Courses

Courses by semester

Courses for Fall 2023

Complete Cornell University course descriptions are in the Courses of Study .

Course ID Title Offered
MUSIC1100 Elements of Musical Notation
This four-week course fulfills the requirement of basic pitch, rhythm, and score-reading skills needed for some introductory courses and 2000-level courses with prerequisites.

Full details for MUSIC 1100 - Elements of Musical Notation

Fall.
MUSIC1101 Elements of Music
Have you ever wondered: is there music in outer space? what is music's "deep history"? how do we know music when we hear it? why does it make us want to dance? does it also make us "civilized"? and how do cultural, technological, and economic forces shape why we listen, when we listen, and what we listen to? Elements of Music offers the opportunity to think about all these questions (and more) through a wide variety of hands-on musical activities: experimenting with instruments, recording and manipulating sounds from the world around us, examining medieval musical books, dancing the Twist, sweatin' to the Oldies, playing samba, improvising, singing, and above all, listening to music from around the world.

Full details for MUSIC 1101 - Elements of Music

Fall.
MUSIC1421 Introduction to Computer Music
A composition-based introduction to computer hardware and software for digital sound and media. Fundamentals of audio, synthesis, sequencing, and other techniques for electronic music production. Each student creates several short compositions.

Full details for MUSIC 1421 - Introduction to Computer Music

Fall.
MUSIC1701 FWS: Sound, Sense and Ideas
This First-Year Writing seminar provides the opportunity to write extensively about music's place in our world. Topics vary by section.

Full details for MUSIC 1701 - FWS: Sound, Sense and Ideas

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC2101 Theory, Materials and Techniques I
Study of the foundations of tonal music as manifested primarily in the Western literate tradition, also incorporating examples from various vernacular idioms. The course combines modern pedagogical methods with the study of historical sources and focuses on active learning at the keyboard. Topics to be covered include rudiments such as scales and triads; melodic and harmonic principles; voice-leading strategies and schemata; species counterpoint; improvisation, including techniques of embellishment; rhythm, meter, and gesture. During sections, the concepts and skills introduced in lecture will be practiced at the keyboard as well as vocally. Other section activities include elements of musicianship (aural skills, intervallic production and identification, rhythmic accuracy and fluency, etc.); transcription; sight singing; and score reading.

Full details for MUSIC 2101 - Theory, Materials and Techniques I

Fall.
MUSIC2111 Songwriting
Songwriting introduces students to the practice of songwriting through workshop-formatted classes. We will explore the ingredients of song (lyrics, melody, delivery, harmony, rhythm, form, texture, timbre, and arrangement) through analysis, composition, recording technologies, performance, and concert reports. Proficiency on one or more musical instruments is required. Songwriting can be taken as a stand-alone course or as part of the Songwriting sequence with Collaborative Songwriting.

Full details for MUSIC 2111 - Songwriting

Fall.
MUSIC2221 Bach and Handel
Born within weeks of one another in 1685, their birthplaces less than one hundred miles apart in the forests of central Germany, George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach composed extraordinary music spanning the gamut of human experience and grappling with fundamental human concerns (love, death, duty, happiness) with an expressive power that has never been surpassed. Handel was one of the great cosmopolitans of the eighteenth century and his life and works offer a panorama of European baroque culture. Bach by contrast spent his entire life in the region of his birth; yet his music demonstrates a miraculous awareness of the greater world beyond Germany. In this course students will encounter vocal and instrumental masterpieces by each composer taken from opera, the church, the court, and the home; we will explore the meanings of these works in their own time and their continued vibrancy in the twenty-first century.

Full details for MUSIC 2221 - Bach and Handel

Fall.
MUSIC2311 The Art and Craft of Music Journalism
This workshop in music journalism will sharpen your prose, your mind, and your tongue. We'll read the work of great journalists of the past and present who've written ardently and unforgettably about music - Joseph Addison, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, George Bernard Shaw, Paul Griffiths, Greil Marcus, Stanley Crouch, and Alex Ross, among others. Thus inspired, we'll dive into the vibrant musical scene of Cornell and beyond, each participant writing weekly pieces for the class blog, whose title and format will be determined by class members. In the course of the semester each student will accumulate a substantial portfolio of journalism, and stroke a love of writing about music.

Full details for MUSIC 2311 - The Art and Craft of Music Journalism

Fall.
MUSIC2340 The Beatles
The course will focus on the music of the Beatles and their impact on American and British culture in the 1960s to the present day. Topics include considerations of race, gender, class, sexuality, and the media in their rise to fame; the influence of the counter-culture, drugs, and other rock musicians, as well as Western and Indian classical music on their music and image; their perceived rivalry with the Rolling Stones; and their experimentation with recording technology.

Full details for MUSIC 2340 - The Beatles

Fall.
MUSIC2341 Gamelan in Indonesian History and Cultures
This course combines hands-on instruction in gamelan, Indonesia's most prominent form of traditional music, and the academic study of the broader range of music found in contemporary Indonesia, including Western-oriented and hybrid popular forms. Students thus engage with music directly, and use it as a lens to examine the myriad social and cultural forces that shape it, and that are shaped by it.

Full details for MUSIC 2341 - Gamelan in Indonesian History and Cultures

Fall.
MUSIC2528 Borderlands History of Jazz: Mexico and African America
Since the early 20th century, perhaps no form of music has reflected more elements of American culture than jazz. At various points, jazz has signified working class defiance, African American cultural resistance, mass-mediated popular culture, expressive freedom, high-art avant-gardism, social and political protest, and third world and subaltern solidarity. This course reexamines jazz practice from the point of view of the history of Mexican and Gulf/Caribbean influences in early jazz, and considers this alongside the Underground Railroad to the South, the Afro-Mexican experience, abolition in the Atlantic world, jazz and capitalism/imperialism, Jack Johnson in 1920s Tijuana, and more. Rather than taking a purely chronological approach, this course will combine a historical timeline with weeks focusing on thematic and methodological issues relevant to Africana Studies.

Full details for MUSIC 2528 - Borderlands History of Jazz: Mexico and African America

Fall.
MUSIC3112 Jazz Improvisation and Theory II
Continuation of jazz theory, technique, and applied skills.

Full details for MUSIC 3112 - Jazz Improvisation and Theory II

Fall.
MUSIC3122 Conducting
This course introduces fundamentals of conducting, including, but not limited to, gesture and movement; score reading, analysis, and interpretation; ear training; and historical practices. Students explore these topics in a variety of musical contexts, including orchestral, wind ensemble, choral, and mixed chamber ensembles. Classes are a mix of lectures, demonstrations, peer-to-peer learning activities, and frequent conducting experiences.

Full details for MUSIC 3122 - Conducting

Fall.
MUSIC3140 Instrumentation for Composers
Instrumentation for Composers is an applied course on composing for classical orchestral and traditional instruments that includes weekly writing projects read and discussed by faculty performers and international guest musicians and ensembles. Notation, new and extended techniques, and instrumental combination and orchestration are also covered. Students will compose an ensemble score for performance as part of their final project.

Full details for MUSIC 3140 - Instrumentation for Composers

Fall.
MUSIC3152 Sound Stories: Field Recording in Theory and Practice
This course explores the art of telling stories with recorded sound. During the semester, you will learn to apply a diverse range of recording and studio production techniques to foster your own personal creative storytelling practice. You will also explore an expansive, cross-disciplinary survey of artistic, philosophical, sociological, and scientific approaches to field recording in theory and practice. Workshops, field trips, listening exercises, and collaborative narrative design experiments will culminate in the development of three original sonic artworks and a sound journal documenting your discoveries over the semester.

Full details for MUSIC 3152 - Sound Stories: Field Recording in Theory and Practice

Fall.
MUSIC3302 Rhythm and Blues to Funk: Black Popular Music Before Hip Hop
In this discussion-focused course, we'll investigate the various sounds of Black popular music in the post-World War II period, its antecedents, interactions with other popular musics, and influences on later developments, principally to the mid-1970s. The historical focus of the course locates rhythm & blues (R&B) as both a personal/interactive expression and as an expression of culture; our investigation, therefore, encompasses style history in light of how R&B affects, and is affected by, notions of ethnicity, class, nationalism, racial politics, aesthetics, gender, and genre. Throughout, we will focus our inquiry through listening to historical recordings. We'll investigate what has changed over time and try to understand why. To do this, we'll study writings about music by musicians and non-musicians, study developments in music production and marketing, experience the music hands-on, and do research to add to the body of literature on rhythm-and-blues.

Full details for MUSIC 3302 - Rhythm and Blues to Funk: Black Popular Music Before Hip Hop

Fall.
MUSIC3431 Sound Design
Covering the basics of digital audio, bioacoustics, psychoacoustics and sound design, as they apply to theatre, film and music production. Students create soundscapes for text and moving image using ProTools software.

Full details for MUSIC 3431 - Sound Design

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3511 Individual Instruction
Individual instruction in voice, organ, harpsichord, piano and fortepiano, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and some brass and woodwind instruments to those students advanced enough to do college-level work in these instruments. For more information about individual instruction, see the section titled Musical Instruction.

Full details for MUSIC 3511 - Individual Instruction

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3513 Individual Instruction
Individual instruction in voice, organ, harpsichord, piano and fortepiano, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and some brass and woodwind instruments to those students advanced enough to do college-level work in these instruments. For more information about individual instruction, see the section titled Musical Instruction.

Full details for MUSIC 3513 - Individual Instruction

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3514 Individual Instruction
Individual instruction in voice, organ, harpsichord, piano and fortepiano, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and some brass and woodwind instruments to those students advanced enough to do college-level work in these instruments. For more information about individual instruction, see the section titled Musical Instruction.

Full details for MUSIC 3514 - Individual Instruction

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3602 Chorus
A nationally renowned choral ensemble and vibrant student-driven organization specializing in repertoire for sopranos and altos. Collaborates frequently with the Glee Club to present mixed-voice repertoire and major works. Tours and records annually. 

Full details for MUSIC 3602 - Chorus

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3603 Glee Club
A nationally renowned choral ensemble and vibrant student-driven organization specializing in repertoire for tenors and basses. Collaborates frequently with the Chorus to present mixed-voice repertoire and major works. Tours and records annually.

Full details for MUSIC 3603 - Glee Club

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3604 Chorale
A course for singers wishing to develop their musicianship, sight-reading, and vocal technique.  The Chorale is a performing ensemble, and is focused on the development of essential skills to a high level, preparing students with the musical foundations necessary for a life in choral music.

Full details for MUSIC 3604 - Chorale

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3609 Brazilian Ensemble - Deixa Sambar
Deixa Sambar performs several styles of samba, Brazil's national music. Members need not have prior background in music-making, but a good sense of rhythm is desirable. Members include students as well as Ithaca community members, brasileiros as well as newcomers to Brazilian culture. Rehearsals develop playing skills, with a deep emphasis on cultural understanding of this vital, community-based music.

Full details for MUSIC 3609 - Brazilian Ensemble - Deixa Sambar

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3610 Cornell Gamelan Ensemble
Performs the traditional repertoire of Central Javanese gamelan.

Full details for MUSIC 3610 - Cornell Gamelan Ensemble

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3613 Cornell Steel Band
The Cornell Steel Band explores the wide variety of music for an orchestra of instruments fashioned from 55-gallon oil drums, and an "engine room" of non-pitched percussion. Interwoven into the focus on hands-on practice is reflection on the meanings of steel band, historically and in the present, in its native Trinidad and Tobago and here in the United States. Formal musical training is not necessary, though a sense of rhythm and a good ear are helpful.

Full details for MUSIC 3613 - Cornell Steel Band

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3616 Cornell Hip-Hop Collective
This course is open to experienced rappers, beatmakers, and vocalists interested forging collaborative relationships with other students. Taking as a foundation hip-hop's relationship to social justice, each semester we will work together to plan and record an EP on a theme or keyword chosen as a group. We will construct and analyze playlists of inspirational material, identifying specific hip-hop compositional strategies for creating beats and rhymes on a theme, and will use these tools to create and workshop our own collaborative tracks in weekly meetings. Please contact the instructor to audition.  

Full details for MUSIC 3616 - Cornell Hip-Hop Collective

Fall, spring.
MUSIC3621 Cornell Symphony Orchestra
This course will provide its members an engaging and vigorous orchestral experience where they will expand their knowledge and enjoyment of advanced repertoire with like-minded musicians. CSO is committed to offering rich concert programming experiences through major works of the orchestral canon as well as groundbreaking works representing music of our time. The primary objective of the course is to achieve a learning outcome that is student and ensemble driven, strengthening the confidence and artistic depth of each musician.

Full details for MUSIC 3621 - Cornell Symphony Orchestra

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3631 Cornell Wind Symphony
The Cornell Wind Symphony unites student musicians in an ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of emerging and traditional wind repertoire.  The Cornell Wind Symphony unites student musicians in an ensemble dedicated to the study and performance of emerging and traditional wind repertoire. In Spring 2021, the Wind Symphony will likely make music in both in-person and remote settings. Full details and audition instructions will be posted on www.cuwinds.com as they become available.

Full details for MUSIC 3631 - Cornell Wind Symphony

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3634 Cornell Percussion Group
The Cornell Percussion Ensemble studies and performs un-conducted percussion chamber music from the rapidly expanding repertoire. Utilizing the stylistic and sonic variety that is unique to the medium, the ensemble performs music from the relatively young canon, including classics by Iannis Xenakis and Steve Reich, as well as many pieces composed within the past few years. Members of the ensemble will develop strategic listening and communication techniques through the study of percussion chamber works and mixed chamber ensemble pieces, while advancing their interpretative and technical skills. Prior experience with percussion instruments is required, and participants must meet with the instructor for a short audition before enrolling.

Full details for MUSIC 3634 - Cornell Percussion Group

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3660 Music Improvisation Ensemble
The Music Improvisation Ensemble provides students with the opportunity to explore the elements of music from an improviser's perspective. This ensemble is open to any level of musician. An audition is required at the beginning of the semester simply as a means of introduction. Please contact instructor Annie Lewandowski for more information: apl72@cornell.edu.

Full details for MUSIC 3660 - Music Improvisation Ensemble

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3901 Supplemental Study in Music
Intended primarily for music majors, this option allows students enrolled in an approved 1000- or 2000-level 3-credit music history course to pursue independent research and writing projects. Students will study various topics in music history at a more advanced level through supplementary reading, discussion, and writing, by arrangement with the professor.

Full details for MUSIC 3901 - Supplemental Study in Music

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC3902 Choral Musicianship
Co-requisite for new members of Cornell Chorus and Glee Club, based on audition, and open to all students regardless of participation in an ensemble. Recommended for singers at all levels wishing to improve musicianship skills. Foundational and advanced approaches to choral sight-singing, aural skills, diction, score reading, and vocal topics.

Full details for MUSIC 3902 - Choral Musicianship

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4233 Music and Touch
This seminar explores musical, aesthetic, physiological, and mythical concepts of touch in relation to music. Focusing on the relationship between the body of the musician and musical sound, we will develop an interdisciplinary history of musical touch from the late 18th century to the present. How are sensibility and sympathy, performance and material culture, instruments and bodies, figured in terms of touch and touching? Exploring haptics, disability studies, new musical instruments, music cognition, physiology, theory of listening, topics include the clavichord as tactile revelation of genius; the glass harmonica, blindness, and physiology of the nervous system; technologies of touch in the 19th century; the fetishization of the disciplined hand; the absent or fantastic touch and its relation to music-making at early 20th-century electronic instruments, especially the Theremin; deafness, musical vibration and wearables; contemporary touch-sensitive keyboarding.

Full details for MUSIC 4233 - Music and Touch

Fall.
MUSIC4331 The Velvet Underground Archive
The Velvet Underground remains one of the most acclaimed and influential rock groups to emerge within the culturally turbulent era of the late 1960s. From their association with Andy Warhol beginning in 1965, to their last recorded performance with Lou Reed in August 1970, the Velvet Underground revitalized rock 'n' roll as streetwise outsider art.  Lyrics tell of hard drugs, hustlers, and queer and transgender lives, while the music ranges from noise, drones, feedback, and minimalism to edgy pop tunes. In 2015 Cornell University acquired a substantial archive of Velvet Underground material, including rare photographs, posters, flyers, handwritten lyrics, rare recordings, and ephemera.  The first segment of this course will delve into music, lyrics, and the performance art of the Velvet Underground as an archive of underground and dissident art and identities in New York City; the second segment of the course will be devoted to working with the Cornell Velvet Underground Archive to develop student projects. This course is open to graduate students and fourth-year undergraduates by permission. Undergraduates should contact the instructor before enrolling.

Full details for MUSIC 4331 - The Velvet Underground Archive

Fall.
MUSIC4501 Individual Instruction
Individual instruction in voice, organ, harpsichord, piano and fortepiano, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and some brass and woodwind instruments to those students advanced enough to do college-level work in these instruments. For more information about individual instruction, see the section titled Musical Instruction.

Full details for MUSIC 4501 - Individual Instruction

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4615 Jazz Ensemble
Study and performance of classic and contemporary big band literature. Rehearsals twice a week with two to four performances per semester.

Full details for MUSIC 4615 - Jazz Ensemble

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4616 Jazz Combo
Study and performance of classic and contemporary small-group jazz.

Full details for MUSIC 4616 - Jazz Combo

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4621 Cornell Chamber Orchestra
The goal of this music performance course is to provide the opportunity for you as a string performer to come together with other like-minded musicians in an ensemble setting to rehearse and perform the highest quality literature from the chamber orchestra repertoire. In this course we will focus on overall concepts of self and ensemble expression, engagement, participation, and performance. We will also address musical concepts of ensemble and individual balance, blend, intonation, phrasing, dynamics, articulation, tone, rhythmic precision, color, and ensemble clarity. We are going to listen to ourselves, to each other and to the composer's voice.

Full details for MUSIC 4621 - Cornell Chamber Orchestra

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4631 Chamber Flute Ensemble
Small ensembles meet weekly to explore diverse flute repertoire including a variety of instrumentation (piccolo, alto flute, bass flute).  There will be a performance opportunity at the end of the semester on a chamber concert or in a studio class setting.

Full details for MUSIC 4631 - Chamber Flute Ensemble

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4641 Advanced Instruction in Gamelan
Concentrated instruction for students in advanced techniques of performance on Indonesian gamelan instruments.

Full details for MUSIC 4641 - Advanced Instruction in Gamelan

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4651 Chamber Music Ensemble
Study and performance of chamber music works from duos to octets, for all instruments and voice. Students will be expected to attend a one hour coaching each week and rehearse on their own as well.  There will be a final performance at the end of the semester and possible additional performance opportunities.

Full details for MUSIC 4651 - Chamber Music Ensemble

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC4901 Independent Study in Music
Independent study affords students the opportunity to pursue special interests or research not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the independent course, must approve the proposed study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work. Students must prepare a proposal for independent study. To apply for independent study, please complete the online form.  Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.

Full details for MUSIC 4901 - Independent Study in Music

Fall or Spring.
MUSIC4911 Honors in Music
First semester of the two semester honors program. In conjunction with faculty, selected candidates formulate a program that allows them to demonstrate their musical and scholarly abilities, culminating in an honors thesis, composition, or recital (or some combination of these), to be presented in their senior year.

Full details for MUSIC 4911 - Honors in Music

Multi-semester course: Fall, Spring.
MUSIC6201 Research and Critical Methodologies
This course explores two necessary components for advanced study and research in the discipline of music:  1) practicalities of research, including concepts, methodologies, and tools, which introduces students to social constructions of knowledge and how it is managed by libraries and archives, as well as many types of bibliographic tools, both printed and electronic; 2) critical approaches and theories of music, sound, performance, and cultural meaning, which introduces the students to key disciplinary and interdisciplinary intellectual movements and scholarly works.

Full details for MUSIC 6201 - Research and Critical Methodologies

Fall.
MUSIC6233 Music and Touch
This seminar explores musical, aesthetic, physiological, and mythical concepts of touch in relation to music. Focusing on the relationship between the body of the musician and musical sound, we will develop an interdisciplinary history of musical touch from the late 18th century to the present. How are sensibility and sympathy, performance and material culture, instruments and bodies, figured in terms of touch and touching? Exploring haptics, disability studies, new musical instruments, music cognition, physiology, theory of listening, topics include the clavichord as tactile revelation of genius; the glass harmonica, blindness, and physiology of the nervous system; technologies of touch in the 19th century; the fetishization of the disciplined hand; the absent or fantastic touch and its relation to music-making at early 20th-century electronic instruments, especially the Theremin; deafness, musical vibration and wearables; contemporary touch-sensitive keyboarding.

Full details for MUSIC 6233 - Music and Touch

Spring.
MUSIC6331 The Velvet Underground Archive
The Velvet Underground remains one of the most acclaimed and influential rock groups to emerge within the culturally turbulent era of the late 1960s. From their association with Andy Warhol beginning in 1965, to their last recorded performance with Lou Reed in August 1970, the Velvet Underground revitalized rock 'n' roll as streetwise outsider art.  Lyrics tell of hard drugs, hustlers, and queer and transgender lives, while the music ranges from noise, drones, feedback, and minimalism to edgy pop tunes. In 2015 Cornell University acquired a substantial archive of Velvet Underground material, including rare photographs, posters, flyers, handwritten lyrics, rare recordings, and ephemera.  The first segment of this course will delve into music, lyrics, and the performance art of the Velvet Underground as an archive of underground and dissident art and identities in New York City; the second segment of the course will be devoted to working with the Cornell Velvet Underground Archive to develop student projects. This course is open to graduate students and fourth-year undergraduates by permission. Undergraduates should contact the instructor before enrolling.

Full details for MUSIC 6331 - The Velvet Underground Archive

Fall.
MUSIC7111 Composition
A course for graduate or advanced undergraduate composers (by permission with a portfolio audition) seeking individual music composition instruction, the course combines one-on-one meetings with group seminars featuring workshops, master classes, and/or visiting guests. In addition to individual and group meetings, composers may have opportunities for the reading and/or performance of their work.

Full details for MUSIC 7111 - Composition

Fall, Spring.
MUSIC7213 History of Sound
This seminar will investigate themes in the interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as sound studies. We will read texts from diverse disciplines with a focus on historical rather than ethnographic approaches to sound; therefore, we will treat such topics as listening, material culture (instruments, architectures), audio technologies, and sonic embodiment from the perspective of music history and its attendant methods. Rather than attempting a chronological history of sound, this syllabus groups the assigned readings around topic areas, allowing seminar participants to recognize sympathetic methodological concerns among disparate scholars, and to register important differences about how to research and write the history of sound.

Full details for MUSIC 7213 - History of Sound

Fall or Spring.
MUSIC7901 Independent Study in Music
Independent study affords students the opportunity to pursue special interests or research not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the independent course, must approve the proposed study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work.

Full details for MUSIC 7901 - Independent Study in Music

Fall, Spring.
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