Music Program Classes
Classes offered at the Graduate Center
in SPRING 2006
Note: In addition to these courses, Graduate Center students
can request permission to take courses at other
CUNY campuses.
Click here for Fall 2005 classes.
81001 Studio Tutorial (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 3 cr.
81002 Studio Tutorial (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 3 cr.
81003 Studio Tutorial (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 3 cr.
81004 Studio Tutorial (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 3 cr.
81101 Ensemble (Room and Campus TBA) Staff
1 cr.
81102 Ensemble (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 1 cr.
81103 Ensemble (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 1 cr.
81104 Ensemble (Room and Campus TBA) Staff 1 cr.
Music 81502 An Aesthetics
of Film Music
Prof. Brown
Tuesdays 2pm-5pm Room 3491
The course will examine the entire phenomenon of film music and the
technical, artistic, aesthetic, psychological, and political problems it
poses. As an ongoing process, we will track the evolution of film music
and how its metamorphoses run parallel to and diverge from those in the
art and commerce of the cinema. For the "classical" film
score, we will examine essential differences between film and concert
music. Scores will be studied in the light of how the composer has
solved both the musical and dramatic problems at hand, and we will
discuss the ways in which varying musical styles, from romantic to
avant-garde, have been deployed in the cinematic context. In many
instances, the musical score opens doors onto deeper readings of the
filmic text, and we will explore some of the ways in which this occurs.
The movement of film music into non-classical areas, in particular pop
and jazz, will also be examined, as will the recent shift towards
electronics (synthesizers, sampling, etc.) and new tendencies in
film/music interactions, such as the breakdown of the distinction
between source (diegetic) and nondiegetic music. Numerous examples from
films and scores will be presented in class. Video copies of complete
films, including documentaries on composers such as Bernard Herrmann,
Jerry Goldsmith, Toru Takemitsu, and Georges Delerue, will be available
for viewing in the library.
Music 81503 Performance
Practice: Classical and Early Romantic
Prof. Erickson
Fridays 10am-1pm Room 3491.
Study of the traditions of performance practices from 1750-1830, with special emphasis on
Mozart and Beethoven. Considerations will be given to the theoretical and practical
documents; the development of instruments and related implications for performance
practice; questions of tempo, ornamentation, music and dance; and the role of
improvisation. Class performances will play a major role in the course.
Music 81504 Performance
Practice: 20th/21st Centuries
Prof. Peress
Thursdays 10am-1pm Room 3491.
A study of the music of
Antheil, Bernstein, Crumb, Ellington, Feldman, Gershwin, Ives, and
Stravinsky. Special emphasis will be given to American composers whose
broad range of vernacular-inspired styles pose interpretive challenges
alongside the technical problems usually faced by the modern performer:
polyrhythms, unusual instrumentation, layered tempi, and aleatoric
music. Students will be asked to prepare applicable works for
instrument or voice.
Music 84200 Seminar in
Music Theory: Rock Theory and Analysis
Prof. O'Donnell
Wednesdays 2pm-5pm Room 3491. Open only to students
enrolled in a doctoral program.
In this seminar we will critically explore the rapidly expanding
subdiscipline of rock theory and analysis. For our purposes, rock music
will be loosely defined as post-1965 rock 'n' roll. We will examine the
growing body of secondary literature comprised of close analytical
readings of specific rock songs, as well as the more ambitious attempts
to define the style through broad theoretical generalizations. Our work
will culminate in original analyses modeled on, and ideally expanding,
the existing literature.
Music 84300 Atonal Voice
Leading
Prof. Straus
Thursdays 2pm-5pm Room 3491.
A survey of theoretical approaches to the linear organization of
post-tonal music. Readings in Schenker, Salzer, Lerdahl, Lewin, and
Morris, as well as recently-published and unpublished research. Topics
include prolongation, linearization, voice-leading parsimony, and
geometrical modeling of atonal pitch space. This course fulfills the
Post-Tonal 2 requirement for theory students. Prerequisite: Post-Tonal
1 (Music 74100: Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory and Analysis) or
permission of the instructor.
Music 86400 Writing About Music
Prof. Atlas
Tuesdays 10:30am-12:30pm Room 3389.
To some extent, this course is an "advanced writing workshop."
It will deal with the strategies of scholarly writing, with the
presentation of historical, analytical, and aesthetic judgments/
interpretations in a clear, polished, and even hard-driving manner.
N.B.: (1) class limit: eight
students; (2) pre-requisite: either our own Music Program's MUS
70000 course, OR an equivalent course taken elsewhere, OR permission of
the instructor; and (3) although the course is worth 3 credits, it will
meet 2 hours each week, in addition to which I'll make myself available
for another three hours each week. For course syllabus, please
be in touch with Prof. Atlas immediately upon registering for the
course.
Music 85400 Intermediate
Schenkerian Analysis
Prof. Burstein
Thursdays 10am-1pm Room 3389.
This course will focus on the practice and theory of Schenkerian analysis. Intensive work
in analysis of selections from the tonal literature will be supplemented by close readings
of Schenker's theoretical and analytical writings as well as readings from the secondary
literature. Prerequisite: Introduction to Schenkerian Analysis (Music 74500) or consent of
the instructor.
Music 86500
Monteverdi and the Beginning of the Baroque
Prof. Hanning
Fridays 10am-1pm Room 3389.
This seminar will investigate the interrelationship and changing styles
of poetry and music in the secular genres of madrigal, solo song, and
early opera from around 1580 to 1640. Monteverdi's role in the emergence
of early Baroque styles and genres will be our central theme, but other
composers, from Rore to Gesulado, will also be represented. A reading
knowledge of Italian is desirable but not essential.
Music 86700
Research Seminar in Music History: After
Enlightenment: Beethoven Inside Out
Prof. Kramer
Wednesday 10am-1pm Room 3491.
Commonly read as testaments of the Revolution and its aftermath,
Beethoven's music interrogates Enlightenment aesthetics in deeply
personal confessionals. We begin with the convoluted historiographic
figure of Beethoven, and seek its immanence in such works as the Bonn
cantatas; some early songs; the [“Moonlight”] Sonata “quasi una
fantasia”in C-sharp minor; Leonore/Fidelio; the Incidental Music for
Goethe's Egmont; the String Quartet in F minor (Opus 95); the folksong
settings composed for George Thompson; the Missa solemnis; the String
Quartet in B-flat, Opus 130 (and the grosse Fuge)--in their texts, and
in contemporary critique and later reception. There will be occasion to
work with the counterpoint and fugue studies written for Haydn and
Albrechtsberger and the theoretical texts culled for other purposes;
with the voluminous sketches that have survived for nearly all
Beethoven’s compositional projects; and with the wondrously complex
autograph scores now available in facsimile: the String Quartets Opus
59; the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies; the Piano Sonatas Opus 90 and Opus
101, among others.
Music 86800 Music History
Seminar: Transatlantic Music Criticism in 19th-Century Paris, London,
Boston, New York
Prof. Saloman
Tuesdays 2pm-5pm Room 3389
This class will discuss principles and practices of music criticism in
source documents from nineteenth-century Paris, London, Boston, and New
York (by Momigny, Castil-Blaze, Berlioz, Urhan, d'Ortigue, Holmes,
Davison, Dwight, Fuller, Seymour, Fry) as well as in modern
musicological scholarship (by, among others, Bashford, Bonds, Cone,
Ellis, Goehr, Kawabata, Kolb, Levy, Rushton, Saloman, Solie, Subotnik,
Walker). We will explore cultural contexts and nineteenth-century
reception history of instrumental music by Haydn, Beethoven, and Berlioz
and of operas by Weber, Berlioz, and Wagner.
Music 87000 American music
from 1880 to 1930
Prof. Graziano
Mondays 2pm-5pm Room 3491.
Music in America during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries was an important part of our culture. As the nation
experienced immense population growth, there was a concomitant growth in
the arts. During the final decades of the nineteenth century, for
example, major arts organizations, such as the Metropolitan opera and
Boston and Chicago symphonies were founded. The first was dedicated
solely to European music, while the latter two programmed works by
American as well as European composers. In other cities, there were
mammoth choral festivals that contributed to community participation in
the arts. In New York, there was a burgeoning musical theater that
thrived alongside vaudeville and minstrelsy, which continued to attract
mainstream audiences. And popular song, much of it heard in theaters,
mirrored the public’s fascination with syncopation and African-American
culture. During the early twentieth century, these trends continued,
culminating after the first World War in new musical sounds in both
cultivated and vernacular music. This seminar examines the growth of
cultivated and vernacular music in the context of a changing American
society. Questions to be discussed include cultivation of an
American/European style, the export of vernacular music, the question of
repertory choices, and the development of a distinct American style.
Music 88300 Regional
Studies: Indian Music
Prof. Manuel
Mondays 2pm-5pm Room 3389.
A survey of musics in India, covering history, contemporary classical,
folk, and popular genres, and related issues including gender,
aesthetics, and nationalism.
Music 89200
Composers Forum
Prof. Olan
Thursdays 5-7pm Room 3491
The Composers Forum features a series of lectures by prestigious composers and
scholars of 20th-century and contemporary music. The meetings of the Composers Forum are
open to the public. Note that the Composers Forum does not meet every Thursday, but only
on selected dates; the specific dates and events may be found on the Composers Forum page.
Classes of previous semesters:
Fall 2005,
Spring 2005,
Fall 2004, Spring 2004, Fall
2003, Spring
2003, Fall 2002,
Spring 2002, Fall
2001.
Music Programs • The Graduate Center,
CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue • New York, New York 10016-4309
(212) 817-8590 • music@gc.cuny.edu
