Course Descriptions

View a complete listing of degree requirements.

Research Courses

• MUS 973: Readings in Music Theory

  MUS 973, Readings in Music Theory, is a seminar in which students engage closely with published scholarship within a particular sub-discipline of the music theory discipline, and conduct and present their own research project within that sub-discipline. The topic changes each time the course is offered, depending on the expertise of the faculty member who is assigned to teach it.

  By the end of this course, students (1) can read critically, relate, and synthesize articles in music theory; (2) have a strong command of the published research in the target sub-discipline, including seminal and recent publications, central debates, terminology, and names of significant scholars; (3) create a research project that articulates research questions, draws connections to existing research, and contributes something new to the sub-discipline; and (4) present the findings of this research both in written form via a paper and in a conference-style presentation in front of peers.

• MUS 979: Proseminar in Music Theory

  MUS 979 is an introduction to the broad discipline of music theory. We will examine recent trends in music theory scholarship, beginning with a focus on the role of analysis within theoretical discourse. We will then explore a wide variety of subdisciplines that fall under music theory, including transformational theory, schema theory, popular music studies, analysis of film and video game music, rhythm and meter, analysis and performance practice, and gender and disability. Our goals are to gain familiarity with current trends in music theoretic research, to gain fluency with the range and types of articles being published in major music theory journals, and to develop as a group a set of annotated bibliographies on a variety of topics.

• MUS 830: Research Methods

  The primary goal of this course is to aid graduate students in developing the research and communication skills necessary for advanced work in music. To that aim, this course will a) provide experience critically evaluating scholarly writings in the field of music by well-known scholars, b) introduce a sampling of the tools available (and necessary) for graduate research in music, c) aid the student in honing the skills necessary for researching and presenting a graduate level paper, thesis, or lecture recital d) apply these skills to the spectrum of activities educated musicians are called upon to perform. Ultimately, the skills acquired in this class come down to learning how to present oneself professionally in writing and in verbal communication.

Pedagogy Courses

• MUS 970: Pedagogy of Music Theory I

  MUS 970 is designed to prepare students to teach music theory courses at the university level by discussing pedagogical philosophy and techniques and by providing teaching experience with extensive feedback. The goal of the course is to reinforce theory skills, to develop teaching skills, and to familiarize students with current textbooks, materials and philosophical issues in the discipline of music theory. A secondary goal of the course is to address theoretical and analytical skills that are critical to successful theory teaching.

  By the end of the course, students will have developed fluency with materials and terminology from the four-semester undergraduate core curriculum. We will familiarize ourselves with current music theory textbooks, and will consider elements of course design, creation of homework assignments, handouts, exams, and computer-assisted instruction. In addition, we will also get teaching experience through teaching demonstrations (formal and informal) throughout the semester.

• MUS 971: Pedagogy of Music Theory II

  MUS 971, Pedagogy of Music Theory II, follows two interrelated tracks. It is an advanced workshop on evidence-based practices for teaching undergraduate music theory, and also a readings seminar on music theory pedagogy and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Building upon MUS 970, which deals with the essential ideas of the undergraduate theory core and approaches to teaching them, MUS 971 is designed to broaden students’ exposure to published literature, to sharpen their skills in the classroom and as course designers, and to launch individual research projects in music theory pedagogy.

Analysis Courses

• MUS 873: Early 20th-Century Techniques

  This course offers a wide-ranging introduction to analytical approaches used for classical music composed from the turn of the twentieth century through the end of World War II. In addition, you will develop your skills in analytical writing, critical listening, and basic model composition while increasing your familiarity with music written in this time period. In order to develop the skills necessary to reach these goals, we will fulfill the following objectives:

  1. Demonstrate analytical fluency with pitch and pitch class intervals, pitch-class set theory, serial techniques, and pitch collections.
  2. Develop strategies for identifying, comparing, and specifically describing rhythms, harmonies, and forms encountered in music of this time.
  3. Compose short pieces using techniques derived from pitch-class set theory and serialism.
  4. Summarize, evaluate, and discuss current writing about music of this time.
  5. Evaluate and critically consider the implications of analytical approaches to early 20^th-century music, especially as they relate to our experience as music performers, listeners, and composers.
• MUS 874: Schenkerian Analysis I
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• MUS 977: Schenkerian Analysis II
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• MUS 875: Analysis of Musical Scores
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• MUS 976: Performance and Analysis

  MUS 976 is different each time it is offered. Here are two recent samples:

  Fall 2018 (Dr. Patrick Johnson):

  This class explores the intersection of music theory and performance, and the many topics to be found at this intersection. Traditionally, a class entitled “Performance and Analysis” would be concerned with how analysis can inform a performer's interpretative decisions and expressive choices. Our scope will include this question, but will also be widened to include other topics, including the analysis of performance (study of audio/video recordings), formal models of relations between analysis and performance, narrative and semiotic approaches (including topic theory), and issues of performance practice. Our path toward the following learning objectives will include reading, listening, analysis, writing, and discussion. As a lens to help focus our efforts, we will primarily (but not exclusively) be concerned with solo piano repertoire. As such, this course is designed with the DMA pianist in mind, but that is not to say that other musicians would not find it valuable.

  By the end of the semester, you will be able to do the following:

  • After exploring a broad sampling of analytical research/writings within, and related to, the sub-discipline of Performance and Analysis, summarize it, critique it, and apply it to the analysis of musical repertoire;
  • Identify methods of analysis that are most helpful to you as a performer, in whichever way performance manifests itself in your musical life;
  • Articulate analytical observations clearly, both verbally and in writing
  • Apply the insights gained through close study of pieces to the interpretations and decisions you make as performers, listeners, and students of piano music;
  • Recognize the performative aspects of analysis;
  • Recognize and identify prescriptive approaches to the relationship between performance and analysis;
  • Recognize and distinguish among stylistic performance trends between the early 20^th century, late 20^th century, and now.

   

  Fall 2017 (Dr. Cara Stroud):

  At the end of the course, you will present a formal lecture-recital. In order to develop the skills necessary to reach this goal, we will fulfill the following objectives:

  1. Hone analytical skills for interpreting music of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  2. Develop strategies and vocabulary for identifying and discussing text-music relationships, topics, agency, intertextuality, and narrative.
  3. Write short summaries, reactions, and outlines in response to reading assignments.
  4. Participate in class discussions about analysis and musical meaning.
  5. Present one short, informal lecture-recital during the semester in preparation for your final lecture-recital.
• MUS 978: Late 20th- and 21st-Century Techniques

  This course offers a glimpse of analytical techniques relevant to music composed after 1945 and the repertoire from this time period. Analytical approaches used for art music composed after World War II range widely, from traditional methodologies used for tonal music to methodologies seeking to understand music from a broad perspective informed by a variety of sources. To that end, it would be impossibly ambitious to cover every influential methodology or repertoire since 1945. Instead, our selected repertoire and readings are intended to assist in your developing the basis for your own approach to recent music. In addition, you will develop your skills in the process of music analysis, analytical writing, and critical listening while increasing your familiarity with music composed after 1945.

  In order to develop the skills necessary to reach these goals, we will fulfill the following objectives:

  1. Demonstrate analytical fluency with pitch and pitch class interval.
  2. Develop strategies for identifying, comparing, and specifically describing rhythms, harmonies, and formal processes encountered in music of this time.
  3. Encounter creative methodologies for conveying analysis outside of traditionally written media.
  4. Summarize, evaluate, and discuss current writing about music of this time.
  5. Evaluate and critically consider the implications of analytical approaches music after 1945, especially as they relate to our experience as music performers, listeners, and composers.

Musicianship Skills Courses

• MUS 870: Advanced Modal Counterpoint

  MUS 870 is designed to strengthen students' musicianship. More specifically, they will learn to compose, listen to, sing, and improvise music. Our repertoire focus is the vocal music of the sixteenth-century Renaissance, but a central aim of the course is to build skills in musical creativity and fluency that transfer well beyond this repertoire as well. Nonetheless, we will spend a great deal of time attending to detailed features of Renaissance music, in order to assimilate them and create music modeled after them.

  Through written homework, performance homework, in-class workshops, reading, and repertoire study, still will acquire techniques of writing idiomatic counterpoint and assemble a small portfolio of model compositions. They also will become fluent with terminology used to discuss the idioms of Renaissance counterpoint, and learn to apply this toward a richer understanding of the music of sixteenth-century composers and beyond.

• MUS 871: Advanced Tonal Counterpoint

  MUS 871 has an ambitious goal: to forever enrich how students hear, make, and understand tonal music. Students pursue this objective via a compositional path. All work for the course will take the form of music making, either in written form (via composition) or in played form (via keyboard improvisation). In particular, the course adopts a modified version of a historical teaching method that originated in seventeenth-century Italy and eventually spread. This method uses partimenti, or unfigured basses, as springboards for fully realized pieces. Implicated in this method are the skills of seeing the harmonic and contrapuntal implications of a bass voice (even without any figures or analytical symbols), of realizing those implications in the upper voices through simple consonances, and of applying diminution, compound melody, motivic coherence, and imitation to create more florid musical surfaces.

  In this course, students will never start with a blank page. Instead, they will start with a partimento: decoding the patterns that it suggests, harvesting the rhythmic and melodic motives that it embeds, taking full advantage of the contrapuntal opportunities that it presents, and ending with a miniature, but fully fledged and satisfying piece. Through written and keyboard-based homework, in-class workshops, reading, and repertoire study, students will learn to write music idiomatic of the eighteenth century and assemble a portfolio of short model compositions.

• MUS 876: Keyboard Skills and Improvisation

  MUS 876 is designed to equip students with keyboard-related skills that can be applied toward a variety of musical endeavors, including music theory pedagogy, composition, improvisation, analysis, memorization, and musical literacy and fluency in general. These skills include, but are not limited to, the following: realizing figured basses, playing common progressions (e.g. cadences, sequences, modulations, etc.), improvising in historical styles, playing from open score, transposing, and harmonizing melodies.

  Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to do the following:

  • Realize standard figured basses (i.e., triads, seventh chords, and suspensions) in four-voice keyboard style;
  • Play and combine common progressions (e.g., tonic prolongations, cadences, sequences, modulations) comfortably in keyboard style, in all common keys and in a variety of meters;
  • Improvise variations over standard ground basses, as well as simple minuets;
  • Read multiple parts in open score, including common C clefs, and create a workable realization on keyboard;
  • Transpose single-line melodies, harmonic progressions, and simple two-voice patterns to other keys using clefs;
  • Harmonize given melodies in four-voice keyboard style;
  • Utilize the keyboard effectively as a tool for teaching music theory.

  Given that the mastery of these skills is a lifetime project, the course is also intended to build efficient and musically rewarding practice methods to assist students in the further development of their keyboard musicianship beyond the end of the semester.

• MUS 972: Advanced Keyboard Skills

  Building on the foundational skills developed in MUS 876—idioms, figured-bass realization, melody harmonization, score and clef reading, improvisation, and transposition—MUS 972 is a project-based course designed to provide opportunities to develop more sophisticated skills. Students are granted considerable license to define their own projects. Like its prerequisite, MUS 972 treats the keyboard more as a laboratory than as a performance instrument, encouraging exploration, (stylistic) composition, improvisation, analysis, memorization, aural learning, music theory pedagogy, and musical literacy and fluency in general. Potential avenues of exploration include realization of larger and more complex scores, historical improvisation methods, realization of figured basses from real repertoire for continuo, realization of non-classical music from lead sheets, stylistic composition at the keyboard, pedagogical applications for the theory classroom, and 20th- and 21st-century keyboard applications; but a student need not focus on all of these and may pursue others not on this list.