Courses Offered in Fall 2023 (112AY 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 music 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 4. 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.

This course focuses on the various definitions of music aesthetics and its relationship to the Western art music tradition and European culture. Our case studies derive from the writings of music critics, authors, composers, and philosophers between the eighteenth- to the twentieth century. In the first half of the semester, we will study Hanlisck’s On the Beautiful in Music, a controversial work that is normally considered the starting point of the music aesthetics. We will read use the writings by Milton Babbitt, Walter Benjamin, and Roland Barthes to delve into issues regarding the relationship between modern music and its audience, the reading of art when it is mechanically reproduced, and the idea of the author.

We will use various repertories and performance events (concerts, museum trips) to complement our readings. Performance majors are encouraged to bring their instruments to demonstrate their points during their presentations.