Courses Offered in Fall 2019 (108AY 1S)

This graduate course introduces research methods, as well as the strategies and the “language” of writing about music to performance majors. We start with a brief review of the basics of research venues, tools, and crucial issues in and ethics of academic writing. We continue with a series of sample writings hand in hand with these principles. We will see how the authors focus on different aspects of perspectives in their discussion of music and how they develop and sharpen their arguments.

The aim of this course is to offer graduate performance majors necessary tools and directions to engage in an intelligent discussion of their repertory, skills that they may apply to their term projects, thesis writing, and lecture recitals. We will have two invited music scholars coming to discuss the ways that they phrase they theories arguments. The selected sample writings will enable us to see the variety of ways that an author may use to approach a music work.

In addition to our weekly discussion, short assignments, and quiz(zes), each student will function as a discussion leader in a class session; sign-up sheet will be distributed by week 3. At the end of the term, the class will be divided into several groups. Each group will present a chosen article or book chapter, discussing how the author’s approach to music and the pros and cons of this writing relate to the principles and basics that we have discussed earlier in the semester.

Our main tasks are professional and academic writings; the skills involved are bibliographical, evaluative, and communicative. The aim is to train ourselves to be an up-to-date musician-scholar-intellectual, able to make music and make sense of music creatively and critically.

Our course is designed as a cycle of four stages:

1. RESEARCH MATTERS: We'll start our intellectual journey by "musing" on who we are, what we do, and why we need to do scholarly research. Then we'll learn the craft of thesis-writing thru criticism and methodological reflections.

2. SUBJECT MATTERS: The first subject of research for musician is our CVs and performance portfolio (posters, bios, program lists and notes). Since this course is designed especially for composition majors, we'll then concentrate on the issue of writing about one's own work thru evaluating and emulating selected examples.

3. STYLE MATTERS: We'll learn to meet our "audience" by written and oral presentations, considering the aspects of form and style.

4. REVIEW MATTERS: Finally, we'll come to present our term project and review what we've accomplished or could be improved. Then we'll preview the perspective of a musician-scholar-intellectual. 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 TA 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.

Our current understanding of what music is and its significance is still very much affected by the rise of aesthetics and the musical art since the 18th-century Europe. Issues such as subjectivity, language, judgment, imagination, romanticism are all connected with music, with contributions from the English empiricist, the French Encyclopédistes, Rousseau, Kant, and Herder et al. This course opts for a historical rather than normative approach and engages contemporary documents to make sense of the legacy of European music in today's global context.

Designed for musicology majors and other students who are interested in independent study; participants will learn to read historical sources and current literature sensitively and critically, and gain experience in academic writing.