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

This course offers an introduction to the history and culture of Western art music, commonly known as classical music. While sketching an overview of important works, events, places, figures, and movements from the medieval period up to the present day, the course will focus on providing students with the knowledge, vocabulary, and listening skills required to locate themselves in relation to this vast and diverse body of music. No previous musical experience is required.

Full details for MUSIC 1205 - Introduction to Western Art Music

(Intro) To Black Music will introduce students to a multitude of Black musical artists across a range of styles and genres - from the blues of Bessie Smith and Blind Lemon Jefferson to the contemporary stylistic experimentation of Doechii, Kendrick Lamar, and Beyoncé - as well as to writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Ralph Ellison who help us better understand the sound and significance of their performances. Students will be expected to engage the dynamic innovation, cultural development, and deep attunements ever-active in the rhythms and melodies of Black social life through critical listening and analysis. In doing so this class will broaden students’ musical and cultural horizons and help students situate Black diasporic music making in the 20th and 21st centuries within a broader context of racial capitalism, commodification, global networks of exchange, and the artistic pathways forged from legacies of joy, sorrow, pleasure, and resistance.

Full details for MUSIC 1332 - (Intro) To Black Music: Listening, Sounding, and Studying Black Radical Possibility

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. (MT)

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. TermTopicInstructorFall, SpringThe Story of a SongN. Vigilante.FallAnimal Music: From Cicadas to WhalesA. Lewandowski.

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 - Tonal Structure and Design in Classical, Jazz, and Popular Music 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. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 2111 - Songwriting

This course will survey the history and US political contexts of LGBTQ+ identities in popular music over three critical decades. We will cover the 1970s era of gay liberation and visibility with glam rock, first-wave punk, women’s music, and disco; the mainstreaming of queer sensibility in dance pop, new wave, and voguing in the neoliberal 1980s; and 1990s rise of queer theory, AIDS epidemic, “don’t ask don’t tell,” and queer activism reflected in queercore, crypto-queer alternative rock, and coded music videos. We will also consider how these past expressive strategies are referenced and extended in later and current queer pop.

Full details for MUSIC 2232 - Queer Pop from the Stonewall Uprising to the Millennium

The musical is a distinct and significant form of American performance. This course will consider the origins, development, and internationalization of the American musical and will emphasize the interpenetration of the history of musical theatre with the history of the United States in the 20th century and beyond. We will investigate how political, social, and economic factors shape the production of important American musical-and how in turn musicals shape expressions of personal identity and national ideology. Key texts include Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, Hair, and Rent.

Full details for MUSIC 2250 - The American Musical

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. No previous knowledge of musical notation or performance experience necessary. (SC)

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

An introduction to fundamental jazz theory, technique, and applied skills. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 3111 - Jazz Improvisation and Theory I

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 - The Art of Conducting

This course provides students with limited composition experience the essential skills to create original music. Students will explore 20th- and 21st-century techniques and repertoire, integrating these concepts into their creative process. The course also emphasizes developing attentive and critical listening habits, examining not only how sounds are produced and combined but also their deeper meanings and historical contexts. Students will engage with diverse compositional methods and styles, and various approaches to music notation. Coursework includes short readings and listening exercises, regular creative assignments, and a larger final composition.

Full details for MUSIC 3141 - The Composer's Toolbox

What can we hear or even see in a sound? Can the sound of a voice conjure traces of a body? How does sound construct gender and race? In this course, we will consider how listening, voicing, and music-making operate as mechanisms of representation. We will pay particular attention to the work that sonic representations perform and their connections to systems of power and identity. From reggaetón and Brazilian funk to voiceovers and machine listening, we will attune our ears to contemporary popular cultures in the Americas, listening closely to how they represent gender and race in relation to other social categories. No prior musical training is required.

Full details for MUSIC 3316 - What's in a Sound? Gender and Race in Sound Cultures

This course surveys the histories, aesthetics, and politics of music and virtuality, focusing on contemporary manifestations of “virtual music” since the 2010s. We will learn about how music is created, performed, and consumed in virtual environments, focusing specifically on questions of embodiment and identity. Case studies will include virtual and augmented reality concerts; musical performances in video games; virtual bands; and Web3/blockchain music. We will pay particular attention to the ties between virtual worlds, musical aesthetics, and queer and trans community building. Students will learn how to conduct digital musical ethnography and will complete participant observation-based final projects in a virtual music community.

Full details for MUSIC 3318 - Virtual Music

A course for students interested in composition and performance, Handmade Music is a practice-oriented composition course in which students will make music created to be performed by themselves and other members of the class, in compositions ranging from solo to small ensemble pieces. The course will culminate in the presentation of a selection of these compositions in a concert produced by the members of the class. Students will explore composition and performance as two manifestations of creation that meet in the same person or group, developing a historical and practical understanding of artists as part of their communities, and recognizing the way in which their environments shaped their practices. No previous musical training is required.

Full details for MUSIC 3423 - Handmade Music: Composition, Performance, and Communities

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

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 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 tenors and basses. Collaborates frequently with the Chorus to present mixed-voice repertoire and major works. Maintains a rigorous rehearsal and concert schedule and performs a wide variety of choral repertoire from throughout history and across the globe. 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. Maintains a rigorous rehearsal and concert schedule and performs a wide variety of choral repertoire from throughout history and across the globe. Tours and records annually.

Full details for MUSIC 3603 - Glee Club

This course provides comprehensive training designed for singers to enhance their musical skills, sight-reading abilities, and vocal technique. The Chorale functions as a performing group with a strong emphasis on cultivating vital proficiencies to an advanced standard, equipping students with the requisite musical groundwork essential for a lifelong in choral music. Open to Cornell's undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff members who share a passion for singing, the Chorale invites participation. An expedited audition process is mandatory to assess suitable ensemble placement. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 3604 - Chorale

Study and performance of Central Javanese gamelan, the best known traditional music of Indonesia. For more information see https://blogs.cornell.edu/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. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 3616 - Cornell Hip-Hop Collective

The Cornell Symphony Orchestra provides its members the opportunity to develop their artistry and enhance their knowledge of orchestral repertoire in a dynamic and engaging environment. Students perform a variety of repertoire that encompasses from the baroque to the 21st century through a range of symphonic activities: orchestral performances, composer and repertoire readings, educational and community outreach events, tours, and collaborations with faculty and guest artists.

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 conducted and 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 a variety of composers and styles, including pieces composed within the past few years. Members of the ensemble will develop strategic listening and communication techniques through the study of chamber music while advancing their interpretative and technical skills. The ensemble performs mostly notated music, and players should have experience with reading advanced music notation. 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. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 3660 - Music Improvisation Ensemble

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 Cornell Chorus and Glee Club members, based on audition, and open to all students regardless of participation in an ensemble. This course provides a comprehensive perspective of choral music designed for singers to enhance their musical skills, foundational and advanced approaches for sight-reading abilities, aural skills, vocal technique, and appreciation of different styles of choral music. Recommended for singers at all levels wishing to improve musicianship skills.

Full details for MUSIC 3902 - Choral Musicianship

Using Cornell University Library’s extensive archival collections on punk, hip hop, electronic music and EDM, this course will introduce students to the practice and theory of archival research on these music subcultures from the 1970s to early 2000s. Through a focus on primary sources, students will engage directly with the history of these genres and develop the critical skills for evaluating and working with different types of artifacts (including correspondence, photographs, flyers and posters, business records, recordings, contemporaneous newspapers and magazines). The course will also consider topics such as: ethical approaches to working with communities of living people; the sustainability and futurity of community controlled and institutional archives; and how archivists and archival repositories identify, appraise, acquire, describe, and provide public access to materials. Guest speakers may include musicians who have placed their personal archives at Cornell, and pop music journalists and biographers who have used the archives in their work, and other curators and community archivists. Open to graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. Some familiarity with popular music history from 1960-2000 is required.

Full details for MUSIC 4252 - Pop Music in the Archive: Researching Subcultures of the Recent Past

Making Sound Futures is a transdisciplinary, transformative, hands-on studio course that nurtures curiosity and promotes experimentation, intuitive decision-making, and risk-taking. Embracing imperfection and uncertainty, we will construct sonic instruments to facilitate self-discovery, promote understanding of others, inspire imaginative exploration, and serve as a tools for problem-solving. Our activities will include close listening to sounds and then designing new instruments, individually and collaboratively, to recreate these sounds and others that have not yet been imagined. Raising awareness about how we contribute toward the future, we will devote ourselves to creating materials and techniques that the next generation of students can use and develop further. We will aim to generate designs for the future that are themselves open to reuse and reimagination.

Full details for MUSIC 4412 - Making Sound Futures

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

Study and performance of classic and contemporary big band literature. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4615 - Jazz Ensemble

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

Full details for MUSIC 4616 - Jazz Combo

The Cornell Chamber Orchestra provides its members the opportunity to develop their artistry and enhance their knowledge of chamber orchestra and string repertoire in a dynamic and engaging environment. Students perform a variety of repertoire that encompasses works from the baroque to the 21st century through a range of activities: chamber performances, composer and repertoire readings, educational and community outreach activities, tours, and collaborations with faculty and guest artists. (PL)

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. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4631 - Chamber Flute Ensemble

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

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.Students may be invited to join in the department of music's weekly reading sessions with faculty by invitation. (PL)

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

Using Cornell University Library’s extensive archival collections on punk, hip hop, electronic music and EDM, this course will introduce students to the practice and theory of archival research on these music subcultures from the 1970s to early 2000s. Through a focus on primary sources, students will engage directly with the history of these genres and develop the critical skills for evaluating and working with different types of artifacts (including correspondence, photographs, flyers and posters, business records, recordings, contemporaneous newspapers and magazines). The course will also consider topics such as: ethical approaches to working with communities of living people; the sustainability and futurity of community controlled and institutional archives; and how archivists and archival repositories identify, appraise, acquire, describe, and provide public access to materials. Guest speakers may include musicians who have placed their personal archives at Cornell, and pop music journalists and biographers who have used the archives in their work, and other curators and community archivists. Some familiarity with popular music history from 1960-2000 is required.

Full details for MUSIC 6252 - Pop Music in the Archive: Researching Subcultures of the Recent Past

Making Sound Futures is a transdisciplinary, transformative, hands-on studio course that nurtures curiosity and promotes experimentation, intuitive decision-making, and risk-taking. Embracing imperfection and uncertainty, we will construct sonic instruments to facilitate self-discovery, promote understanding of others, inspire imaginative exploration, and serve as a tools for problem-solving. Our activities will include close listening to sounds and then designing new instruments, individually and collaboratively, to recreate these sounds and others that have not yet been imagined. Raising awareness about how we contribute toward the future, we will devote ourselves to creating materials and techniques that the next generation of students can use and develop further. We will aim to generate designs for the future that are themselves open to reuse and reimagination.

Full details for MUSIC 6412 - Making Sound Futures

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

Topic for Fall 2025: The Mediation of Nineteenth-Century Music This seminar will explore the mediation of nineteenth-century European music by investigating the philosophical, aesthetic, and technological conditions that engendered and sustained it. How were musical content and form conceptualized, materialized, transmitted, and stored, particularly in relation to shifting ways of imagining and materializing sound? The seminar will frame these questions via theoretical readings and address them in specific contexts via music-historical and analytical discourse.

Full details for MUSIC 7205 - Seminar in Nineteenth Century 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