Music (MUSC)

MUSC 0050 College Music Program

Private study in voice, keyboard, strings, woodwind, brass, percussion, and non-western instruments. Such study is designed to meet the artistic, technical, and/or professional needs of the student. Note: This is not a syllabus. Course requirements and assessment will be determined by the private instructor. Private lessons in the College House Music cannot be taken Pass/Fail. Please visit http://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/performance. Students cannot register through Penn In Touch. Registration will be maintained by the music department upon receipt of application and instructor permission. An additional lesson fee will be charged to student account for participation in this program.

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0070 Ensemble Performance

Successful participation in a music department sponsored group. Ensemble groups: University Orchestra, University Wind Ensemble, Choral Society, University Choir, Collegium Musicum, Baroque and Recorder Ensemble, Chamber Music Society, Arab Music Ensemble, Samba Ensemble, Penn Flutes, Opera and Musical Theater, and Jazz Combo. This course must be taken for a letter grade (Pass/Fail registration option may not be utilized for this course).

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0100A Marian Anderson Performance Program

Special instruction in vocal and instrumental performance for music majors and minors only. Students must demonstrate in an audition that they have already attained an intermediate level of musical performance. They also must participate in a Music Department ensemble throughout the academic year, perform in public as a soloist at least once during the year (recital), perform a jury at the end of the spring semester, and attend and participate in masterclasses.

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0100B Marian Anderson Performance Program

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0110A Marian Anderson Group Performance Program

Special instruction in vocal/instrumental small group (ensemble) performance, for music majors and minors only. Students must demonstrate in an audition that they have already attained an intermediate or advanced level of musical performance. They also must participate in a Music Department ensemble throughout the academic year, perform in public as a soloist at least once during the year (recital), perform a jury at the end of the spring semester, and attend and participate in masterclasses. Prerequisite: Students must be a music major or minor.

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0110B Marian Anderson Group Performance Program

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0160 First-Year Seminar

The primary goal of the first-year seminar program is to provide every first-year student the opportunity for a direct personal encounter with a faculty member in a small setting devoted to a significant intellectual endeavor. Specific topics will be posted at the beginning of each academic year. Please see the College's First-year Seminar website for information on current course offerings http:/www .college.upenn.edu/courses/seminars/freshman.php. Fulfills Arts and Letters sector requirement.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 0180A Music in Urban Spaces

Music in Urban Spaces is a year-long experience that explores the ways in which individuals use music in their everyday lives and how music is used to construct larger social and economic networks that we call culture. We will read the work of musicologists, cultural theorists, urban geographers, sociologists and educators who work to define urban space and the role of music and sound in urban environments, including through music education. While the readings make up our study of the sociology of urban space and the way we use music in everyday life to inform our conversations and the questions we ask, it is within the context of our personal experiences working with music programs in public neighborhood schools serving economically disadvantaged students, that we will begin to formulate our theories of the contested musical micro-cultures of West Philadelphia. This course is over two-semesters where students register for .5 cus each term (for a total of 1 cu over the entire academic year) and is tied to the Music and Social Change Residential Program in Fisher Hassenfeld College House which will sponsor field trips around the city and a final concert for youth to perform here at Penn, if possible. Students are expected to volunteer in music and drama programs in Philadelphia neighborhood public schools throughout the course experience.

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

Also Offered As: URBS 0180A

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0180B Music in Urban Spaces

Two Term Class, Student must enter first term; credit given after both terms are complete

Also Offered As: URBS 0180B

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 0181 On Belonging: Music, Displacement, and Well-Being (SNF Paideia Program Course)

The 2020s has begun as a time of global existential angst: we are all living with so much uncertainty and change. Think of the impact of the COVID pandemic and the questioning of science in the form of vaccine resistance; climate change challenges; a technological and educational revolution; growing income inequality; the urgency of BLM protests in the USA, moves against dictatorships, the need to decolonize universities, and the pressure to address human rights and refugee challenges. But it is also a moment of real excitement, with increased technological access and presence in our lives. In fact, the capacity to connect to others almost anywhere in the world, immediately, is truly revolutionary. As is the capacity to plug into the sound of the world’s music in an instant. Through personal music listening, for example, we can use music to soothe, to excite, to travel imaginatively, to focus, for meditation, as a soundtrack to our everyday lives, and as emotional regulation. But the work of music for personal wellbeing and collective healing is much larger than just an individualized listening experience. This seminar opens up the issue of emotional regulation and collective healing by examining the relationship between sound and musical practice, performance, and engagement, both locally and around the world. You might think about this seminar as a kind of reflexive moment as you arrive on campus: as undergraduates and members of communities you will think about the relationship between your own recent move/displacement and the work of music/sound as a strategy of individual and collective belonging. There will be an ABCS component to the class.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 0190 Critical Speaking Seminar: See department for current offerings

Critical Speaking Seminars utilize oral communication assignments as a primary method for learning and assessment. They have three key requirements: (1)At least half of the course grade is based on two prepared oral presentations (one group and one individual). Students will meet with an undergraduate speaking advisor outside of class at least twice. (2) One rehearsal for each of the two required presentations. (3) Students will be video-recorded and will watch the recording with either the instructor of the advisor. Critical speaking fellows are doctoral candidate who teach in the respective disciplines. Enrollment is capped at 16 students/course. For additional details regarding a critical speaking requirement, see: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/cwic/courses/critical.html

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 0810 First-Year Seminar: Italian Music

Topics vary. See the Department's website at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/italians/courses for a description of current offerings.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: CIMS 0089, ITAL 0089

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1250 Musical Interfaces and Robotics

Musical Interfaces and Robotics is a skills and discussion-based class for students interested in learning the basics of electricity and physical computing specifically for musical purposes. Discussions will be organized around readings related to art and technology with a focus on sound-based works. Students will learn to program Arduinos that control DC motors and respond to physical buttons or sensors. We will learn how to integrate these tools with music applications that communicate with MIDI such as Reaper, Logic Pro, and/or Max/MSP. As a final project students will present a working prototype for a new instrument they've created or plans for an art installation featuring a kinetic sculptural element.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1270 Introduction to Electronic Musicmaking

An exploration of composition, style, and technique in a variety of popular and experimental electronic music genres. We'll study and practice making works in genres including acousmatic music, beat-driven music such as hip-hop and techno, pop songwriting, and sound art. As we proceed, we'll investigate techniques including field recording, sampling, sound synthesis, and generative music. Within each genre, we'll begin from the analysis and technique of exemplary music, then work towards presentation and group discussion of student composition projects.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1280 Audio Production

Audio Production is designed for students interested in taking their mixing, mastering, and recording skills to the next level. During this course we will conduct critiques and analysis of student projects as well as learn from local industry professionals. Through listening assignments we will refine our ears to identify the effects digital signal processing production tools have on recorded sounds. While we will examine current practices from many different genres, a special emphasis will be placed on exploring experimental approaches that you might be able to integrate into your artistic practice. A good understanding of Logic Pro is necessary to enter this course. Significant experience working with Pro Tools may substitute pending approval from the instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1290 History of Electronic Music

This course is a nonlinear history of electronic music, primarily in the United States. It is divided into ten topical milestones of electronic music history. Each week one topic is addressed, divided between mainstream and experimental perspectives and their interactions. Topics include early experimental electronic instruments, sampling/hip-hop, disco, and noise/glitch. Much of the class is about listening and learning to analyze music in terms both subjective and objective. Students will also train their ears to identify concrete elements within a musical track such as development and instrumentation, and consider abstract elements such as meaning and perception.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1300 1000 Years of Musical Listening

We know that we like music and that it moves us, yet it is often difficult to pinpoint exactly why, and harder still to explain what it is we are hearing. This course takes on those issues. It aims to introduce you to a variety of music, and a range of ways of thinking, talking and writing about music. The majority of music dealt with will be drawn from the so-called "Classical" repertory, from the medieval period to the present day, including some of the 'greats' such as Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Berlioz, and Verdi, but will also introduce you to music you will most likely never have encountered before. This course will explore the technical workings of music and the vocabularies for analyzing music and articulating a response to it; it also examines music as a cultural phenomenon, considering what music has meant for different people, from different societies across the ages and across geographical boundaries. As well as learning to listen ourselves, we will also engage with a history of listening. No prior musical knowledge is required. (Formerly Music 021). Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1320 Composers: Opera Composers 1600-1900

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism. Fulfills Arts and Letters Requirement. The course centers on a group of composers who created or developed opera as a successful genre by setting texts in Italian: Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini. We will explore how these musicians were involved in opera as a business model, how their careers took shape, how their music interacted on stage with words, bodies, and sets (enhancing narratives based on literature, mythology and history), how their works were products of larger social contexts, and finally, how and why these operas are presented today by American theatres (also adapted as Broadway musicals) or in film versions. The course is intended for non-majors, but music majors are welcome. Knowledge of Italian is not necessary.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ITAL 1320

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1321 Composers: Verdi and Shakespeare

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism. Fulfills Arts and Letters Requirement. Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi wrote three famous operas based on Shakespeare, Macbeth (1847), Othello (1887), and Falstaff (1891). We will examine the intriguing relationships between the plays and the operas, explore Verdi’s entire output and the conventions and contexts of Romantic opera, and finally discuss issues of race, gender, and performance that were as relevant for these two authors as they are for us today. The course is intended for non-majors, but music majors are welcome.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1322 Composers: Mozart/DaPonte

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism. Fulfills Arts and Letters Requirement. Mozart’s meeting with Lorenzo Da Ponte in Vienna in 1783 sparked one of the most successful collaborations in opera history between a poet and a composer, generating three works that are frequently staged in today’s theatres worldwide, The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790). We will study the literary sources of these operas, the poetic and operatic conventions of the time, and the issues (such as love, power, and gender) that these works raise, by also comparing different versions on video. The course is intended for non-majors, but music majors are welcome.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ITAL 1322

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1323 Composers: Anonymous, History's Most Prolific Composer

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1324 Composers: Medieval Songwriters

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism. Fulfills Arts and Letters Requirement. In this course we explore the sometimes anonymous, sometimes named creators of song across Europe, ca. 1100-1500. Some, like Philip the Chancellor, wrote serious, even polemical Latin songs, while others, such as Adam de la Halle, wrote works firmly entrenched in the poetics of courtly love. In the course we will consider issues of authorship/composership; attribution and transmission; linguistic and national song styles; and the contemporary reception of the medieval “troubadour.”

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1325 Composers: Fryderyk Chopin

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism. Fulfills Arts and Letters Requirement. Permanently exiled from his native Poland for half his short life, and debilitated by illness for much the same time, Fryderyk Chopin nonetheless produced a profoundly important repertory of music for the piano, music at times transcendentally beautiful and at times viscerally exciting. Through close listening to recordings, viewing of recorded live performances, and selected readings, this course will explore Chopin’s music and the cultures within which and for whom he composed. The course is intended for non-majors, but music majors and performers are more than welcome as well.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1326 Composers: Ludwig van Beethoven

This course will center on the biography, works, and cultural context of a specific composer or group of composers. As well as introducing students to the musical works of the composer(s), the course will examine issues such as reception history, the canon, mechanisms of cult formation, authorship and attribution, identity, historical and social contexts, and nationalism and patriotism.This course will explore the nature, evolution, and meanings of Beethoven's music. We will also consider aspects of his biography, particularly as they touch on his compositional output, and also think about the relationships between his music and cultural and political developments of his time. Listening to Beethoven's music, discussing it, and thinking about his life and art will constitute the heart of the course. The course is intended for non-majors, but music majors and performers are more than welcome as well.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1340 Performers: Dancers and Musicians

This course looks at the history of popular, vernacular, and art music in various time periods. Studying music from the ground up, we examine how performers have influenced music history. This introductory course examines the relationship of musicians and dancers from the Middle Ages up to the emergence of ballet. Engaging with musical scores, iconography, theoretical writings, and a range of other textual sources, we will consider the ways in which dance (and dancers) informed music (and musicians), and vice versa, over the course of several hundred years.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1341 Performers: The Singer ca. 800-1400

This course looks at the history of popular, vernacular, and art music in various time periods. Studying music from the ground up, we examine how performers have influenced music history. Tracing the figure of the singer beginning in the court of Charlemagne to the papal outpost of Avignon in the late thirteenth century, this introductory course considers the evolving roles of singers in the Middle Ages. From monastic cantors to virtuosic soloists, we will be concerned not only the cultural function of singers but also the repertoire they performed.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1342 Performers: Celebrity

This course looks at the history of popular, vernacular, and art music in various time periods. Studying music from the ground up, we examine how performers have influenced music history. This introductory course looks at the history of celebrity culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From "rival queen" actress-singers on London stages to mania over virtuoso instrumentalists, we will explore how celebrities dazzled fans, popularized repertoire, manipulated their public images, and were depicted in the media.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1343 Performers: Marian Anderson (1897–1993): Sound, Gender, and the Color Line

This course looks at the history of popular, vernacular, and art music in various time periods. Studying music from the ground up, we examine how performers have influenced music history. We will focus on the life, times, and art of legendary African-American contralto and native Philadelphian Marian Anderson, whose archive is housed by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections. Anderson's legacy remains extraordinarily relevant today as the country and the music world face new and old challenges in broadening access and fostering equality across boundaries of race, gender, and social class. We will develop hands-on projects based on Penn’s archival holdings (photos, diaries, letters, programs, audio materials, and scores) to explore Anderson’s pathbreaking role in American history, impacting music, politics, racial and gender relationships, and social justice. The exciting primary-source foundation will be complemented by secondary readings, listenings, and viewings.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1400 Jazz Style and History

This course is an exploration of the family of musical idioms called jazz. Attention will be given to issues of style development, selective musicians, and to the social and cultural conditions and the scholarly discourses that have informed the creation, dissemination and reception of this dynamic set of styles from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Fulfills Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 1400

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1420 Thinking About Popular Music

Catchy yet controversial. Fun but hard-hitting. Popular music is not just entertaining: it presents societal issues, raises questions, expresses ideas. This course considers how popular music of the 20th century manifested the hopes, contradictions, ingenuity, and challenges of life in the United States, as seen and heard through the experiences of musicians and audiences. We will address three core questions: (1) How is “talent” and “good” music distinguished? (2) What happens when we treat music as “property,” especially with respect to broader ideas of ownership and credit? (3) When, how, and why is music considered dangerous? We delve into these questions by profiling musicians’ lives, analyzing the musical traits of specific repertoire, investigating changes in how music circulates, and situating popular music in U.S. cultural history. This course is not a chronological survey and does not aim to cover all U.S. popular music (or global popular music). Instead, each core question is addressed through case studies. Over the course of the semester students learn listening and analytic skills, how to engage critically with a range of writings about music, how to develop compelling arguments and articulate them verbally in class discussions and in writing assignments.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1430 History of Opera

An investigation, through a series of representative works, of the central problem of opera: how does the combination of music, text, and visual spectacle create an art form in which the whole is more powerful than its parts. Today this issue can be examined not only in live performances but also through media such as film, DVD, streaming video-- media to which this four-centuries-old multimedia form has adapted, evolving in still compelling ways. The works chosen for the course provide a chronological survey but also represent the variety of sources on which opera has drawn for it subject matter: myth and legend, the epic, the novel, and the play.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ITAL 1430

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1440 Film Music in Post 1950 Italy

An exploration of cinematic sound through the lens of specific composer/director collaborations in post-1950 Italy, examining scores, soundtracks, and the interaction of diegetic and non-diegetic music with larger soundscapes. Composers Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone serve as case studies, in partnership with directors Fellini, Visconti, Leone, Pontecorve, Pasolini, and Coppola. Highlights include several excerpts form the Fellini/Rota collaboration, including The White Sheik, I vitelloni, The Road, Nights of Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, Juliet of the Spirits, Satyricon, The Clowns, Roma, Amarcord, Casanova, and Orchestra Rehearsal. Rota's music for Visconti will be examined in Senso, the Leopard, and Rocco and his Brothers, along with his Transatlantic collaboration for The Godfather. Morricone's work with various directors will be discussed in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Battle of Algiers, and Teorema, as well as for American films such as Malick's Days of Heaven and Tarantino's The Hateful Eight. Weekly screenings required. Open to all: music majors, minors, and non-majors; will count toward requirements for music minor. Knowledge of music and Italian helpful but not required. All readings and lectures in English.

Also Offered As: CIMS 1440, ITAL 1440

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1450 Songwriting

This class will tackle song as a topic of study from the perspective of the listener and the maker. We will consider popular song, folk song, art song, and other styles, as well as styles that may be hard to categorize, taking a big picture look at the role of songs in our lives and also getting into the nitty gritty of how songs are created. Reflective and analytical work will be required of students, with the main focus being the creation of original songs.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1500 World Musics and Cultures

This course examines how we as consumers in the "Western" world engage with musical difference largely through the products of the global entertainment industry. We examine music cultures in contact in a variety of ways-- particularly as traditions in transformation. Students gain an understanding of traditional music as live, meaningful person-to-person music making, by examining the music in its original site of production, and then considering its transformation once it is removed, and recontextualized in a variety of ways. The purpose of the course is to enable students to become informed and critical consumers of "World Music" by telling a series of stories about particular recordings made with, or using the music of, peoples culturally and geographically distant from the US. Students come to understand that not all music downloads containing music from unfamiliar places are the same, and that particular recordings may be embedded in intriguing and controversial narratives of production and consumption. At the very least, students should emerge from the class with a clear understanding that the production, distribution, and consumption of world music is rarely a neutral process. Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: AFRC 1500, ANTH 1500

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1510 Music of Africa

African Contemporary Music: North, South, East, and West. Come to know contemporary Africa through the sounds of its music: from South African kwela, jazz, marabi, and kwaito to Zimbabwean chimurenga; Central African soukous and pygmy pop; West African Fuji, and North African rai and hophop. Through reading and listening to live performance, audio and video recordings, we will examine the music of Africa and its intersections with politics, history, gender, and religion in the colonial and post colonial era. (Formerly Music 053). Fulfills College Cross Cultural Foundational Requirement.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 1510

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1530 Music in Troubled Places

In this class, we go beyond the headlines to discuss the history and cultures of peoples who have had to endure terrible suffering, particularly through ethnic conflict and civil war. We will focus on a curious phenomenon: populations typically defined as separate from one another (e.g., Israelis and Palestinians) often have a history of shared or related cultural practices, of which music is a prime example. We will survey a number of current and recent conflict zones and use music as a way to deepen our understanding of the identities and relationships between the peoples involved including through a consideration of my own fieldwork in Sri Lanka. Querying the very definitions of music, trouble, and place, the course then broadens out to consider how musicians have been affected by and/or responded to important global problems like slavery, sexual violence, climate change and other ecological disasters, like Hurricane Katrina. Regions to be considered in our lectures and/or readings include: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria (including Kurdish musics), Israel-Palestine, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Myanmar/Burma, Uganda, Sierra Leone, North and South Korea, the Marshall Islands, Cambodia, Mexico, and the United States.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 1533

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1560 Seeing/Hearing Globally (SNF Paideia Program Course)

This is a Penn Global Seminars Abroad semester long class with travel abroad after. It focuses on the interrelationship of music, arts, community-building, land, politics, and history. Places covered in coursework and travel vary by semester, and students have to apply for the class through Penn Global. The class is limited in student participation to no more than 20 students.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 1560, ANTH 1560

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1580 Weird Music

The term “weird” has long been used pejoratively to describe music that people don’t understand, which sounds to them like some combination of extreme, bad, pretentious, or indecipherable (“strange”). The term “weird” may be laced with racism and ignorance, such as when one chooses to say another culture’s music is “weird” rather than try to understand it. “Experimental,” by contrast, elevates music that is perceived as intending to push boundaries. Thus, both conjure up what they are not: “normal” music, such as a mainstream pop song. In this class, we take a journey through some of the world’s “weirdest” music and in the process question musical normativity and taste. We consider music deemed by its makers (or by outsides observers) as too loud, soft, fast, slow, complex, meandering, or simple; we study global histories of experimentalism, including experimental instruments and tuning systems, subversive and/or humorous uses of digital and analog technologies, and the “slow movement” and related DIY and punk subcultures; and we explore alternative ways of conceptualizing the structure and function of music that lie far outside the mainstream music industry. Questioning how capitalism makes its musical object, and moving beyond exoticism, we will seek greater insight into the fraught role of musical outsiders and cultural difference in mainstream capitalist culture. Why does some music strike us as weird? What role has the music industry played in shaping conventions? What strategies might we use to better respect musical difference?

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1700 Introduction to Theory and Musicianship

This course will cover basic skills and vocabulary for reading, hearing, performing, analyzing, and writing music. Students will gain command of musical rudiments, including notation, reading and writing in treble and bass clefs, intervals, keys, scales, triads and seventh chords, and competence in basic melodic and formal analysis. The course will include an overview of basic diatonic harmony, introduction to harmonic function and tonicization. Musicianship skills will include interval and chord recognition, rhythmic and melodic dictation and familiarity with the keyboard. There will be in-depth study of selected compositions from the "common practice" Western tradition, including classical, jazz, blues and other popular examples. Listening skills--both with scores (including lead sheets, figured bass and standard notation), and without--will be emphasized. There is no prerequisite. Students with some background in music may place out of this course and into Music 170, Theory and Musicianship I. Fulfills College Formal Reasoning and Analysis Foundational Requirement.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1710 Materials in Jazz Improvisation

This course is an introduction to basic theoretical materials explored in improvisation as heard in traditional jazz practice. In this course we will discuss typical harmonic progressions, traditional jazz song structures, chord symbols, melodic constructions, form, solo transcriptions, rhythmic concepts, lead sheet notation, and improvisation using modes, chromaticism, and various types of scales and melodic patterns. Ear training, sight-singing, and weekly rhythmic dictation exercises will occur concurrently with theoretical discussion. The student must have some familiarity with a beginner-intermediate level of basic music literacy and notation; they should already be able to demonstrate a basic understanding of scales, major and minor triads, key signatures, and meters. However in special cases where students might not be familiar with music notation, those students are still encouraged to communicate with the professor ahead of time to discuss prior experiences in music making. Finally, the student must have some access to a musical instrument and/or be willing to sing, as jazz is an aurally learned music and learning it by ear and through consistent engagement with the materials is the best way.

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1780 Audiovisual Climate Research*

In this course, you will collaborate with your peers to create a public-facing, digital exhibit that communicates research about a local problem posed by the climate crisis. First you will encounter theories for communicating climate research in sounds, images, and embodied practices. You will apply these theories to analyze exemplary audiovisual projects. Then you will connect with your university’s digital scholarship librarian and visit a media lab to help you shift from theoretical to technical aspects of creating a digital exhibit and recording sounds and images. After agreeing on a local climate problem that the exhibit will address, you will then form teams focused on creating different components of the overall exhibit: on the sound team, you might combine field recordings and recorded interviews into a short podcast episode; on the image team, you might create photo or video essays; on the education team, you might create public educational resources like DIY monitoring kits, reading lists, or create/improve relevant Wikipedia articles; on the interface team, you might link your skills in electrical engineering or environmental monitoring to build interfaces that connect bodies with real-time, local air quality measurements. Or you might devise an altogether different team in consultation with the professor. The course culminates in a public showcase of each team’s contribution to the digital exhibit. You will share your projects with peers, faculty, project participants/interviewees, and other community members. * Audiovisual Climate Research © 2022 by Andrew Niess

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1810 Film Sound and Film Music

Please check the website for a current course description at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/italians/courses

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: ITAL 1982

1 Course Unit

MUSC 1999 Guided Research

Individual research under the supervision of a member of the faculty.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 2300 Introduction to European Art Music

This course aims to introduce students to what it means to study the European musical tradition. Students will approach the diverse music that constitute the classical tradition from a variety of scholarly perspectives. The goal of this class is to listen deeply and think broadly. Students will consider questions such as: what sort of object is music? Where is it located? What does it mean to say a work is "canonic"? What is left out of the story? This class will be in dialog with other tier-one classes, and will consider what the historian can bring to the study and understanding of music. Fulfills the requirements of the Music major. Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 or 2700, or equivalent; or by permission of the instructor. Preference given to music Majors and Minors.

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 OR MUSC 2700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 2301 Introduction to Musicology

This class will consider what the historian brings to the study and understanding of music. Students will approach the diverse musics that constitute the Western tradition (broadly received) from a variety of scholarly perspectives. The goal of this class is to listen deeply and think broadly. Students will consider questions such as: what sort of object is music? Where is it located? What does it mean to say a work is “canonic”? What is left out of the story? What are the main techniques of archival research? How do we learn and apply techniques of critical listening and reading to music? Instructors will use resources, especially library’s primary sources, available at Penn and in Philadelphia. Fulfills the requirements of the Music major.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 OR MUSC 2701

1 Course Unit

MUSC 2400 Introduction to the Music Life in America

This course surveys American musical life from the colonial period to the present. Beginning with the music of Native Americans, the European legacy, and the African Diaspora, the course treats the singular social and political milieu that forged the profile of America's musical landscape. Attention will be given to the establishment of the culture industry and to various activities such as sacred music, parlor music, concert and theater music, the cultivation of oral traditions, the appearance of jazz, the trajectory of western art music in the United States, and the eventual global dominance of American popular music. Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 or 2700, or equivalent; or by permission of the instructor. Preference given to music Majors and Minors. Fulfills the Cultural Diversity in the U.S. College Requirement.

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 OR MUSC 2700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 2500 Introduction to Ethnomusicology

This course introduces students to the field of ethnomusicology through a series of case studies that explore a range of traditional, popular, and art musics from around the world. The course takes as a point of departure several works of musical ethnography, musical fiction, and musical autobiography and, through in-depth reading of these texts, close listening to assigned sound recordings, and in- class case studies, generates a context within which to think and write about music. Fulfills the requirements of the Music major.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 2700 Theory and Musicianship I

Introduction to and development of principles of tonal voice-leading, harmonic function, counterpoint, and form through written analysis, composition, improvisation, and written work. Course covers diatonic harmony and introduction to chromaticism. Repertoires will focus on Western classical music. Musicianship component will include sight-singing, dictation keyboard harmony. Fulfills College Formal Reasoning and Analysis Foundational Requirement.

Fall

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700

1.5 Course Unit

MUSC 2710 Theory and Musicianship II

Continuation of techniques established in Theory and Musicianship I. Explores chromatic harmony. Concepts will be developed through analysis and model composition. Musicianship component will include sight singing, clef reading, harmonic dictation and keyboard harmony.

Spring

Prerequisite: MUSC 2700

1.5 Course Unit

MUSC 3200 Modular Electronic Music Systems & Performance

MUSC3200 offers an introduction to electronic music/sound production with a focus on modular hardware systems and performance. Guest artists will join us for in-class visits and performances during the semester. Meetings will take place in the classroom, in concert spaces and in the studio. Preference given to Music majors and minors for registration.

Spring

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 OR MUSC 2700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3210 Recording Music: Theory & Methods

An introduction to music and sound recording with a focus on concerts and live performances. The entire process will be examined from start to finish, including the roles played by composers, musicians, listeners, performance spaces, and recording technology. Meetings will take place in the classroom, in concert spaces and in the studio. Music majors and minors will be given preference for registration.

Fall

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 OR MUSC 2700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3230 Computer Music I

This is an introductory class to the music creation software Max/MSP. Students will learn basic principles of synthesis, in theory and practice. Classwork includes lectures, problem-solving, and student presentations of creative work. Assignments and two large projects are creatively oriented with limitations to ensure understanding of concepts. Students are required to purchase and install the software on their machines (Mac or PC).

Not Offered Every Year

Mutually Exclusive: MUSC 7201

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3300 Historical Eras and Topics: Earlier Periods

Classes under this number offer a more in-depth look at historical eras and topics or repertories associated with a specific period of music history. Classes will focus on one historical epoch (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque). The purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity to engage deeply with musical objects, both historically and analytically, as well as to expose them to a range of methodologies with which to study music. Topics include: the Italian and English Renaissance madrigal; Baroque Opera 1600-1750.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ITAL 3300

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3301 Historical Eras and Topics: Earlier Periods

Classes under this number offer a more in-depth look at historical eras and topics or repertories associated with a specific period of music history. Classes will focus on one historical epoch (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque). The purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity to engage deeply with musical objects, both historically and analytically, as well as to expose them to a range of methodologies with which to study music. Topics include: medieval song and polyphony; songbooks ca. 1100-1600; inscribing music, ca. 800-1600; sound and listening in premodern Europe.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3310 Historical Eras and Topics: Later Periods

Classes under this number offer a more in-depth look at historical eras and topics or repertoires associated with a specific period of music history. Classes will focus on one historical epoch (Enlightenment, Romantic, Modernism, etc.). The purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity to engage deeply with musical objects, both historically and analytically, as well as to expose them to a range of methodologies with which to study music. Topics will be drawn from the history of opera in Europe and the United States.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3311 Historical Eras and Topics: Later Periods

Classes under this number offer a more in-depth look at historical eras and topics or repertoires associated with a specific period of music history. Classes will focus on one historical epoch (Enlightenment, Romantic, Modernism, etc.). The purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity to engage deeply with musical objects, both historically and analytically, as well as to expose them to a range of methodologies with which to study music. Topics include: the Classical string quartet; sacred music in the age of Enlightenment; sentimental song; music and colonial encounter.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3312 Historical Eras and Topics: Later Periods

Classes under this number offer a more in-depth look at historical eras and topics or repertoires associated with a specific period of music history. Classes will focus on one historical epoch (Enlightenment, Romantic, Modernism, etc.). The purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity to engage deeply with musical objects, both historically and analytically, as well as to expose them to a range of methodologies with which to study music. Topics include: music in the Enlightenment; music in the long nineteenth-century; and musical modernisms.

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3320 Themes in Music History

In this course, students will have the opportunity to explore music history from a thematic or conceptual perspective, frequently through several eras. Past topics include: Sound Tracks: Music, Memory, and Migration, Being a Gentleman Amatuer.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3321 Themes in Music History

In this course, students will have the opportunity to explore music history from a thematic or conceptual perspective, frequently through several eras. Among the topics that we will explore: medievalism and the reception of medieval music; vocality and sound in the Middle Ages; signs and symbols of music; anonymity and the medieval composer; the materiality of early music.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3322 Themes in Music History

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3323 Baroque Opera from Monteverdi to Gluck

We will explore the history of Baroque opera from the vantage point of its beginning and its end: Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607) and Christoph Willibald Gluck‘s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), both works setting into music narratives about the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as told by Ovid, Virgil, and others. We will discuss not only the historical documents that survive about these two masterworks (scores, librettos, letters etc.) but also today’s productions available in video. Why was the myth of Orpheus central to creators and audiences? What do these two operas and their performances tell us about being human in the world, both back then and today? How do we approach and understand this 400-years old multimedia genre, and why do these works still attract worldwide audiences today? We will also investigate works by Sartorio, Lully, Charpentier, Purcell, Telemann, and Handel. These works are based on poetic texts (“librettos”) thus we will explore text/music issues, focusing on prosody. Students in ITAL/FIGS are not expected to know music (in technical terms) but will have an opportunity to be exposed to poetic texts (in Italian, French, and German) that, by supporting music, function differently from other texts.

Fall or Spring

Also Offered As: ITAL 3323

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3340 Performers: Music, Rhetoric, Performance

This course looks at the history of popular, vernacular, and art music in various time periods. Studying music from the ground up, we examine how performers have influenced music history. We engage critically with issues such as music in social life, collaborative creative processes, and vernacular music’s engagement with race and gender. The great variety and quality of the instrumental and vocal music composed in Europe during the period 1600-1800, roughly from the birth of opera to Mozart’s death, solicits today an equally wide and intriguing array of responses from instrumentalists and singers aware of pre-Romantic performance practices. In this intermediate course fulfilling elective requirements for music majors, we will study the music from this early modern period by focusing on its performance, exploring topics such as sound, relationships between text and music, improvisation, and ornamentation, among others; for opera, we will focus on staging and acting practices, then and today. We will familiarize ourselves with issues such as: national idioms, dance music, rhetoric, the history and ideology of the performance practice movement, and the critical use of editions and of primary material, including original treatises and iconographical and literary sources.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3341 Performers: Dancers and Musicians

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3342 Performers: The Singer ca. 800-1400

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3343 Performers: Celebrity

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3450 Studies in African-American Music

This course explores aspects of the origins, style development, aesthetic philosophies, historiography, and contemporary conventions of African-American musical traditions. Topics covered include: the music of West and Central Africa, the music of colonial America, 19th century church and dance music, minstrelsy, music of the Harlem Renaissance, jazz, blues, gospel, hip-hop, and film music. Special attention is given to the ways that black music produces "meaning" and to how the social energy circulating within black music articulates myriad issues about American identity at specific histroical moments. The course will also engage other expressive art forms from visual and literary sources in order to better position music making into the larger framework of African American aesthetics. (Formerly Music 146).

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 3450

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3460 The Blackness of Rock: Revisiting Histories of Race, Gender, and Genre

This course explores the history of rock music by focusing specifically on the innovations and contributions of black musicians. The course will address itself to the legacies of race records, the uninterrupted appropriation of black sounds by white artists (think Elvis), and the further complications introduced by the British Invasion, all while focusing on individual artists such as Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Jimi Hendrix. The course will highlight and offer hands-on explorations of the innovations brought to rock music by these black artists. And, because the guitar is such an iconic instrument in rock, the course also will introduce students, through a series of labs, to the gear that makes these sounds possible. Understanding how amplifiers, effects pedals, and guitars interact and produce radically divergent sounds depending on how they are set up will offer insights into the artistry of these early rock musicians. Understanding the circuits, and how using (and abusing) them in particular ways is part of the materiality of rock's sound, will help shed light on the extent to which creative engagement with technology determined particular sonic pathways within the genre (distortion, overdrive, fuzz, feedback, etc.). And, these innovations literally shaped the future of rock, providing a foundation of sound and style and a particular relationship to gear that extends into the present. The final unit of the course will explore the racial politics, gender dynamics, and industry structures that have buried the black histories of rock and sidelined women's crucial contributions to the genre, contributing to rock's framing and marketing as a (mostly) male, white genre. The course will also ask how black musicians who perform rock today, such as Tosin Abasi, Lenny Kravitz, Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Bad Brains, Big Joanie, and Living Colour, among many others, negotiate these politics, these silenced histories, these industry barriers, and these audience expectations?

Fall

Also Offered As: AFRC 3460

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3480 Gender, Sexuality, & Pop Music

How is popular music implicated in the representation, production, performance, and interpretation of gender and sexuality? How have musicians negotiated traditional categories of gender and sexuality? In this class, we will approach the study of popular music through the lens of feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, transnational feminist theory, and intersectional methodologies to articulate the ways in which gender and sexuality have shaped musical discourse and popular culture more broadly. Topics include: gay anthems, trans vocality, masculinities, boy bands, oral histories, queer electro-pop, afrofuturism, performance alter-egos, queer(ing) methods, cover songs, censorship, musical borrowings & cultural appropriation, the politics of representation, and affective modes of listening. Students will learn about and be able to articulate the values and ideologies that are communicated in various subgenres of popular music, and how musical production impacts our understanding of cultural practices and social systems. *No prior musical knowledge required.*

Also Offered As: GSWS 3480

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3510 Music and Healing

In this class we will explore the many ways in which music around the world, and in our own neighborhoods, has been used for social-emotional healing, and individual and collective well-being. We will think about music and healing in four ways: through the lens of the musical, the social/cultural, performative, and biomedical (Roseman 2012). In other words, we read across the disciplines, to include ideas about music, the brain, and emotion; about the impact of adversity, and the work of music and creativity as vehicles of restoration and healing. There will be an Academically Based Community Service project in the Spring 2022 class. The course is intended specifically for music majors and minors, but others may request a place from the instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3520 Music, Religion, Ritual in South and Southeast Asia.

What role does music play in articulating religious identities and spaces? What is the importance of ritual musics as they persist and change in the modern world? How does music reflect and articulate religious ways of thinking and acting? In this course, we explore these and other questions about the interrelations between music, religion, and ritual in South and Southeast Asia. Focusing on India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the course emphasizes musics from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian traditions; nevertheless, it draws widely to touch upon sacred musics in Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and among some indigenous peoples in the region. Throughout, we explore ontologies of sound; sonic occurrences in religious structures, public processions, and pilgrimage sites; the construction of religion and ritual as ideas forged through colonial encounter and modern scholarship on religion; the politics of sacred sounds in today's public spaces and contemporary media, such as television and online; and the surprising fluidity between popular and sacred musical genres.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ANTH 3520

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3550 Accordions of the New World

This course focuses on the musical genres and styles (both traditional and popular) that have grown up around the accordion in the New World. We will begin our explorations in Nova Scotia and move toward the Midwest, travelling through the polka belt. From there, our investigation turns toward Louisiana and Texas--toward zydeco, Cajun, and Tex-Mex music. We will then work our way through Central and South America, considering norteno, cumbia, vallenato, tango, chamame, and forro. Our journey will conclude in the Caribbean, where we will spend some time thinking about merengue and rake-n-scrape music. Throughout the semester, the musical case studies will be matched by readings and film that afford ample opportunity to think about the ways that music is bound up in ethnicity, identity, and class. We will also have occasion to think about the accordion as a multiply meaningful instrument that continues to be incorporated into debates over cultural politics and mobilized as part of strategies of representation through the New World. (Formerly Music 157).

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 3550, LALS 3550

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3560 Music and Performance of Africa

This class provides an overview of the most popular musical styles and discussion of the cultural and political contexts in which they emerged in contemporary Africa. Learning to perform a limited range of African music/dance will be part of this course. No prior performance experience required. (Formerly Music 253).

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 3560, ANTH 2560

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3570 Caribbean Music and Diaspora

This course considers Caribbean musics within a broad and historical framework.Caribbean musical practices are explored by illustrating the many ways that aesthetics, ritual, communication, religion, and social structure are embodied in and contested through performance. These initial inquiries open onto an investigation of a range of theoretical concepts that become particularly pertinent in Caribbean contexts--concepts such as post-colonialism, migration, ethnicity, hybridity, syncretism, and globalization. Each of these concepts, moreover, will be explored with a view toward understanding its connections to the central analytical paradigm of the course--diaspora. Throughout the course, we will listen to many different styles and repertories of music ranging from calpso to junkanoo, from rumba to merengue, and from dance hall to zouk. We will then work to understand them not only in relation to the readings that frame our discussions but also in relation to our own North-American contexts of music consumption and production. (Formerly Music 258).

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 3570, ANTH 2570, LALS 3570

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3580 Latin American Music

This survey course considers Latin American musics within a broad cultural and historical framework. Latin American musical practices are explored by illustrating the many ways that aesthetics, ritual, communication, religion, and social structure are embodied in and contested through performance. These initial inquiries open onto an investigation of a range of theoretical concepts that become particularly pertinent in Latin American contexts--concepts such as post-colonialism, migration, ethnicity, and globalization. Throughout the course, we will listen to many different styles and repertories of music and then work to understand them not only in relation to the readings that frame our discussions but also in relation to our own, North American contexts of music consumption and production. (Formerly Music 158).

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 3580, LALS 3580

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3660 Performance, Analysis, History

Participation in the course may require an audition, see section details. This course must be taken for a letter grade (pass/fail option may not be utilized for this course). This weekly seminar will explore music from the past and present through class discussions of performance, historical or contemporary context, and analytical aspects of the music led by a professor and/or performer. One example of a class in this number will be an indepth study of chamber music repertoire led by the Daedalus Quartet. Students will prepare for a final performance at the end of the semester as well as a paper/presentation. MUSC 3660 may be taken multiple times, but can only count once as a Music major elective, and no more than twice toward the major performance requirement. Please note that a course that counts as an elective may not also count toward the performance requirement.

Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3700 Theory and Musicianship III

Continuation of techniques established in Theory and Musicianship I and II. Concepts will be developed through analysis and model composition. Musicianship component will include advanced sight singing, clef reading, harmonic dictation and keyboard harmony.

Fall

Prerequisite: MUSC 2700 AND MUSC 2710

1.5 Course Unit

MUSC 3710 Composition I: Historical Practices

Studies in selected 16th through 19th century compositional practices. Possible topics may include 16th century modal counterpoint; sonata forms in Viennese classicism; advanced chromatic harmony. Course includes analysis of relevant pieces and student compositional projects reflecting course topic.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: MUSC 2700 AND MUSC 2710

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3720 Composition II: Contemporary Practices

Studies in seleted 20th and 21st century compositional practices. Possible topics may include symmetry in post-tonal harmony; composing for piano; the sonata in the 20th century. Course includes analysis of relevant pieces and student compositional projects reflecting course topic.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: MUSC 2700 AND MUSC 2710

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3730 Orchestration

An introduction to writing for the instruments of the orchestra. Course will include study of individual instruments and various instrumental combinations, including full orchestra. Representative scores from the 18th century to the present day will be analyzed. Students will be responsible for several scoring projects and will have opportunities to hear readings of their projects. Prerequisite: at least two semesters of music theory or permission of instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: MUSC 1700 OR MUSC 2700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3740 Composition for Musicians

Music 3740 is a Composition Seminar that treats composing as both an end in itself and a means for thinking broadly and speculatively about music. We will work on various compositional techniques through exercises as well as 'free' composition, giving attention to skills as well as to personal voice. We will survey the current musical landscape through listening, analysis and dicussion. The question of musical style itself will be pursued, and while we will be oriented to western art music, we will consider a wide range of styles, including popular music. It is assumed that students will have fluency with musical notation. Prerequisite: Music 171, or permission of the instructor.

Prerequisite: MUSC 2710

1 Course Unit

MUSC 3800 Critical Birding: Music, Observation, and the Environment

Critical birding encompasses birds, birdsongs and sounds, birds’ environments, humans’ interest in birding, and the inspiration musicians take from birds. Focusing primarily on the nineteenth century to today, we will use birding explore the relationship between “nature” and “music.” First, composers and musicians have long listened to and imitated birds, and we will study a diverse repertoire of bird-based musical works. Second, birding itself has strong cultural and political significance, including for the history of conservation, of environmentalism, and of race in the United States. We will familiarize ourselves with these histories. Finally, birding offers an opportunity to critically consider the visual and aural practices of observation. We will engage in amateur birding. This course meets once a week for three hours. It is a seminar-style discussion-based learning experience with some outdoor local birding activities.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 4097 Honors Thesis (sem1/.5 c.u.)

Individual research under the supervision of a member of the faculty. Guidelines for Honors Thesis can be found:https://music.sas.upenn.edu/

Fall

Prerequisite: (MUSC 2300 OR MUSC 2400 OR MUSC 2500) AND MUSC 2700

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 4098 Honor's Thesis (Sem2/.5 c.u.)

Individual research under the supervision of a member of the faculty. Guidelines for Honors Thesis can be found: https://music.sas.upenn.edu/

Fall

Prerequisite: (MUSC 2300 OR MUSC 2400 OR MUSC 2500) AND MUSC 2700

0.5 Course Units

MUSC 4300 Seminar in Music History

This is an advanced seminar, primarily for juniors and seniors who are prepared to engage deeply and critically with a specialized research topic. The topic of the seminar focuses on a particular genre or body of repertoire, music-maker or composer, or the cultural and social dynamics of a period in music history. The topic of the seminar is determined by the instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: MUSC 2700

1 Course Unit

MUSC 4500 Seminar in Ethnomusicology

This is an advanced seminar, primarily for juniors and seniors who are prepared to engage deeply and critically with a specialized research topic in ethnomusicology. The topic of the seminar is determined by the instructor, and can focus on a particular theoretical concern (for example: postcolonial studies, sound studies, ethnicity, war), and/or on a genre or body of repertoire.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 4700 Seminar in Theory & Composition

This is an advanced seminar, primarily for juniors and seniors who are prepared to engage deeply with the study of compositional practices, and/or theoretical and analytical issues including a range of musical styles. The topic of the seminar is determined by the instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

Prerequisite: MUSC 2700 AND MUSC 2710

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6200 Creative and Compositional Approaches

This course focuses on methods for thinking and engaging creatively through sound, whether compositionally or through other kinds of sound objects. Topics may include: compositional strategies; recording and producing; film; sound installations; experimental ethnography; sound art; and performance practice. Students will begin to put these methodological ideas into practice by developing semester-long projects. These projects can be individual or collaborative.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6210 Composing with Instruments

Students will study the capabilities of instruments, individually and in combination. Historical and contemporary practices will be analyzed. Creative projects will be completed. Please see department website for current term course descriptions. https://music.sas.upenn.edu/courses.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6220 Composing with Electronics

Students will study a variety of hardware and software used in making electronic music. Historical and contemporary practices will be analyzed. Creative projects will be completed. Please see department website https://music.sas.upenn.edu/courses for current term course descriptions.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6230 Composing For Performers

This graduate level composition seminar brings active focus to composing for live performers. Class activities and assignments are designed to foster the exploration of what is possible through interpretation and collaboration, as well as how best to anticipate possibilities through notation. Students will study repertoire, both old and new. Course content will vary depending on the instructor. Students may take this course a second time with a different instructor.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6300 Historical and Historiographic Approaches

This course focuses on theories and models of historical investigation. It explores, among others, methodologies and conceptions of archival research, textual criticism and editing, codicology and paleography, philology and bibliography, encoding and textual technologies, and digital humanities; critical frameworks such as performance, gender/sexuality, critical race, transnational, environmental/landscape, materiality, and ritual and religious studies; and topics concerning oral histories, notational systems, and book, manuscript, and print cultures.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6301 Historical and Historiographic Approaches: Performance Studies

This course focuses on theories and models of historical investigation. It explores the historiographies and methodologies of performance studies, opera/dance studies, and theater/drama studies, in their collisions, collusions, and resonances. The term performance signals “a ‘broad spectrum’ or ‘continuum’ of human actions ranging from ritual, play, life performances . . . to the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and on to healing . . . the media, and the internet” (R. Schechner). We will discuss work by (among others) B. Brecht, R. Wagner, A. Artaud, V. Turner, M. Carlson, W.B. Worthen, J. Rancière, J.L. Austin, J. Butler, R. Schneider, E. Fischer-Lichte, H.-T. Lehmann, G. Didi-Huberman, N. André, A. Cavarero, K. Thurman, N. Cook, C. Abbate, D. Levin, and S. McClary, dealing with topics such as agency, performativity, time, materiality, technology and mediation, multimodality, spectatorship, voice, embodiment, dance/movement, the “Baroque,” reconstruction and re-enactment, theatricality, intercultural and postdramatic approaches. Students are expected to elaborate their own critical categories to research performance objects selected not exclusively within the province of opera/dance/theater but also within the range of possibilities investigated by performance studies broadly intended.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: FIGS 6301, ITAL 6301

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6500 Ethnographic and Anthropological Approaches (SNF Paideia Program Course)

This course focuses on the ethics, politics, and practice of ethnography. Topics may include: fieldwork methods; collaborative practice; ethnography and the archive; power and subjectivity; multimodal approaches; reciprocity and questions of accessibility; oral histories; experimental ethnography; and the politics of transcription, inscription, and translation. Students will begin to put these methodological ideas into practice by developing semester-long ethnographic projects. These projects can be individual or collaborative partnerships, and might also connect students to ongoing community-based research.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6700 Analytical and Theoretical Approaches

This course focuses on the analytical methods and theoretical approaches. Topics may include: the politics of listening; score-based analysis; social and critical theories; issues and politics of translation, inscription, and transcription; questions of form; the history of theory; performance studies; the history of musical notation; voice and vocality; and sound studies. Students will typically begin to put these methodological ideas into practice through a series of hands-on assignments which could be either individual or collaborative in nature.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 6710 Theory-Critical Perspectives

Study of the relation of theory and criticism to analytic, ethnographic, and historical methods. Topics may include anthropology of nature and culture; archaeology and genealogy; actor-network and assemblage theories; critical race theory; deconstruction; feminist theories; gender and sexuality; materialisms and new materialisms; media archaeology and cultural techniques; phenomenology; technics.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7200 Seminar in Composition

Seminar in selected compositional problems, with emphasis on written projects. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7201 Computer Music I

Not Offered Every Year

Mutually Exclusive: MUSC 3230

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7210 Composition Studio and Forum

Composer's Forum is a regular meeting of graduate composers, often along with other members of the Penn composing community, in which recent performances are discussed, musical issues taken up, and visitors occasionally welcomed to present their work or offer master classes. In addition to weekly Forum meetings, students will be paired with a composer for individual lessons in composition. Ph.d. Candidates in Composition in their third year in the program will continue non-credit participation in both forum and lessons.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7300 Studies in Medieval Music

Seminar on selected topics in the music of the Middle Ages. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7310 Studies in Renaissance Music

Seminar on selected topics in the music of the Renaissance.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7320 Studies in Baroque Music

Seminar on selected topics in the music of the Baroque period. The seminar explores musical genres (madrigal, opera, cantata, etc.) using poetic texts in Italian (primarily), French, and German, which circulated mainly in Europe in both private and public settings during the 17th and early 18th centuries. Issues of reception and performance/staging during the 20th and 21st centuries are also investigated. Each instance of the seminar has a focus, e.g.: Monteverdi’s madrigals, opera in seventeenth-century Venice and Paris, Guarini and Marino in music, histories of the madrigal, Petrarchism and music, the ”Baroque” in theory and practice, Handel’s operas, staging Baroque opera today, historically informed performance practice, etc. Please see department website https://music.sas.upenn.edu/course-list/ for current term course descriptions.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: ITAL 7320

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7330 Studies in 18th Century Music

Seminar on selected topics in the music of the Classical period. Please see department website https://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/courses for current term course descriptions.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7340 Studies in 19th Century Music

Advanced research topics in the music of the 19th century.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7350 Studies in 20 and 21st Century Music

Seminar on selected topics in the music of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7360 Topics in Musicology

This seminar investigates topics unfolding across different historical periods.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7361 Topics in Musicology

This seminar investigates topics unfolding across different historical periods. This iteration covers the period from 1500 to today. The specific topics can be found on the course-related webpages of the Department of Music and that of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies, in addition to the Graduate Catalogue. The seminar is open to all graduate students, including those in Music Studies and Composition; Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies; Comparative Literature & Literary Theory; Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Africana Studies; History of Art; Spanish and Portuguese; English; Russian and East European Studies; Jewish Studies; Cinema & Media Studies; Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; Anthropology; Philosophy; Classical Studies; History; and Digital Humanities.

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: FIGS 7361

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7390 Methods for Music and Archives (Learning to Go Along and Against the Archival Grain)

This seminar focuses on archives and “archives.” That is, the course offers, on the one hand, a practicum on historical research methods; and on the other, an exploration of how information is collected, housed, and organized to produce knowledge. Archives are trendy: the “archival turn” continues to bring critical attention to the generative and coercive power of institutions that hold historical records. They are also the source of some musicological consternation: scholars struggle with how to reconcile the piecemeal work of archival research with other goals, such as music criticism and critique generally. We will approach the archive from multiple directions, reading classic texts on archives and their allure (from musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, anthropology, history, and other disciplines); exemplary scholarship based on extensive and inventive uses of archival sources; and critiques of archive. We won’t just talk about archives, however. Students will design and undertake archival projects using collections in the Philadelphia area. Through this hands-on experience students will gain skills in managing information, frustration, and intuition when conducting archival research. The course culminates in a symposium in which the students present their research projects.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7400 Seminar in African-American Music

Seminar on selected topics in African American Music. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu

Not Offered Every Year

Also Offered As: AFRC 7400

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7500 Seminar in Ethnomusicology

Topics in Ethnomusicology. Open to graduate students from all departments. See department website (under course tab) for current term course description: https://music.sas.upenn.edu

Fall

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7510 Intellectual History of Ethnomusicology

Topics may include the intellectual history of ethnomusicology, current readings in ethnomusicology, a consideration of theoretical principles based upon the reading and interpretation of selected monographs, and area studies. Please see department website https://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/courses for current term course descriptions. Prerequisite: Open to graduate students from all departments.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7700 Studies in Music Theory and Analysis

Seminar on selected topics in music theory and analysis. Please see department website https://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/courses for current term course descriptions.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 7710 Writing Sound--Sounding Literature

Seminar on selected topics in sound studies. Please see department website https://www.sas.upenn.edu/music/courses for current term course descriptions.

Not Offered Every Year

1 Course Unit

MUSC 9940 Preparation for Ph.D. Candidacy in Music Studies

MUSC 9940 registration spans both semesters, (Fall and Spring), of year three in the Ph.D. program. The Ph.D. Candidate in Music Studies will finalize the dissertation proposal and comprehensive essays. They should also expect to continue attending the colloquium series sponsored by the department, participate in the Writing and Professionalization Workshop, as well as complete remaining teaching pedagogy requirements. Registration in 9940 indicates full time enrollment while preparing for dissertation.

Fall or Spring

1-3 Course Units

MUSC 9941 Preparation for Ph.D. Candidacy in Composition

MUSC 9941 registration spans both semesters, (Fall and Spring), of year three in the Ph.D. program. The Ph.D. Candidate in Composition will finalize their Portfolio of Compositions in consultation with faculty. They should also expect to continue participation in Composers' Forum and lessons (non credit), attend the colloquium series sponsored by the department, participate in the Professionalization Workshop, as well as complete remaining teaching pedagogy requirements. Registration in 9941 indicates full time enrollment while preparing for dissertation.

1-3 Course Units

MUSC 9999 Independent Study and Research

Individual study and research under the supervision of a member of the faculty.

Fall or Spring

1 Course Unit

Music (MUSC)

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