3000 Level Music Course Descriptions

HUMANITY 3210
Western Music I: Medieval to Mozart
Over 1,000 years of music in Western civilization is surveyed. Historical, cultural, and social contexts are studied as they pertain to the music. After a brief introduction to the Greeks, work from early chant and minstrels through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical periods to Mozart (ca. 1800) is studied through extensive reading and listening. Students learn to develop a macro-level music vocabulary for the understanding of musical forms, styles, tonal hierarchies, and texture. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3211
Western Music II: 19th Century
A survey of Western music from Beethoven to Romantic Expressionism with emphasis on musical style, form, and nationalistic tendencies in historical, cultural, and social contexts. Chamber and vocal music, symphonic forms, and operas are among the genres explored. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3212
Western Music III: 1900-1950
A survey of European and American music from Debussy to early Cage. Developments in Impressionism, Expressionism, Neo-Classicism, and Serialism, and the early American and French experimentalists are explored. New compositional tools such as electronics, found sounds, and extended instrumental techniques are identified through musical examples of this period. Composers studied include Debussy, Satie, Ives, Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Cowell, Varese, and early Cage. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3215
Contemporary Music Seminar
Selected issues in music since World War II are studied. Topics vary each semester and may include a survey of American and European new music, musical theater, new compositional styles, minimalism, indeterminacy, new improvisation, new technologies, and others. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3220
Masterworks of Music
A detailed, intensive study of particular composers, recognized masterworks, or seminal ideas that have made a significant contribution or changed the course of music history. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3231
History of Jazz
A survey of jazz as an African American art form from its origins in blues, field hollers, and spirituals to present developments. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3232
American Jazz: 1917–1969
A survey of the first half of the history of jazz in America starting from its roots in blues, spirituals, minstrelsy, and European band music, to the beginning of the Free Jazz movement in the early 1960s. Topics include: early piano and instrumental ragtime; early New Orleans jazz; early New York and Kansas City jazz; the Swing era; Bebop and Hard Bop; the 50s West Coast style, the 50s Third Stream and experimental jazz; and early Free Jazz. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3233
The World of Jazz, 1960–2000
This course considers historical developments in jazz over the last forty years, with an emphasis on the global dimensions of the music. Initially dipping back into bebop and hard-bop epochs (1945–1960) we follow several lines of evolution out of those musical genres into the turbulent years of the free jazz revolution (1960–1970) and the ensuing creative musics, which include but are not limited to: expressionism, post-bop, jazz-funk fusion, experiments with jazz and world music, impressionism, and new age. Along with some of the styles considered, this course also examines ideas such as the meaning of the word “freedom” in the context of jazz history; the emergence of a somewhat distinct practice of music-making with clear connections to jazz: free improvised music, the dissemination of the music worldwide and the concept of expatriotism, and the prevalence of neoconservativism in the 80s. The class will discuss the commercial valence of jazz and new attempts to create successful pop-jazz hybrids like “smooth” or “lite” jazz. This also entails a detailed investigation of the changing role of the conservatory in jazz education. The end of the course focuses on the current state of jazz and ongoing debates over the definition of jazz in a contemporary cultural milieu. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3235
History of Rock ‘n’ Roll and Popular Music
A survey of popular music from its roots in country music, blues, and other genres (rock ‘n’ roll, circa. 1954), through the expansion of the rock style (1957–63), and its maturity (1964–68), to rock as a postmodern art form. Factors such as ethnic backgrounds, geography, dance, instrumentation, media, the recording industry, sexuality, and morality are examined as a basis for understanding style in addition to analyzing and listening to the literature. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3240
Music of the Caribbean and Brazil
This class will provide an overview of music from diverse cultures in Latin America and the Caribbean. This global perspective on music fabrication will be examined as a phenomenon of world cultural evolution in order to perceive, understand, and identify cultural similarities and differences, as well as to identify aspects that characterize particular traditional musical practices. Music from Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad, Brazil, Africa, and Europe will be examined, specifically how its connections to religious, political, and social systems of each country has had greater ramifications upon the musical traditions within and beyond each country's culture. This course serves as an introduction to the many styles and traditions which grew out of pre- and postcolonial Latin America and European-African-Caribbean developments. Prerequisite: First Year English Requirement

HUMANITY 3245
Music of Asia and The Pacific
A study of the basic kinds of music and musical instruments found in the major Asian civilizations and island cultures of the Eastern Hemisphere. This vast range includes music from Australia, the Pacific Islands, Indonesia, the Middle East, India, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Japan, Korea, and others. Some investigation into the anthropology of this music is necessary to bring the musical and instrumental traditions to light. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3252
Selected Musical Topics:
History of Recorded Music
Selected issues in music and related areas are studied. Topics vary each semester and may include (but are not limited to): musical structure and form, aural literacy, opera studies, music and words, music and the visual arts, history of recorded music, history of the oral tradition, semiotics, communications theory, and others. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

HUMANITY 3260
Nineteenth-Century Opera Survey
Like motion pictures today, the opera stage was the dominant art form of its time and it displayed and inspired many of the innovations in fashion, visual arts, dance and music in the 19th century. This course may include the late 18th century operas of Mozart, such as Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute; the “gesamtkunstwerk” operas of Wagner such as The Ring of the Nibelungen and Parsifal; examples of the French “Opera Comique” such as Bizet’s Carmen and Delibes’ Lakme; the Italian opera of Verdi, La Traviata and Il Trouvatore; the “verisimo” operas of Puccini such as La Boheme, Trittico, and Madame Butterfly; and Strauss’ radical operas Salome and Elektra. The operas studied are viewed in class and optional field trips to local opera productions will be planned. Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.