 18th century.
Participants will learn to read historical sources and current literature sensitively and critically, and gain experience in academic writing.

Taking a "hands-on" and interactive heuristic approach, this course provides an open forum for all students to present and discuss their individual projects and conference papers. Theoretical perspectives will be explored as relevant to the practical work at hand. The aim is to help each other to be a more experienced and critical writer of academic paper.

Together the group is also responsible for writing program notes and editing the program booklet for institute recitals.