T418 Music and Ideas -- Fall 2006

Music and Ideas — Music in Contemporary Culture

MUS-T418 Music and Ideas (3 cr.), section 26385
MUS-N399 Honors Seminar in Music (3 cr.), section 21270

Instructor: Professor M.C. Kielian-Gilbert
11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Tues/Thurs
M271 (Music Library)

An introduction to the philosophy of music and problems of music aesthetics. Can music express ideas? Can music express emotions? If so, how? This course brings together work on music philosophy and aesthetics, cultural theory, and music analysis to explore connections between music and ideas in contemporary culture. Emphasis will be on aesthetic issues such as beauty, meaning, values, and relationships between music and the other arts; other topics will include changing music receptions and modes of perception, politics, sexuality and gender. Writings from particular historical contexts (Hanslick, 19th-century hermeneutic writers) will set the stage for discussion. Analyses will also develop connections between technical and figurative descriptions of music, and practices of music listening and contemporary experience (e.g., discontinuity, hypertextuality and technology, forces of pluralism and globalization).

Readings, music: The course will be organized around particular topics (rather than by chronology) and readings will also be geared to the interests of the class. We will listen to and analyze music from a wide range of repertoire, including classical and operatic, popular and theatrical. The instructor has particular interests in the music of 19th- and 20th/21st-century composers.

Texts: Leonard Meyer, Music, The Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture (2nd ed.). John Berger, Ways of Seeing.

Course requirements: readings, reaction papers or reports on issues arising in the readings, midterm and final paper, class presentations of research. Prerequisite: Junior standing or consent of instructor; N399 requires section authorization.