Courses by semester
Courses for Spring 22
Complete Cornell University course descriptions and section times are in the Class Roster.
| Course ID | Title | Offered |
|---|---|---|
| MUSIC 1100 |
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. |
Fall. |
| MUSIC 1105 |
Building Musical Skills
This course is designed to develop and strengthen your fundamental musical skills through embodied music interaction. You will compose, improvise, listen, and perform. You will use fundamental musical materials such as chords, melodies, and rhythms, and learn to notate music with accepted systems and describe it with appropriate terminologies. Using your voice, the keyboard, and other instruments, you will stimulate your creativity, refine your listening skills, and put your ideas into practice. The course will address music-making from a diverse set of cultures and traditions, and the skills you acquire will be transferrable to a wide range of applications. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1202 |
Classical Music from 1750 to the Present
What is "classical" music anyway? And how does its history get told? This course examines the past 250 years of European and American art music through an American-centric perspective to explore how musical meaning changes between contexts and over time. Through a series of case studies that showcase the shifting cultural contexts surrounding the production and reception of music, we'll think critically about music's composition, circulation, reception, and politics, while considering the place of jazz and popular music in the "classical canon." The course emphasizes close listening and students will increase their fluency in speaking and writing about music. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS, HST-AS) Full details for MUSIC 1202 - Classical Music from 1750 to the Present |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1212 |
Music on the Brain
This course is for anyone who listens to music or plays music and wonders what's happening in your brain that makes you feel the way you do. Starting with the music each of you knows and loves—the soundtrack to your life—we'll tackle questions like: What is the relationship between speech and music? Do animals have music, too? How does the brain process aspects of music, including rhythm, melody, harmony, and form? Why does some music trigger an emotional response? What does it mean to say that music is an embodied behavioral act? What is the relationship between music and memory? Through lectures, discussions, experiments, compositions, recording technologies, student presentations/performances and writing assignments we'll explore how/why you've chosen the particular tunes on the soundtrack of your life, and how your brain processes musical thoughts and experiences. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1466 |
Physics of Musical Sound
This course explores the physics of musical sound. How and what do our ears hear? How does that determine the kinds of sounds we find pleasant and not so pleasant? How is sound generated by strings, pipes, and plates, and what determines the characteristics – pitch, timbre, attack, consonance, or dissonance – of that sound? How do the major families of musical instruments (string, wind, reed, brass, percussion) and specific examples (violin, guitar, piano, flute, oboe, trumpet, chimes, pipe organ) work, and how does that affect how they are played and the sounds they produce? How do we generate sound when we sing, and how does that vary in different kinds of singing? What makes for a good concert hall or listening space? These are explained using physical and mathematical concepts including vibrations, standing waves, harmonic series, beats, spectra, and logarithms, and illustrated using demonstrations, audio clips, and musical selections from a wide variety of genres. This course is a Writing In The Majors course: both science writing and physics problem-solving skills are developed through weekly assignments. Student activities include hands-on investigations of musical instruments and field trips. At the level of The Science of Sound by Rossing, Moore, and Wheeler. Catalog Distribution: (PBS-AS, PHS-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1701 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 2102 |
Theory, Materials and Techniques II
Theory, Materials, and Techniques II surveys tonal music as conceived and practiced throughout late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe. The course combines modern pedagogical methods with the study of relevant historical sources and incorporates active learning at the keyboard. Topics to be covered include the analysis of form and genre; advanced techniques of modulation; transformational theory and other approaches to the configuration of diatonicism and chromaticism; and the relationship of words and music in nineteenth-century song. During section meetings, the concepts and skills introduced in lecture will be practiced at the keyboard as well as vocally. Other topics to be covered in sections include advanced aural skills; sight singing; score reading; and the improvisation of preludes. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 2102 - Theory, Materials and Techniques II |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2112 |
Collaborative Songwriting
Collaborative 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) in diverse collaborative contexts through analysis, composition, recording technologies, performance, and concert reports. Proficiency on one or more musical instruments is required. Collaborative Songwriting can be taken as a stand-alone course or as part of the Songwriting sequence. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2201 |
Introduction to Music Studies
This course introduces students to the study of music as an expression of history and culture by examining the ways in which music creates meaning, knowledge, archives, and identities. Musical examples will be drawn from a broad range of styles, chronological periods, and geographical locations; and students will engage with live performance as well as various forms of recorded music and mediated performance. Along with considering music as sound, the course will examine different modalities of writing about music—journalistic, academic, and creative—and we will think about how these musical texts, and those that the students produce, function to situate music as discourse. The course will develop critical thinking, writing, and presentation skills. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2221 |
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. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2311 |
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. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 2311 - The Art and Craft of Music Journalism |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2330 |
Music in and of East Asia
This course explores the breadth of music found in present day China, Japan, and Korea--from indigenous musical traditions, through adaptations of Western art music, up to the latest popular styles--as well as the presence of traditional East Asian musics outside East Asia, including right here at Cornell. In both cases, music offers a lens for examining the myriad social and cultural forces that shape it, and that are shaped by it. The course's academic focus on critical reading and listening, written assignments, and discussion is complemented by opportunities to engage directly with music, whether attending concerts or participating in workshops with student-led ensembles. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2421 |
Computers in Music Performance
A course exploring strategies and techniques for live musical performance and real-time, interactive sound manipulation with computers. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 2421 - Computers in Music Performance |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2441 |
Shaping Sound II
In the second part of Shaping Sound - an introduction course toexperimentation in sound, composition and performance - we will continue to experiment with creating, manipulating and transforming sounds. By using everyday sounds, materials, notations and guided improvisations we aim to create forms of interacting, listening, sonic textures, and structures. Through this process we will question notions of sound perception and generate new forms of sonic knowledge. In a workshop environment, we will explore influential compositions and artworks from the 20th century to the present day, as starting points for discussions on form, concept, and artistic method. A larger project inspired by the works examined through the course can be presented as a composition, sound object, an installation, an exhibition, or any combination thereof. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2703 |
Thinking Media
From hieroglyphs to HTML, ancient poetry to audiotape, and Plato's cave to virtual reality, "Thinking Media" offers a multidisciplinary introduction to the most influential media formats of the last three millennia. Featuring an array of guests from across Cornell, including faculty from Communication, Comparative Literature, German Studies, Information Science, Literatures in English, Music, and Performing & Media Arts, the course will present diverse perspectives on how to think with, against, and about media in relation to the public sphere and private life, archaeology and science fiction, ethics and aesthetics, identity and difference, labor and play, knowledge and power, expression and surveillance, and the generation and analysis of data. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 3324 |
Singing from the Heart: Choral Music and the Human Experience
The vibrant sound of a choir singing against an orchestra has thrilled listeners for centuries. Confronting extremes of human emotion, choral works encourage a complex response in their listeners, inviting us to hear them as universal expressions of joy, love, tragedy, death. Yet what might an eighteenth-century German work about the Crucifixion say to a twentieth-century American response to a lynching? How do we listen to a contemporary work by a woman that confronts life in the new millennium alongside a work written by a man at the dawn of the "modern world" in 1610? Imaginative listening, across historical and stylistic periods, will let us explore the genre, and question music's ability to speak across nation, race, gender, and religion. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 3324 - Singing from the Heart: Choral Music and the Human Experience |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 3422 |
Perform it Yourself
Inspired by the phrase "do it yourself" (DIY), Perform it Yourself (PIY) will train students from any background to make performances by utilizing their individual skills through theatrical presentation and new composition. The course offers the history and technique of contemporary, performance-based works; students will develop their own solo and group projects, including: 1) performance laboratory: students will perform theatrical works including Mauricio Kagel's Staatstheater, Yoko Ono's Grapefruit book, Nitibhon's Live Around, Louilarpprasert's Smelly Tubes and more; and 2) PIY compositions: students will compose new pieces and organize their own performances during the semester. The course will also provide topics including the analysis of theatrical/inventive notation, music and multimedia, technology in composition, and experimental art performance. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 3431 |
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. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Fall, Spring. |
| 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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| 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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| 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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3514 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3602 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3603 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3604 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3610 |
Cornell Gamelan Ensemble
Performs the traditional repertoire of Central Javanese gamelan. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3613 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3615 |
Jazz Repertory Ensemble
Study and performance of classic and contemporary big band literature. Rehearsal once a week with one to two performances a semester. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 3616 |
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. |
Fall, spring. |
| MUSIC 3621 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3631 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3634 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3660 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3901 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3902 |
Choral Musicianship
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. |
Fall. |
| MUSIC 4121 |
Advanced Conducting
Intended to give students more experience with score study, rehearsal techniques, and conducting tools through weekly feedback, conducting and class discussion. Advanced conducting will continue topics covered in The Art of conducting (2120) or Basic Conducting (3121). Ear training in the context of being able to hear the score will be an integral part of the course. Understanding of Basic knowledge of beat patterns and gestural vocabulary will be assumed. Students will explore conducting in the orchestral, band, choral, and mixed media. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4341 |
Writing Musical Ethnography
This seminar examines the role of ethnographic writing in musical anthropology, exploring how ethnographic knowledge is produced, authorized, and consumed. It critically interrogates ethnography's generic conventions, probing its relation to travel writing, memoir, poetry, and fiction, and engaging narrative, experimental, reflexive and auto- ethnography. Drawing on performance studies, it considers the textuality of musical events and weighs the particular challenges, possibilities, and limitations of writing ethnographically about sound, music, and movement. In doing so, it explores the temporality and spatiality of ethnographic writing, engages related critiques of the so-called ethnographic present, and considers issues of representation and subjectivity. Students will approach these questions through critical readings in anthropology and ethnomusicology as well as through weekly workshopping of their own writing. Catalog Distribution: (CA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4440 |
FutureSound
FutureSounds is a course that will serve as a multidisciplinary cross-arts lab for students interested in composition but who do not necessarily have specific training in music. The course emphasizes the dialogue between past and future by considering new music written for old and newly constructed instruments. With a focus on Cornell's extensive collection of historical instruments (from krumhorns to clavichords to Moog synthesizers), as well as a collection of newly built 13- and 17-tet fretted instruments, the course will be split into three strands: 1) in the Seminar, students will develop critical approaches to alternative tuning systems, notation, performance practice, sound color, as well as relevant musical figures/works/collaborations (i.e. Harry Partch, Bjork/John Cavatorta, Liam Byrne, and others); 2) in the Keyboard Lab students will work to develop an automatic mechanism to modify and extend the sound world of the piano; 3) in the Performance Lab, students will test drive their developing pieces. FutureSounds culminates in the ReSounds MicroFestival, a public showcase for new works created throughout the semester. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4501 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4601 |
Chamber Singers
A mixed-voice, touring chamber choir for students with outstanding sight-reading skills and considerable choral experience. Aims to rehearse at a professional level. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4615 |
Jazz Ensemble
Study and performance of classic and contemporary big band literature. Rehearsals twice a week with two to four performances per semester. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4616 |
Jazz Combos
Study and performance of classic and contemporary small-group jazz. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4621 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4631 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4641 |
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. |
| MUSIC 4651 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4667 |
Sonic Remains: Media, Performance, and Material Culture
Sonic Remains investigates how music/sound are mobilized to negotiate the passage of time, as well as how, by enduring and being retrieved through bodies, objects, and media formats, they challenge the pastness of the past. The course familiarizes students with key approaches to the material culture of music and sonic media, as well as with questions that animate critical thinking about the presence of the past across the disciplines. In addition to scholarship, we will consider how work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Allora & Calzadilla, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Susan Schuppli, Lourdes Portillo, or Nadine Robinson, among other artists, intervenes in these questions (and remains). Topics include the sonic afterlives of imperial projects, sonic memorials, electronic waste, audio reenactments and revivals in living history, knowledge-production, and performance practices. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website. Catalog Distribution: (LA-AS, ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 4667 - Sonic Remains: Media, Performance, and Material Culture |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4901 |
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. |
Fall or Spring. |
| MUSIC 4912 |
Honors in Music
Second 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. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 6341 |
Writing Musical Ethnography
This seminar examines the role of ethnographic writing in musical anthropology, exploring how ethnographic knowledge is produced, authorized, and consumed. It critically interrogates ethnography's generic conventions, probing its relation to travel writing, memoir, poetry, and fiction, and engaging narrative, experimental, reflexive and auto- ethnography. Drawing on performance studies, it considers the textuality of musical events and weighs the particular challenges, possibilities, and limitations of writing ethnographically about sound, music, and movement. In doing so, it explores the temporality and spatiality of ethnographic writing, engages related critiques of the so-called ethnographic present, and considers issues of representation and subjectivity. Students will approach these questions through critical readings in anthropology and ethnomusicology as well as through weekly workshopping of their own writing. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 6400 |
Thinking Media Studies
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. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 6410 |
Bending Instruments
What is a sounding object or musical instrument, and how does human culture shape these unique human-made material sources of sound? In a workshop environment, students will explore how instruments and sound objects can be modified or "bent" to produce yet more sounds. By using ideas from music, sound art, and sound studies and being inspired by visiting instrument makers, we will explore what instruments are and could be. Students, working alone or in collaboration, will design and build (which could include a conceptual reworking) their own instrument or sounding object that they will learn to operate and modify to make new sounds. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 6440 |
FutureSound
FutureSounds is a course that will serve as a multidisciplinary cross-arts lab for students interested in composition but who do not necessarily have specific training in music. The course emphasizes the dialogue between past and future by considering new music written for old and newly constructed instruments. With a focus on Cornell's extensive collection of historical instruments (from krumhorns to clavichords to Moog synthesizers), as well as a collection of newly built 13- and 17-tet fretted instruments, the course will be split into three strands: 1) in the Seminar, students will develop critical approaches to alternative tuning systems, notation, performance practice, sound color, as well as relevant musical figures/works/collaborations (i.e. Harry Partch, Bjork/John Cavatorta, Liam Byrne, and others); 2) in the Keyboard Lab students will work to develop an automatic mechanism to modify and extend the sound world of the piano; 3) in the Performance Lab, students will test drive their developing pieces. FutureSounds culminates in the ReSounds MicroFestival, a public showcase for new works created throughout the semester. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 6667 |
Sonic Remains: Media, Performance, and Material Culture
Sonic Remains investigates how music/sound are mobilized to negotiate the passage of time, as well as how, by enduring and being retrieved through bodies, objects, and media formats, they challenge the pastness of the past. The course familiarizes students with key approaches to the material culture of music and sonic media, as well as with questions that animate critical thinking about the presence of the past across the disciplines. In addition to scholarship, we will consider how work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Allora & Calzadilla, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Susan Schuppli, Lourdes Portillo, or Nadine Robinson, among other artists, intervenes in these questions (and remains). Topics include the sonic afterlives of imperial projects, sonic memorials, electronic waste, audio reenactments and revivals in living history, knowledge-production, and performance practices. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website. Full details for MUSIC 6667 - Sonic Remains: Media, Performance, and Material Culture |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 7111 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 7321 |
Politics, Utopias, and Noise in the Sound Archive
The development of sound recording technologies at the end of the 19th century revolutionized musicological research and the idea of storing and circulating music and sound. The establishment of the first sound archives soon after allowed for an unprecedented access to musical practices from around the globe and the development of new forms of knowledge in relation to nation- and empire-building projects. These practices are the starting point for an exploration of the principles and practice of sound storage and retrieval in historical and contemporary contexts in an attempt to interrogate traditional archives but also expand the notion of what an archive can be at a moment marked by the arrival of the aural turn in the humanities. Full details for MUSIC 7321 - Politics, Utopias, and Noise in the Sound Archive |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 7356 |
Rhetoric of Social Movements
The recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor sparked a global protest movement for social justice and against police brutality. Beyond the US, these events also fostered a stronger sense of agency among social movements in the Black Atlantic (Africa and the Diaspora) many of which are demanding more accountability from power establishments, the dismantling of systemic racism and colonial legacies as well as the implementation of antiracist policies. How do these movements come into existence? What challenges are they facing? How do they impact the societies in which they evolve? How do social movements mobilize resources for mass action? This course examines the causes of the rise of contemporary social insurgencies in the Black Atlantic and their effects in the sociopolitical environments. It also explores the tools social activists use to confront the power establishment, such as music, social media and street protests. In addition to providing a deep analysis of social movement theories, this course will examine the intersections of age, class, gender, race, gender through several case studies from various countries, including #BLM in the United States, #FeesMustFall in South Africa, #RhodesMustFall in Britain, and Y en a marre in Senegal. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 7501 |
Historical Performance Practice
This seminar is designed to enable graduate students in musicology, performance and composition to become better acquainted with scholarly perspectives on the history, theory, and practice of musical performance. It is a foundational course within the Keyboard Studies DMA program. Moving from a genealogy of the term "performance practice" to the current state of critical performance studies, we will consider how notions of "performance practice" have changed over time, from formative debates over history, authenticity, and ontology to the absorption of recent developments in performance studies, embodied cognition, actor-network theory, cultural ecology, materials and computational sciences, and media archaeology. How have traditions and practices been transmitted orally, literally, technologically, conceptually, and corporeally? Whose authority is at stake? On what political, ethical, and aesthetic grounds have claims to historical fidelity been laid and challenged? What has been gained and lost in the process? Full details for MUSIC 7501 - Historical Performance Practice |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 7901 |
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. |
Fall, Spring. |