Music Program Classes
Classes offered at the Graduate Center in
Spring 2010
Click here for
registration schedule.
Click here for schedule of Fall 2009 classes
Click here for schedule of classes
in other previous semesters
MUS 76001 Proseminar in Music History: the
Renaissance, and
MUS 81202 Performance Workshop: the
Renaissance
Performance (Note: these classes are co-requisite)
[10356; 10361]
Profs. Ruth Deford and Anne Stone Thursday
2-6pm Room 3491.
MUS 76701 Teaching Proseminar
[10885]
Prof.
Jane Sugarman Thursday 5:30-7:30pm Room 3491.
An exploration of teaching strategies and a discussion
of prominent pedagogical issues across the range of disciplinary areas
in Music, including Ethnomusicology, with special emphasis on teaching
the music of the Americas; Theory and Composition; Musicology, with two
sessions given to the teaching of Music Appreciation; and Performance. A
final meeting will offer instruction on the use of computers in the
classroom. Faculty from respective areas will conduct each session,
joined by current and recent teaching fellows who have taught in the
CUNY system. Chancellor's Fellows will be assigned a mentor on the
campus at which they are scheduled to teach in the following fall
semester and will be expected to attend a few meetings of a class on
that campus and to make a guest presentation there. All students will be
asked to present a twenty-minute mock teaching assignment to the
proseminar. No written work will be required.
The course is required of first-year Chancellor’s
Fellows. All students in Music are welcome to register, up to the cap of
twenty students.
MUS 76702 DMA Topics
[10886]
Prof. Sylvia Kahan Monday 10:-11:30a, Room 3491
MUS 81202 Performance Workshop: the Middle Ages
Performance and MUS 76001
Proseminar in Music History: the Middle Ages (Note: these
classes are co-requisite; for class details, see under
MUS 76001 above) [10356; 10361]
MUS 81503 Performance Practice: Classic and Early Romantic
[10362]
Prof. Raymond Erickson Thursday
2-5pm Room 3491.
MUS 81504 20th & 21st Century Performance
Practice [10363]
Prof.
Ursula Oppens Wednesday 10am-1pm Room 3491
MUS 8300 Popular Music in
Cross-Cultural Perspectives [10364]
Prof. Peter Manuel Monday 2-5pm
Room 3491
This course combines conceptual and
analytic approaches to the study of popular music with explorations of
diverse selected genres, emphasizing music cultures outside the
Euro-American mainstream and distinct from those (such as Hispanic
Caribbean music) that are covered in other seminars. The thematic
approaches considered include, among others: urbanization; the relevance
of Frankfurt School and Birmingham School theorizing to world popular
music; ramifications of globalization, including the dynamics of
borrowings between the West and 'the rest'; the impact of new media,
from cassettes to cyberculture; popular music and diaspora studies;
formal analytical approaches to non-Western popular musics; varieties
and strategic uses of postmodern aesthetics; gender dynamics in diverse
popular music subcultures; issues of copyright and ownership; and
polemics regarding the ethics of world beat.
While not attempting a comprehensive survey of world popular
musics, the course also aims to generate some familiarity with a
representative spectrum of non-Euro-American genres diverse in style,
historical era, and locale. These may include, among others: assorted
African popular genres (juju, highlife, soukous); in the Mediterranean:
arabesk, rebetika, nuevo flamenco, rai, and 'central domain' Arab
popular music; in Latin America: tango, norteño, nor-tec, cumbia; in the
Caribbean (time permitting): dancehall, chutney. Students will be
required to make at least one succinct oral presentation on a selected
reading, and at the end of the semester, a presentation on their term
paper.
MUS 83100 Questions of Genre in US
Music [10365]
Prof. Stephen Blum Thursday 10am-1pm Room 3491
The study of musical genres is a major concern of
ethnomusicologists, music historians and music theorists alike.
Concentrating on music of the U.S., the seminar attempts a systematic
treatment of approaches to description and analysis of genres through
the perspectives of music historians, social historians, sociologists,
ethnographers, biographers and others involved in production,
distribution and criticism of music. In addition to reading and
listening assignments, students are required to write a research paper
on an approved topic. Open only to doctoral students; not available
to auditors.
MUS 84000 Music of Stravinsky
[10366]
Prof. Joseph Straus Tuesday 12-5 pm Room 3491
An analytical survey. While we will take account of
historical and biographical context, contemporary musical trends, and
primary documents (including both writing and compositional sketches),
our principal focus will be the music itself, including especially its
pitch and rhythmic organization. Assignments include extensive listening
and reading, weekly analytical essays, and a final analytical paper. No
theoretical background is assumed, but some knowledge of basic atonal
theory will be helpful.
MUS 84100 The Beatles [10367]
Prof.
Mark Spicer Monday
6:30-9 pm Room 3491
This seminar will offer an in-depth study of the music of
the Beatles. Using Walter Everett’s The Beatles as Musicians as
our central reference, we will trace the group’s stylistic development,
song-by-song and album-by-album, from their earliest days as the Quarry
Men through their swan song Abbey Road. Our primary focus will be
on analyzing the substance of the recordings themselves — that is, we
will explore issues of form, harmony and voice leading, rhythm and
groove, performance practice, text-music relations, and so on — and yet
we will also take time to consider the profound influence that the
Beatles have had, and continue to have, in shaping not only the
landscape of pop and rock music, but our postmodern world itself.
(Enrollment limited to doctoral students in music, or by permission of
the instructor.)
MUS 85400 Seminar in Theory and
Analysis: Intermediate Schenkerian Analysis [10368]
Prof. L. Poundie Burstein Tuesday 10am-1pm Room
3491
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.
MUS 85600 Analysis of Musical
Transformation [10369]
Prof. Philip Lambert Friday 10am-1pm Room 3389
A study of transformational theories and their
application in musical analysis. The course will focus on the work of
David Lewin, Henry Klumpenhouwer, and others, with special emphasis on
the usefulness of their theoretical ideas for the analysis of tonal and
post-tonal music. Activities will include collaborative and comparative
analyses, oral presentations on readings, and individual analysis
projects. This course is intended for students who have already taken
the fall-semester course in basic post-tonal theory or who have acquired
the equivalent background in some other way.
MUS 86300 Late Haydn
[10370]
Prof. Bruce MacIntyre Friday 10am-1pm Room 3491
MUS 86400 Writing About Music
Prof. Allan Atlas Tuesday 11am-1pm Room 3389
[10371]
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, hard-driving, and polished manner. Each student will write: (1) four short papers (approximately 500-750 words = 2 - 3 double-spaced pages) on assigned topics, these to be submitted at the rate of one every other session over the course of sessions 3 - 11 (each paper will be assigned two respondents); (2) a Notes-length (approximately 1,000 words) review of a book, edition, or recording of your choice (due at sessions 10-11), OR (3) a faux dissertation proposal (approximately 1,500 words plus annotated bibliography--due at sessions 12-13); in addition, students will work in two-, three-, or four-person teams, with each team presenting an annotated outline (in effect, an annotated table of contents of the kind that one might submit to a publisher) for a large-scale book on the history of music in Victorian England. Finally, from time to time we will analyze selected readings from the musicological (in the widest sense) literature, studying strategies and prose styles (both good and bad) that various scholars have used. N.B.: (1) class limit: eight students; (2) pre-requisite: the Music Program's version of Music 70000, an equivalent course taken elsewhere, or permission of the instructor; (3) although the class 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.
MUS 86500 The Poetic Imagination: Schubert, Schumann and the Beginnings of
Romanticism [10372]
Prof. Richard Kramer Wednesday
1:15-4pm Room 3491.
The few years separating the death of Schubert
(1828) and the music of Schumann’s first maturity (1832) were immense–a
breach of aesthetic and historical significance. For each, the poem
triggers a new way of conceiving music. We examine the early Romantic
temperament, its expression in music and literature, as a
self-conscious, self-fulfilling phenomenon. We explore the grand cycles,
and the idea of cycle itself: Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin,
Winterreise, and the two cycles within Schwanengesang, one by
Rellstab, the other by Heine; Schumann’s Liederkreis (Eichendorff),
Dichterliebe (Heine), and Frauenliebe und -Leben (Chamisso);
and the poetry of Goethe, Schiller, Hölty, Novalis. Works of other
genres will include Schubert’s Fantasy for Piano (Wanderer), Opus
15, and Schumann’s Fantasy, Opus 17, among others. Readings will engage
the important contemporary critics (E. T. A. Hoffmann, the Schlegels,
Schumann himself) and recent critical, historical and analytical studies
by Rosen, L. Kramer, Daverio, Hoeckner, Solie, Marston, Muxfeldt.
(Knowledge of German helpful but not required.)
MUS 86600 Jazz & Pop: A Fusion
Interpretation of America’s “Classical”
Music;
cross-listed with ASCP 81500 [3389]
Prof. Gary Giddens Tuesday
4:15-6:15pm Room 3389
MUS 86700 History of American
Theatre: The Post-60s Musical, cross-listed with THEA 86100 &
ASCP 82000 [10903]
Prof. Elizabeth Wollman Wednesday 4:15-6:15pm Room 3389
Room TBA
MUS 88400 Music, Politics, and Society in Southeast Europe
[10374]
Prof. Jane Sugarman Wednesday
10-1pm Room 3389
MUS 89200 Composers
Forum [10376]
Prof. David Olan Wednesday
5:30-7pm Room 3491.
The Composers Forum is a series of
meetings on topics of interest to composers. There will be guest
composers from inside and outside CUNY; presentations by students on
their own work and discussion of the best ways to present one’s own
work; and discussions of technical, musical and professional issues in
contemporary composition.
Music Programs • The Graduate Center,
CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue • New York, New York 10016-4309
(212) 817-8590 • music@gc.cuny.edu
