The Cornell University Department of Music will be hosting an Open House on Thursday, October 19 from 12:30pm to 2:00pm in Lincoln Hall B20. Faculty and current students will be there to answer questions for anyone considering becoming involved in the music department!
“The Department of Music offers a wonderful variety of perspectives on sound and musical practices; from seventeenth century European music and dance to hip hop and punk, from sound art and experimentalism to gamelan and samba ensembles, from computer music and video games to jazz and medieval music cosmologies,” writes Professor Alejandro Madrid, Director of Undergraduate Studies in Music. “We have a truly remarkably diverse department, and I would say experiencing that diversity as extensively as possible and getting to know our amazing faculty is what the Cornell music experience is all about.”
“As a culturally mediated practice and experience, music offers a unique window into how humans make sense affectively and intellectually of the world around them; including human relations, social networks, emotional connections, ideas about beauty, value systems, racial and gender configurations, etc. In sum, studying music provides a wonderful opportunity to understand what makes us human.”
Professor Madrid is enthusiastic about the new direction the Department is taking, and how it fits within the larger liberal arts atmosphere at Cornell:
“We have made serious curricular changes in order to become more relevant to important intellectual projects beyond the sphere of music studies. Without losing sight of the musical traditions the department has fostered through its history, we are now much more receptive of non-traditional musical experiences as well as of different modes of being musical as points of entry into critically studying music and what happens when music happens. We are in a position of leading a radical transformation of the field of music studies nationally and internationally; being a part of that is extremely exciting.”
“For decades, our colleagues in other academic disciplines have seen music programs and departments with a degree of suspicion; for them they were oddities within the intellectual project of the university. With few exceptions, privileging Western art music and certain elitist ideas about musical value and meaning central to that tradition probably made music departments look more concerned with cultural propaganda than with critically engaging ideas and endeavors in dialogue with larger intellectual projects in the liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences. I believe the changes we have implemented move the department in the right direction, making us an integral part of the university's intellectual life.”
Drop by the Music Department to meet music faculty and students, learn about ways to make music a central and meaningful aspect of your Cornell experience, hear about music courses offered next semester, and explore the music major and minor! Free sandwiches and wraps provided.
