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. (MUSIC-MT)

Full details for MUSIC 1101 - Elements of Music

A self-contained introduction to functional tonality and related ideas found in jazz, rock, other popular forms, and traditional folk genres. Fundamentals of pitch (e.g., melody, harmony, temperament, voice leading) and time (rhythm and form) are examined through diverse musical examples, from the 17th century Western European canon to Haitian roots music to blues. Concepts ranging from counterpoint to clave are analyzed on their own terms. (MUSIC-MT)

Full details for MUSIC 1106 - Introduction to Western Music Theory

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. (MUSIC-HC)

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 Beyonc? 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. (MUSIC-HC)

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. (MUSIC-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. (MUSIC-HC)

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. (MUSIC-MT)

Full details for MUSIC 2101 - Tonal Structure and Design in Classical, Jazz, and Popular 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 sessions at the organs as well as regular organ recitals. No prior musical experience necessary, although those interested (and with some keyboard skills) will have the opportunity for an introduction to learning to play - with both hands and feet. (MUSIC-HC)

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

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. (ASIAN-SC, MUSIC-HC)

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

This course is a hybrid seminar/performance forum that combines scholarly exploration of hip hop musical aesthetics with applied performance. Students will engage in online and in-class discussions of hip hop musical aesthetics, contextualized historically, socially, and culturally through weekly reading and listening assignments. They will also devote significant time to creating and workshopping individual and collaborative musical projects. Formal musical training is not required, but students should have experience making music (instrumentalists, beat makers, lyricists, vocalists, beatboxers, etc.), and should have at least a basic familiarity with hip hop music. Students who wish to enroll in the course should contact the professor for more information. (MUSIC-MT)

Full details for MUSIC 2380 - Performing Hip Hop

A hands-on introduction course to experimentation in sound composition. Our 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. (MUSIC-MT)

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

This course considers music and digital games in light of their playability. It aims to provide students with creative and critical frameworks for making sense of the diverse roles played by music in digital games as well as the ways in which playing digital games can be considered a musical activity. Focusing on games across an array of genres, the course introduces students to recent scholarship on digital games while prompting them to develop new modes of engagement with game music as creators and players. A background in music and/or game development is not required: the course?s materials and assignments can be approached in different ways depending on each student?s level of experience. (MUSIC-HC)

Full details for MUSIC 2701 - Music and Digital Gameplay

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

Full details for MUSIC 3122 - The Art of Conducting

How can music be both ephemeral and eternal, bound to time while floating free of it? This course will survey musical expressions of time across a wide array of histories and genres both within and outside of Western art music. Spanning case studies from Renaissance prolation canons to Javanese Gamelan and durational performance art to J Dilla, we will uncover the ways in which time is made audible and embodied through performance. In addition to analysis of scores and recordings, we will study texts on temporality found across music, sound, film, and performance studies. Students will be assessed through several short creative projects throughout the semester. Basic fluency with Western notation is recommended, but not required.

Full details for MUSIC 3331 - Hearing Time

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. (MUSIC-MT, PMA-DE)

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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-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/. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-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. (MUSIC-PL)

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. Full details and audition instructions will be posted on www.cuwinds.com as they become available. (MUSIC-PL)

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 and advanced skill in reading music notation is required. Participants must demonstrate skills to instructor via video, audio recordings, or in-person audition before receiving code to enroll. (MUSIC-PL)

Full details for MUSIC 3634 - Cornell Percussion Group

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. (MUSIC-PL)

Full details for MUSIC 3902 - Choral Musicianship

This class examines the centrality of audiotape to the aesthetic and political cultures of the late Cold War period. After writing On the Road in the mid-1950s, Jack Kerouac spent twenty years writing a novel that tried, in part, to emulate in literary writing the properties and capacities of tape recording. By the time Visions of Cody was finally published in 1972, audiotape had become an aesthetic medium in its own right, its capacity for editing inspiring revolutions in music, art, and writing. From its very inception, however, it was also an instrument of political communication and surveillance. With an eye to the state and another to the field of music, this class will focus on the way literary writing responded to and incorporated the new technology. (ENGL-PST)

Full details for MUSIC 4454 - Writing on Tape in the 60s, 70s, 80s: Art and Politics of the Overdub

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. (MUSIC-PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4501 - Individual Instruction

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

Full details for MUSIC 4615 - Jazz Ensemble

Study and performance of classic and contemporary small-group jazz. (MUSIC-PL)

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. (MUSIC-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. (MUSIC-PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4631 - Chamber Flute Ensemble

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

This required seminar for the new graduate minor in media studies considers media from a wide number of perspectives, ranging from the methods of cinema and television studies to those of music, information science, communication, science and technology studies, and beyond. Historical and theoretical approaches to media are intertwined with meta-critical reflections on media studies as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Close attention will be paid to media's role in shaping and being shaped by race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and other politically constructed categories of identity and sociality.

Full details for MUSIC 6400 - Thinking Media Studies

A course for DMA graduate composers 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 will have opportunities for the reading and/or performance of their work.

Full details for MUSIC 7111 - Composition

One-on-one composition lessons for graduate students in the DMA in Composition. The course offers lessons with a faculty instructor, aimed at developing and discussing new works in progress.

Full details for MUSIC 7112 - Graduate Composition Lessons

The seminar is centered around one of the richest 18th-century texts concerning music: the three-volume diary published in the early 1770s by the English music historian and composer Charles Burney documenting his travels through France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. In addition to Burney’s diaries, we will read other travel writings of the period, as well as excerpts from the history of music researched by Burney during his European sojourns. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, the seminar will address themes such as music historiography, biography, cosmopolitanism, politics and music, and changing conceptions of travel and cultural exchange.

Full details for MUSIC 7306 - Charles Burney's Musical Travels

Semiotics of Listening is a graduate seminar exploring listening as an active, interpretive process through which meaning is produced, mediated, and contested. Drawing on semiotics, sound studies, philosophy, and media theory, the course examines how signs are sounded, heard, interpreted, and negotiated across social, political, and aesthetic contexts. Students will engage critical texts, close listening practices, and experimental methods to rethink listening as a site of knowledge, power, and relation.

Full details for MUSIC 7312 - Semiotics of Listening

This course explores the intersections of critical disability studies and ethnography, the latter understood both as method and as mode(s) of writing. We will consider ethnography’s potential to intervene in medicalized or pathologizing frameworks of disability. We will interrogate ethnography’s tacit ableism and question the possibilities and challenges of a disabled ethnographic method. Centering questions of embodiment, we will draw on queer studies, Black studies, and feminist theory to collectively imagine disability as an emancipatory project that refigures the professional outputs and daily experience of academia.

Full details for MUSIC 7335 - Ethnography and Disability

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