Courses

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

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

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

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

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

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

A survey of Western music and its social contexts from the beginning of notation (circa 900) to 1700. Topics include sacred chant, secular song, polyphony, madrigals, early opera, and the development of independent instrumental music. The course emphasizes listening and comprehension of genres and styles, and is intended for music majors and qualified nonmajors.

Full details for MUSIC 2207 - History of Western Music I

The organ is an interdisciplinary wonder where mechanics, architecture, acoustics, religion, philosophy, literature, as well as the musical arts and sciences meet. This course uses the organ to explore music's relation to technology, history and culture, and in turn traces the technical and mechanical mysteries, and expressive possibilities, of the 'King of Instruments' across its long history. Students will gain 1) an understanding of some key aspects of musical history and repertoire; 2) a sense for the historical relation between music and technology; 3) a new knowledge of (and enthusiasm for!) the organ; and 4) an insight into the ways in which musical instruments and the musical practice associated with them are cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. With a key focus on the music of J. S. Bach, as well as on the reception of Bach's music in the 19th and 20th centuries, topics include the mechanics of organ construction, the North German organ art and the toccata, virtuosity and the use of the feet, the symphonic organ in the 19th century, 20th-century experimentation with organ sound, the organ and film. The course combines lectures with practical studio-style sessions at Cornell's four superb organs, and unprecedented access to those instruments. No prior musical experience necessary, although those interested (and with some keyboard skills) will have the opportunity to learn to play – with both hands and feet.

Full details for MUSIC 2244 - The Music, Art, and Technology of the Organ

What does it mean to have "good taste" in music? Where does the idea come from, and how has it changed historically? Who has the power to decide which music is good and which is terrible? What makes an expert? Does expertise mean anything in assessing the "value" of different musics? And how does aesthetic expertise interact with other systems of power and identity? Why do people love some genres and hate others? Why does a "guilty pleasure" involve guilt at all? How do we explain our most basic aesthetic attachments? We will examine these questions by reading and discussing texts by philosophers, historians, journalists, musicologists, and sociologists on taste and cultural authority.

Full details for MUSIC 2290 - You Have Terrible Taste in Music

Music and dance cultures have been central topics of study in the development of Chicano studies, Puerto Rican studies, and Latino studies in general. From Americo Paredes to Frances Aparicio and from Jose Limon to Deborah Pacini-Hernandez, focusing on music and embodied culture through sound has allowed scholars to engage the wide variety of cultural experiences of the different ethnic groups usually described with the term "Latino". Taking this scholarship as a point of departure, this class offers a survey of Latino music in the U.S. as a window into the political, cultural and social that struggles Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, Colombians, and Central Americans have gone through while becoming hyphenated (Eg. Mexican-American, Cuban American, etc) or not, and into how these processes have continually challenged and enriched mainstream notions of "American identity".

Full details for MUSIC 2320 - Latino Music in the US

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

A hands-on introduction course to experimentation in sound art and composition. Our main focus will be on the use of everyday sounds and materials in the context of musical composition. We will investigate the process of creating new work from the gathering of materials to extended forms of musical notation. We will experiment with creating, manipulating and transforming sounds using notations and guided improvisations to create forms of interacting, listening, musical textures, and structures. We will also explore notions of time, approaches to musical notation, and the symbolic representation of sound. As part of this course, we will study influential compositions and artworks from the 20th century to the present day, as starting points for discussions on form, concept, and compositional method.

Full details for MUSIC 2440 - Shaping Sound I: An introduction to Experimentation in Sound and Composition

Continuation of jazz theory, technique, and applied skills.

Full details for MUSIC 3112 - Jazz Improvisation and Theory II

This course introduces fundamentals of conducting including: gesture and movement; score reading, analysis, and interpretation; rehearsal procedures; and historical practices. Students will explore these topics in both instrumental and choral contexts. 

Full details for MUSIC 3122 - Conducting

The Composer's Toolbox is a two-semester sequence of courses that equips undergraduates with the skills and techniques needed to compose and notate original works of music. Taught in a hybrid workshop/lecture style, there will be opportunities to learn how to develop and transform musical material, to gain an understanding of different compositional techniques and styles through existing repertoire, to enhance critical thinking and listening skills, to refine score notation and to work one-on-one with performers.

Full details for MUSIC 3141 - The Composer's Toolbox I

This course welcomes Music Majors engaged in an honors project, as well as other students interested in pursuing a scholarly study outside of honors.  In a welcoming workshop setting we will develop important research skills:  defining and refining a topic; producing a bibliography; evaluating source materials; reviewing the scholarly literature; crafting a thesis statement; writing abstracts; using libraries; navigating archives and on-line resources; making use of recorded sound and visual materials; producing persuasive, lucid prose; presenting your work to others.  All kinds of projects can be pursued in this seminar: historical studies; critical engagements; performance projects enriched by scholarship—or combinations of these and other approaches.

Full details for MUSIC 3212 - Seminar in Music Research

In this 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

How do music, sound, and listening practices construct race? Conversely, how might we critically understand those moments when, in experiences of music, we feel race and other divisions temporarily melt away? What would it take to unmake race for real? Would we even want to? This course seeks answers in everyday experiences like urban noise and voice-overs that racialize nonhuman movie characters, and also in texts by scholars and radical decolonial and abolitionist activists. Our goals will be, first, to build critical awareness of race's own geographic and historical embeddedness, inner logics, and sonic manifestations; and second, to consider when, how, and why race might cease to be, and what the role of sound might be in its unmaking.

Full details for MUSIC 3317 - Music in the Making and Unmaking of Race

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

This course examines hip hop's historic development in the United States and its global spread to Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. We will explore how youth throughout the world increasingly draw on U.S. hip hop to address their own experiences of marginality, exploitation, and displacement, localizing the music in ways that potentially complicate dominant models of cultural globalization.

Full details for MUSIC 3490 - Hip Hop in Global Perspective

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

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 3512 - 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

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

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

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

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

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

Performs the traditional repertoire of Central Javanese gamelan.

Full details for MUSIC 3610 - Cornell Gamelan Ensemble

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Argentine tango composer and virtuoso bandoneón player Astor Piazzolla is considered one of the most important figures in the history of tango. Piazzolla's centenary falls in 2021, and we will celebrate his legacy by performing his tango nuevo music alongside traditional Argentine tangos from composers such as Juan d'Arienzo, Carlos Gardel, and Osvaldo Pugliese. All members of the ensemble will also interact with master tangoists and participate in free dance lessons. We will live and breathe the tango!

Full details for MUSIC 3701 - Performing Chamber Wind 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

Co-requisite for new members of Cornell choirs, based on audition. Recommended for choral musicians at all levels. Foundational and advanced approaches to choral sight-singing, aural skills, diction, score reading, and vocal topics.  

Full details for MUSIC 3902 - Choral Musicianship

Covers the major topics in the psychology of music treated from a scientific perspective. Presents recent developments in the cognitive science of music, including perception and memory for pitch and rhythm, performing music, the relationship between music and language, musical abilities in infants, emotional responses, and the cognitive neuroscience of music.

Full details for MUSIC 4181 - Psychology of Music

This seminar explores the aesthetics of musical touch, especially at the keyboard, from the late 18th century to the present. We will examine how sensibility and sympathy, performance and material culture, instruments and bodies, are figured in terms of touch and touching. Readings include C. P. E. Bach on keyboard practice and Diderot on sympathetic vibration, German romantic fiction, contemporary theory of sensibility, physiology, and new materialism, and visual materials including hand casts, photography, and film. Topics include clavichords and sympathetic vibration; glass harmonicas and physiology of the nervous system; 19th-century technologies of touch and the fetishization of the disciplined hand; and the absent or fantastic touch and its relation to music-making at early 20th-century electronic instruments.

Full details for MUSIC 4233 - Music Aesthetics and Criticism: Sensation, Sympathy and Theories of Touch c. 1800

Minimalism emerged in the early 1960s in a tight interdisciplinary configuration among music, sculpture, film, and dance. It has been understood as an investigation into, variously, the relationship between frequency and rhythm, apperception over expression, collaborative authorship or anonymity, the creative possibilities of magnetic tape, and reduced compositional materials. Music-specific descriptions might highlight drones, pulses, consonance, just intonation, and non-western metric systems. This upper-level seminar will touch on all of  these claims about minimalism, as well as the social and political conditions of its appearance. Artists will include La Monte Young, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, Terry Jennings, CC Hennix, Robert Morris, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Julius Eastman, and Eliane Radigue.

Full details for MUSIC 4270 - Minimalism

Although ethnographic fieldwork is often touted as the hallmark of ethnomusicological research, it is sometimes unclear what distinguishes certain music scholarship as "ethnographic" to begin with. Does conducting interviews render a study ethnographic? Is participant observation in a band or performance ensemble an effective research method? This class introduces and problematizes primary methodologies in ethnomusicological research, taking into consideration the relations of power that determine the subjects, processes and products of that research. It places foundational ethnomusicological texts and contemporary ethnographies of music and performance in dialogue with a broader body of critical scholarship on ethnographic methods, including interviewing, field recording, participant observation, and hanging out. Students will test and critically evaluate these methods as they design and conduct fieldwork projects in the local community and workshop those projects in class.

Full details for MUSIC 4340 - Fieldwork Methods in Ethnomusicology

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

A mixed-voice, touring chamber choir for students with outstanding sight-reading skills and considerable choral experience.  Aims to rehearse at a professional level.

Full details for MUSIC 4601 - Chamber Singers

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

Study and performance of classic and contemporary small-group jazz.

Full details for MUSIC 4616 - Jazz Combos

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

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

Concentrated instruction for students in advanced techniques of performance on Indonesian gamelan instruments.

Full details for MUSIC 4641 - Advanced Instruction in Gamelan

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

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

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

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

This seminar explores the aesthetics of musical touch, especially at the keyboard, from the late 18th century to the present. We will examine how sensibility and sympathy, performance and material culture, instruments and bodies, are figured in terms of touch and touching. Readings include C. P. E. Bach on keyboard practice and Diderot on sympathetic vibration, German romantic fiction, contemporary theory of sensibility, physiology, and new materialism, and visual materials including hand casts, photography, and film. Topics include clavichords and sympathetic vibration; glass harmonicas and physiology of the nervous system; 19th-century technologies of touch and the fetishization of the disciplined hand; and the absent or fantastic touch and its relation to music-making at early 20th-century electronic instruments.

Full details for MUSIC 6233 - Music Aesthetics and Criticism: Sensation, Sympathy and Theories of Touch c. 1800

Minimalism emerged in the early 1960s in a tight interdisciplinary configuration among music, sculpture, film, and dance. It has been understood as an investigation into, variously, the relationship between frequency and rhythm, apperception over expression, collaborative authorship or anonymity, the creative possibilities of magnetic tape, and reduced compositional materials. Music-specific descriptions might highlight drones, pulses, consonance, just intonation, and non-western metric systems. This upper-level seminar will touch on all of  these claims about minimalism, as well as the social and political conditions of its appearance. Artists will include La Monte Young, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, Terry Jennings, CC Hennix, Robert Morris, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Julius Eastman, and Eliane Radigue.

Full details for MUSIC 6270 - Minimalism

Although ethnographic fieldwork is often touted as the hallmark of ethnomusicological research, it is sometimes unclear what distinguishes certain music scholarship as "ethnographic" to begin with. Does conducting interviews render a study ethnographic? Is participant observation in a band or performance ensemble an effective research method? This class introduces and problematizes primary methodologies in ethnomusicological research, taking into consideration the relations of power that determine the subjects, processes and products of that research. It places foundational ethnomusicological texts and contemporary ethnographies of music and performance in dialogue with a broader body of critical scholarship on ethnographic methods, including interviewing, field recording, participant observation, and hanging out. Students will test and critically evaluate these methods as they design and conduct fieldwork projects in the local community and workshop those projects in class.

Full details for MUSIC 6340 - Fieldwork Methods in Ethnomusicology

Intended principally for doctoral students in music composition but open to others by permission. The course presents a practical overview of both classical and state-of-the-art techniques for computer music including digital synthesis, signal processing and sound manipulation, analysis and re-synthesis, spatialization, and real-time and/or interactive applications. Students will produce several short compositional etudes as well as one larger piece to be performed at the semester's end.

Full details for MUSIC 6420 - Electroacoustic Techniques

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

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