Courses by semester
Courses for Spring 2025
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, Spring. |
| 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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1199 |
Elements of Studio Production and Recording
A hands-on four-week course focused on fundamentals of sound technology and production. Students will learn essential analog and digital hardware and software (microphones, mixers, cable routing, audio interfaces, digital audio workstations, speakers, etc.) and best practices for sound engineering in studio recording and live performances. Full details for MUSIC 1199 - Elements of Studio Production and Recording |
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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1213 |
Music on the Brain Field Study– Whale Conservation: Marine Stewardship in Cape Cod Bay
This course provides students with the opportunity to devote their Spring Break to a marine conservation effort on Cape Cod. The class will travel to Provincetown, Massachusetts to collaborate with the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) on their annual Outer Cape Clean Up and Ghost Gear Removal Program. Students will learn about acoustic communication in marine mammals and participate in a deep exploration of marine habitat and anthropogenic environmental impact as part of a community-engaged experience. Students will work with CCS on a coordinated debris clean up effort; learn from CCS scientists, conservationists, and commercial fishermen about the complex network of issues impacting marine conservation on Cape Cod; and ultimately collaborate on a multi-media creative intervention to share with the public. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 1312 |
History of Rock Music
This course examines the development and cultural significance of rock music from its origins in blues, gospel, and Tin Pan Alley up to alternative rock and hip hop. The course concludes with the year 2000. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
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. Catalog Distribution: (WRT-AG) |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 2102 |
Tonal Structure and Design in Classical, Jazz, and Popular Music 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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for MUSIC 2102 - Tonal Structure and Design in Classical, Jazz, and Popular Music 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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2361 |
Arranging Nationhood–Reclaiming Identity: Caribbean Folk Albums in the USA
This course explores how first-generation American and immigrant musicians from the Caribbean and Latin America arranged and commodified the folk music of their countries for audiences in the United States. Whether for entertainment, as political protest, or as a way to understand themselves, artists like Harry Belafonte and Franz Casseus in the 1950s to Nathalie Joachim and Layla McCalla in recent years embraced the music of Haiti, Jamaica, and Trinidad for musical inspiration. We will first consider the nature of folk music as a repository for cultural heritage and then examine its relationship to other genres of music. We will listen to many albums and compose our own folk arrangements. Other course themes will include: transnationalism, hybridity, commercialism, cultural appropriation and social justice. Catalog Distribution: (GLC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 2380 |
Performing Hip Hop
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. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 3313 |
Pianos, Nations, and Empires
Outside of its native West, how and why have people made the piano theirs? This course will investigate how the piano (and its associated Western musical systems) have functioned culturally and politically amidst various and shifting notions of modernity and national identity across the Global South. Included in this broad survey are 20th-century developments from sub-Saharan Africa, Southwest Asia and North Africa, South and East Asia, as well as excursions into the Americas. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, HST-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 3370 |
Listening for Blackness: Sound, Noise, Music
This course will examine how theorists, scientists, artists, and other audiences ask questions of sound and questions of blackness, as well as what those questions reveal about the listener. We will also consider how everyday practices of sounding and listening for blackness challenge and undermine preconceived notions of race, gender, sexuality, and individuality. The intention of this course is for students to develop a better understanding of how sound shapes our experience and understanding of the world. The course is interdisciplinary; we will draw on black studies and sound studies approaches to sound, speech, aurality, and musicality from contemporary and historical moments. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 3370 - Listening for Blackness: Sound, Noise, Music |
Fall or 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: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) |
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 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. 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. |
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. 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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3604 |
Chorale
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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3609 |
Brazilian Ensemble - Deixa Sambar
Deixa Sambar performs several styles of samba, Brazil's national music. Members need not have prior background in music-making, but a good sense of rhythm is desirable. Members include students as well as Ithaca community members, brasileiros as well as newcomers to Brazilian culture. Rehearsals develop playing skills, with a deep emphasis on cultural understanding of this vital, community-based music. Full details for MUSIC 3609 - Brazilian Ensemble - Deixa Sambar |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 3610 |
Cornell Gamelan Ensemble
Study and performance of Central Javanese gamelan, the best known traditional music of Indonesia. For more information see https://blogs.cornell.edu/gamelan/. |
Fall, 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
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. |
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 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. |
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 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. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4121 |
Advanced Conducting
This course is designed to build on topics covered in The Art of Conducting (MUSIC 3122) and introduce concepts related to score study, rehearsal techniques, and advanced nonverbal communication. Competency with traditional beat patterns, a fundamental vocabulary of gestures, and the ability to read staff notation are assumed. Students will conduct orchestral, band, choral, and mixed chamber ensembles. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4124 |
Jazz Arranging and Orchestration
A study of arranging, composition, and orchestration technique by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sammy Nestico, Thad Jones, Horace Silver, and various members of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Work consists of three substantial arrangements for small, medium, and large ensemble with bi-weekly assignments. Arrangements are recorded by members of the jazz ensemble and submitted as a portfolio at the end of the semester. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) Full details for MUSIC 4124 - Jazz Arranging and Orchestration |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4313 |
Music and Sound Studies
This seminar serves as a rigorous introduction to the scholarly study of music and sound. We will read classic books and articles as well as more recent influential contributions, concentrating on scholarship in ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and sound studies. We will seek to understand how scholars have analyzed musical works of art, social practices of music making, and cultures of listening in different historical periods and in different parts of the world. Our goal will be to develop a general understanding of the current state of the field. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS, SCD-AS) (CA-AG, D-AG, LA-AG) |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 4421 |
Technology in Music Performance
A course on strategies and techniques for live musical performance with technology, including multimedia: image, video, movement, and sound. In developing our awareness of tools for live music with various media, we will explore several stylistic, technical, and logistical approaches, including collaboration and ensemble. We will engage with an array of software and hardware combinations within a variety of performance spaces, seeking to both understand and subvert standard practices for our own creative purposes. Catalog Distribution: (ALC-AS) (CA-AG, LA-AG) Full details for MUSIC 4421 - Technology in Music Performance |
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 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 Combo
Study and performance of classic and contemporary small-group jazz. |
Fall, Spring. |
| MUSIC 4621 |
Cornell Chamber Orchestra
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. |
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 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 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 6313 |
Music and Sound Studies
This seminar serves as a rigorous introduction to the scholarly study of music and sound. We will read classic books and articles as well as more recent influential contributions, concentrating on scholarship in ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and sound studies. We will seek to understand how scholars have analyzed musical works of art, social practices of music making, and cultures of listening in different historical periods and in different parts of the world. Our goal will be to develop a general understanding of the current state of the field. |
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 6422 |
Technology in Music Performance
A course on strategies and techniques for live musical performance with technology, including multimedia: image, video, movement, and sound. In developing our awareness of tools for live music with various media, we will explore several stylistic, technical, and logistical approaches, including collaboration and ensemble. We will engage with an array of software and hardware combinations within a variety of performance spaces, seeking to both understand and subvert standard practices for our own creative purposes. Full details for MUSIC 6422 - Technology in Music Performance |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 7104 |
History of Music Theory: Global Approaches and Perspectives
Across countless geographically and temporally distinct cultures, people have developed accounts of musical materials and techniques: what they believe music is, what it is made of, and how. People have also marveled at—and sought to comprehend—music's mysterious power to affect us, and have offered speculative theories and practical pedagogies in response. This course offers an introduction to some influential ideas, practices, and traditions of theorizing music, broadly construed, in various world cultures at distinct moments. Full details for MUSIC 7104 - History of Music Theory: Global Approaches and Perspectives |
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 7308 |
Sounding the Apocalypse: Ecomusicology from the Enlightenment to the Anthropocene
We will read groundbreaking scholarly and public-facing texts in the relatively new field of Ecomusicology, a sub-discipline that considers musical practices and ideologies in relation to their environments. The course challenges long-held claims for music as an autonomous enterprise distinct from nature and investigates the status of music as an evocation of landscape, weather, birdsong, and as a mode of nostalgia, alienation and resistance. Systems of production (music printing and dissemination, instrument fabrication, modes of recorded sound and delivery) will be considered along with other technological and moral aspects of music making and consumption. What are the possible purposes of sonic creativity in an age of environmental apocalypse? Locally oriented research projects and artistic collaborations will be fostered. |
Spring. |
| MUSIC 7314 |
(Black-Queer-Feminist) Ethics of Listening
This course will explore modes of listening across a wide variety of musical genres and traditions, past and present, considering the ways people hear music differently in a broad range of contexts. Students will reflect critically on their own listening paradigms, on the assumptions and preconceptions that affect how we translate what we hear into feeling and knowing, and on the stakes of those translations. The intention of the course is to develop our critical awareness of the power and politics involved in both everyday listening practices and listening as a "scientific" ethnographic method. Centering a black queer ethic of care, the course will bring together key texts from Black feminist musicologists, cultural theorists, and ethnographers in order to help cultivate an ethic for listening as carework. Attending the power dynamics of listening both in the archive and in the field, participation in this course will be grounded in students' individual objects and sites of study. Full details for MUSIC 7314 - (Black-Queer-Feminist) Ethics of Listening |
Fall or Spring. |
| MUSIC 7501 |
Historical Performance Practice
This course 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. |