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The emphasis of this course is upon the thesis that the Black or `Blues Aesthetic’ is a cultural perspective that emerges from within the experiences of Black people, facing the socio-political and economic conditions of modern and contemporary America. Our focus will be upon the traditions of African American music, literature, theater/film, and specifically the visual arts.

This course explores the relationship between sound and its affect on visual perception in relation to moving images. By practicing the creative application of audio post-production techniques (foley, ADR, sound design, surround mixing) the class will learn about various conceptual elements of sound (diegetic, non-diegetic, on and off screen, visual magnetism). Students will learn to approach sound in film with a better understanding in both theory and application.

The class explores the influence of music on the development of mathematics, specifically the sub-discipline of analysis. From Pythagoras’s tuning problem, an early evidence for the existence of irrational numbers, to finding precise descriptions for pitch and musical timbre, questions from music inspired important developments in mathematics, giving rise to the flourishing subfield known as harmonic analysis. By exploring the influence of music on mathematics, the class will provide an introduction to harmonic analysis, reaching from classical results on the convergence of Fourier series to the theory of the Fourier transform and distributions, and their applications to acoustics.

Using different case studies from around the world, this course examines the power of music in social life. We will explore the meanings and uses of music, such as the way music is used to heighten and ensure spiritual efficacy, to comment on and contribute to social movements, or to make sense of “natural” disasters. Rather than diving deep into musical structures, we will explore music in its cultural, political, religious, economic, historical, and/or ecological contexts. Ultimately, the course gives you critical tools and frames to apply to your own case students.

This course explores interactions of sensory experience, time, and place in which music is an integral part, drawing on texts from performance studies, music history, ethnomusicology, the sociology of culture, media studies, and anthropology, with in-class active listening from music indexed in the texts used to analyze the ways in which music from a variety of genres and time periods structures the intentions and affect of places and the practices they facilitate. (future course)

This course explores the long-standing relationship between verbal art and music in high art, popular, and folk traditions. We will consider: how musical paradigms shape literary aesthetics, song and identity, improvisation in music and verbal art, Romanticism and the dissonance of Modernity in literature and music, the relationship between popular song and poetry, tradition and innovation in oraliture, models of performance in literature and music. Examples drawn from Spanish, Latin American, and U.S. Latino/a traditions. Taught in Spanish.

This course is an introduction to Samba. Deeply enmeshed with Brazil’s colonial history Samba has arisen as a symbol of its cultural and national identity. With dance as our foci, this course will offer an embodied exploration of the racial and cultural mixing at Samba’s root through a study of physical techniques, aesthetics, rhythms and ideology. We will also study the music, history, traditions and socio-cultural context surrounding the dance through readings, videos and discussions.

The lyric poem has always had a close but mysterious relationship to music and song. In the domain of literature, term lyric has designated a type of poem distinct from dramatic or narrative poetry, but in the domain of music, particularly opera, the distinction breaks down, and lyric, drama, and narrative work hand in hand. This course will investigate these relationships by reading and writing the lyrics, both in the poetic and musical sense of the word. Students enrolled in this learning community will work in close collaboration with composers and singers to develop a new opera.

The basic principles of physics (mechanics, wave motion, and sound) that influence the design and performance characteristics of musical instruments will be studied. The major groups of modern orchestral and keyboard instruments will be discussed, and the physics of hearing, singing, harmony, tuning temperaments, and room acoustics will be included. Group projects will be required.

The German city of Berlin has long been a city of fascination and transformation. During the short years between WWI and the Nazi takeover, it was the center of a cultural efflorescence that has rarely been matched since, including the music of Kurt Weill, the art of Dada and Neue Sachlichkeit, and the designs of the Bauhaus, among others. This course will examine the culture of Weimar Berlin and situate it within the turbulent social life and politics of those years. Required course for the From Berlin to Broadway: The Music of Kurt Weill StudiOC Learning Community.