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

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. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 1106 - Introduction to Western Music Theory

A hands-on, half-semester (7 weeks) course on fundamental techniques for recording and live music production. Students will learn best practices for sound engineering, studio recording, and live performance production using various analog and digital hardware and software tools. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 1199 - Elements of Studio Production and Recording

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. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 1212 - Music on the Brain

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. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 1213 - Spring Break: Marine Stewardship and Creative Collaboration

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. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 1312 - History of Rock Music

This First-Year Writing seminar provides the opportunity to write extensively about music's place in our world. Topics vary by section. TermTopicInstructorFall, SpringThe Story of a SongN. Vigilante.FallAnimal Music: From Cicadas to WhalesA. Lewandowski.

Full details for MUSIC 1701 - FWS: Sound, Sense and Ideas

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. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 2102 - Tonal Structure and Design in Classical, Jazz, and Popular Music II

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. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 2112 - Collaborative Songwriting

Music plays an essential role in identity formation, social experience, emotional regulation, interpersonal bonding, caregiving, and the creation of spiritual meaning across all human cultures. This course surveys the ways in which music interacts with our minds and bodies, focusing on core theoretical concepts such as pitch, timing, and expectation, but also on the cultural history of states such as trance or flow, and the implementation of musical joy and mimesis in cultural productions. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to music by combining approaches from musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory with sound studies, acoustics, and cognitive science. It is designed to be stylistically agnostic, and no prior experience with any particular form of music is required.

Full details for MUSIC 2140 - Music, Mind, and Body

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. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 2201 - Introduction to Music Studies

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. (HC, SC)

Full details for MUSIC 2330 - Music in and of East Asia

This course critically examines the politics and ethics of knowledge production across the humanities and social sciences. It poses an expansive and complex question: how, by whom, and for whom is knowledge produced and to what ends? We will explore quantitative and qualitative research methods, theories of the archive and curation, and artistic and creative work as forms of knowledge production while centering questions of access across a range of categories, including but not limited to disability, language, geopolitical positioning, and neurodivergence. In a semester-long active learning project, students and faculty will collaboratively produce knowledge and disseminate it via the in-progress, open-access digital humanities platform Palestinian Pedagogy Network. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 2352 - How Do You Know? The Ethics and Politics of Knowledge

In the second part of Shaping Sound - an introduction course to experimentation in sound, composition - 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 throughout the course can be presented as a composition, sound object, an installation, or any combination thereof. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 2441 - Shaping Sound II

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. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 2703 - Thinking Media

Continuation of jazz theory, technique, and applied skills. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 3112 - Jazz Improvisation and Theory II

Composer’s Toolbox II introduces undergraduate students to music composition through non-conventional approaches to sound organization and notation. The class explores composing with field recordings, the inclusion of improvisation, process music, experimental music production techniques, and sound art. There are no stylistic prescriptions in the class, and students are encouraged to blend different techniques. Coursework consists of in-depth repertoire analysis, short readings, listening assignments, regular creative exercises, and a final composition. The course is open to students with varying degrees of compositional experience. Students who identify as having limited or extensive experience in composition will find opportunities to expand their practice and engage with new methods. (Note: Composer’s Toolbox I is not a prerequisite.) (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 3142 - The Composer's Toolbox II

In her pathbreaking text Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval Saidiya Hartman writes that young Black women were radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other ways to live and never failed to consider how the world might be otherwise. This two-semester course endeavors to travel through those worlds using the cultural and musical forms of gospel and the blues as our compass. The first semester is guided by the work of scholars and writers like Angela Davis, Hazel Carby, Alice Walker, and Gayl Jones and artists like Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Together we will interrogate the spectrum of lived experiences making for a kaleidoscopic sonic history of joy, pleasure, sorrow, resistance, and everything in between. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 3322 - Gospel and The Blues: A Black Women's History I, 1900-1973

This course will survey the influence of jazz across multiple forms, including literature, poetry, and film. This influence was often reciprocal; as writers, playwrights, filmmakers and poets sought to think with and through jazz, so too did jazz musicians engage with and take inspiration from other forms. Through our engagement with these multiple mediums, we will develop a broader understanding of the social and political context for this music and the unique affordances and challenges of cross-media scholarship. No prior knowledge of jazz is required; the course is designed to function as a novel (excuse the pun) way of introducing the genre. In addition to reading and watching various forms of media, we will be listening to music throughout.

Full details for MUSIC 3327 - Jazz Fictions: Film, Literature, Music

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. (MT)

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. (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. (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. (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. (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. (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. (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/. (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. (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. (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. (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. (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 is required, and participants must meet with the instructor for a short audition before enrolling. (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

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. (MT)

Full details for MUSIC 4121 - Advanced Conducting

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. (HC)

Full details for MUSIC 4313 - Music and Sound Studies

This course offers a unique opportunity to engage in a dynamic, multi-sited exploration of music production, cultural exchange, and technological collaboration. This course is open to songwriters, performers, producers, and engineers who want to collaborate remotely with peers in Rwanda to produce and showcase original compositions, fostering a rich cross-cultural dialogue through music. By integrating theoretical knowledge with practical experience, students will increase their ability to create and collaborate in the recording studio, as well as cultivating different strategies for long-distance collaboration on musical projects.

Full details for MUSIC 4355 - Rwanda Audio Lab

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. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4501 - Individual Instruction

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

Full details for MUSIC 4615 - Jazz Ensemble

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

Full details for MUSIC 4621 - Cornell Chamber Orchestra

Small ensembles meet weekly to explore diverse flute repertoire including a variety of instrumentation (piccolo, alto flute, bass flute). There will be a performance opportunity at the end of the semester on a chamber concert or in a studio class setting. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4631 - Chamber Flute Ensemble

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

Full details for MUSIC 4641 - Advanced Instruction in Gamelan

Study and performance of chamber music works from duos to octets, for all instruments and voice. Students will be expected to attend a one hour coaching each week and rehearse on their own as well. There will be a final performance at the end of the semester and possible additional performance opportunities.Students may be invited to join in the department of music's weekly reading sessions with faculty by invitation. (PL)

Full details for MUSIC 4651 - Chamber Music Ensemble

Independent study affords students the opportunity to pursue special interests or research not treated in regularly scheduled courses. A faculty member, who becomes the student's instructor for the independent course, must approve the proposed study and agree to provide continuing supervision of the work. Students must prepare a proposal for independent study. To apply for independent study, please complete the online form. Undergraduate student and faculty advisor to determine course of study and credit hours.

Full details for MUSIC 4901 - Independent Study in Music

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.

Full details for MUSIC 4912 - Honors in Music

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.

Full details for MUSIC 6313 - Music and Sound Studies

This course offers a unique opportunity to engage in a dynamic, multi-sited exploration of music production, cultural exchange, and technological collaboration. This course is open to songwriters, performers, producers, and engineers who want to collaborate remotely with peers in Rwanda to produce and showcase original compositions, fostering a rich cross-cultural dialogue through music. By integrating theoretical knowledge with practical experience, students will increase their ability to create and collaborate in the recording studio, as well as cultivating different strategies for long-distance collaboration on musical projects.

Full details for MUSIC 6355 - Rwanda Audio Lab

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

This seminar explores the recent “global turn” in music history: a call to confront the discipline’s imperial legacies, decenter nation-bounded narratives, and cultivate post-Eurocentric frameworks for a more equitable historiography. With a focus on voice and empire (when listening across colonial lines, who counts as a proper human?) we’ll read important literature in and outside music studies that have been central to the development of this field. Some questions we’ll grapple with are as follows: What are the arguments for and against the global turn? Is globality a relevant framework for any research project in music and sound? What does it mean to decolonize knowledge production in music studies?

Full details for MUSIC 7224 - Voice, Empire, Global Music History

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

This seminar primarily explores the interplay of video and music through both the study and creation of Intermedia works. We will explore musical and visual strategies for shaping time-based art, with a focus on the relationship between sound and image. Intersections of sound with theater, sculpture, and interaction with AI will also be explored. Repertoire for the course includes analysis of intermedia works by composers such as Pamela Z, Jennifer Walshe, Brigitta Muntendorf, and Simon Steen-Andersen, alongside visual artists engaging with sound, including Joan Jonas, Arthur Jafa, Ryoji Ikeda, and Mark Leckey. Students will receive foundational instruction in audio and video editing software, leading to short creative études and a final intermedia composition. No prior experience in electronic music or video art is required. The course is open to graduate students in music and visual arts.

Full details for MUSIC 7412 - Intermedia Arts Seminar: Aesthetics and Practice

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