Music (MUSC)

MUSC102 World Music

This course will explore the diversity and range of musical expression around the world, mapping styles across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. We will immerse ourselves in a combination of extensive listening to recordings and viewing videos, reading, discussion, in-class performances, and attending relevant cultural events. The world as a whole will be surveyed and regional traits will be identified. Emphasis will be placed on specific pieces, musical instruments, artists, genres, and countries; discovering cross-cultural commonalities and differences; and understanding histories and processes of globalization. Assignments will consist of quizzes on the listening material, Moodle Forum posts, recording and concert reviews, and midterm and final group or solo projects. Three parallel goals will be pursued: 1) to become literate in a broad range of music from around the world; 2) to become familiar with a variety of approaches to understanding music from around the world; and 3) to experience the creative formation of a global music community in microcosm through midterm and final projects.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC103 Materials and Design

Materials and Design is an introduction to some of the elements of musical notation within the Western European musical tradition. Its primary aim is to provide students with a vocabulary and set of tools with which they can describe their experience of music, broadly understood. Focused on music's formal construction and operation within a specific cultural practice, the course also encourages critical listening and thinking skills across genres and geographies. It presumes no prior musical knowledge or training.

This particular version of Materials and Design (Spring 2025) is an experimental version that examines how musical notational and theoretical practices are often encoded in digital audio workstations by teaching Ableton Live alongside introductory music theory. The class culminates in final creative projects developed over the course of the semester. Additional lab sessions outside of class are required for developing both theory and software skills. Prior experience with Ableton or digital audio tools are not required.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC103Z Materials and Design

Materials and Design is an introduction to some of the elements of musical notation within the western European musical tradition. Its primary aim is to provide students with a vocabulary and set of tools with which they can describe their experience of music, broadly understood. Focused on music's formal construction and operation within a specific cultural practice, the course also encourages critical listening and thinking skills across genres and geographies. It presumes no prior musical knowledge or training. Unlike the Fall and Spring versions of MUSC 103, this version of Materials and Design is expanded in terms of scope and the level of student engagement. In the case of the former, the summer terms will allow for vibrant discussions about the history of musical "materials"--instruments, natural resources, and people--as well as how these materials are "designed"--notational practices, improvisation, the formation of canons, accessibility related to class, gender, sexuality, race, and place of origin. In the case of the latter, whereas the Fall and Spring versions of the course are designed for the quick acquisition of a specific skill set, the immersion format of the summer course will allow for greater and more individualized exploration, including independent and group listening assignments, improvisation exercises, discussion posts, and more.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC104 Rhythms of the World: An Introduction to Rhythm, Meter, and (Musical) Time

In MUSC 104, students explore the diverse ways people around the world use rhythm and time in musical expression. Through a combination of experiential learning and theoretical investigation, students will discover what rhythmic models reveal about music cultures and how these models resonate in us when we put them into practice. Our direct interactions with varied musical traditions will deepen students' rhythmic skills, broaden their musical creativity, and provide a foundation for deeper engagement in Wesleyan's musical offerings.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC105 MF DOOM and Pierre Henry

This course will explore the relationship between hip hop and musique concrete by investigating the works of MF DOOM and Pierre Henry. The music of both employs the full range of sound through techniques of turntablism and sound sampling. In this course, we will explore the basic processes of sampling and field recording and use the compositional methods of DOOM and Henry in the creation of our own pieces. In this process, we will also examine the role of these methods in the history of hip hop and musique concrete. Course work will consist of weekly writing assignments and discussions plus monthly creative compositional assignments. Any choice of sampling software may be used in the completion of those assignments.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC106 A Thousand Years of Music History

This course will offer a history of European art music from the early Middle Ages to the present day. Featured composers will include Hildegard, Machaut, Strozzi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Stravinsky, Beach, and Cage. Students will relate course content to art, architecture, and literature of the periods, as well as to major economic and historical events. We will explore the technical workings of music and together build a vocabulary for analyzing music and articulating a response to it; music will be interpreted as a cultural phenomenon. By the end of the semester, students should be equipped for a lifetime of informed listening.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC108 History of Rock and R&B

This course will survey the history of rock and r&b (broadly defined as a conglomeration of loosely connected popular musical genres) from their origins in the 1940s and '50s through the early 1990s. Three parallel goals will be pursued: to become literate in the full range of their constituent traditions; to experience the workings of the music industry by producing group projects; and to become familiar with a variety of theoretical approaches to the music, confronting issues such as economics of the industry, race relations and identities, youth culture and its relationship to American popular culture, and popular music as a creative, cultural, and social force. For the midterm and final projects, the class will form a music industry in microcosm (musicians, journalists, producers, video and sound engineers, visual artists), resulting in audio and video releases and a magazine.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC109 Introduction to Experimental Music

This course is a survey of recent and historical electronic and instrumental experimental works. MUSC 109 begins with early experimentalists and germinal works of John Cage, then quickly moves to a wide range of composers working with idiosyncratic electronics, invented instruments, intermedia, sound art, and many other areas of sound exploration and inquiry.

Artists works include (and are not limited to) Henry Cowell, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, Anthony Braxton, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, David Behrman, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, La Monte Young, Muhal Richard Abrams, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Robert Ashley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, John Zorn, and Julius Eastman. The course includes discussions of recent work by composers, performers, and sound artists such as Pamela Z, Tristan Perich, Guillermo Galindo, Lesley Flanigan, Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture), Holly Herndon, Raven Chacon, Jennifer Walshe, and Object Collection.

The course includes lectures, demonstrations, and performances, and occasional visits by special guests.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC110 Introduction to South Indian Music

This course will introduce students to one of the world's great musical traditions, one that has been part of Wesleyan's renowned World Music Program for more than 60 years. Students will learn beginning performance techniques in melody (raga) and rhythm (tala), the cornerstones of South Indian music. Through a listening component, they will also learn to identify important ragas (melodic modes). Lectures will cover a wide range of topics, including karnatak (classical) music, temple and folk traditions, music in South Indian film, and pop music. Readings and lectures will also provide the historical and cultural context for this rich and diverse musical world and will prepare students for the fullest possible enjoyment of the annual Navaratri Festival in October.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS110
Prereq: None

MUSC111 Music and Theater of Indonesia

Since the early history of Indonesia, the Indonesian people have continually been in contact with a number of foreign cultures. Particularly, Hinduism, Islam, and the West have had significant impact on the development of Indonesian culture. This course is designed as an introduction to the rich performing arts and culture of Indonesia. A portion of the course is devoted to demonstrations and workshops, including instruction of an Islamic frame drum ensemble, singing, and Gamelan (percussion ensemble of Java and Bali).
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-THEA
Identical With: THEA348
Prereq: None

MUSC115 Introduction to North Indian Music

This course will introduce students to North Indian Hindustani classical music, one of the two classical musical traditions of India. Students will learn about the basic concepts of melody and rhythm--the cornerstones of Indian music. Through listening components, they will also learn to sing the basics and identify important ragas (melodic modes) and tal (rhythm). Lectures will cover a wide range of topics, including Hindustani (classical) music, light classical music genres, folk music traditions, music in Bollywood film, and contemporary pop music. Readings and lectures will also provide the historical and cultural context for this rich and diverse musical world.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS115
Prereq: None

MUSC116 Visual Sounds: Exploring the Landscape and Architecture of Musical Notation

This course examines a diverse range of musical works seeing their notation as a process of translation, transformation, provocation, and imagination. Tracing a thread from medieval notations through to contemporary scores, we investigate the shifting tensions between the sonic and the visual over the long arc of music history. Why were sounds inscribed in the 9th century? How do 1960s scores reflect the radicalism of their era? Connections across centuries help shed light on musicians for whom the creative potential of notation surpasses its descriptive and prescriptive functions. Featured composers will include Hildegard of Bingen, Guillaume de Machaut, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Earle Brown, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Cathy Berberian, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Mark Applebaum, and Claudia Molitor. Complementary materials comprise visual art, concrete poetry, and live theater.

One of the reason composers started to experiment with open scores in the 1950s and '60s was to develop a kind of musical notation that could be read, and therefore performed, even by those who did not identify as musically literate. This course is, accordingly, open to all students. No prior knowledge of musical notation or instrumental expertise is required. Meetings will involve discussion of a wide range of readings with the goal of expanding understanding of multiple relationships between music and visual materials.

Learning Objectives:

- To gain familiarity with the diversity of forms of musical notation.

- To recognize the variable relationships between inspiration, transcription, performance, and recordings.

- To consider musical notation as a form of design, a language code, and a form of translation.

- To develop creative processes and understand the creative processes of others.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC116F Visual Sounds: Exploring the Landscape and Architecture of Musical Notation (FYS)

This course examines a diverse range of musical works, seeing their notation as a process of translation, transformation, provocation, and imagination. Tracing a thread from medieval notations through to contemporary scores, we investigate the shifting tensions between the sonic and the visual over the long arc of music history. Why were sounds inscribed in the 9th century? How do 1960s scores reflect the radicalism of their era? Connections across centuries help shed light on musicians for whom the creative potential of notation surpasses its descriptive and prescriptive functions. Featured composers will include Hildegard of Bingen, Guillaume de Machaut, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Earle Brown, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Cathy Berberian, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Mark Applebaum, and Claudia Molitor. Complementary materials comprise visual art, concrete poetry, and live theater.

One of the reason composers started to experiment with open scores in the 1950s and '60s was to develop a kind of musical notation that could be read, and therefore performed, even by those who did not identify as musically literate. This course is, accordingly, open to all students; no prior knowledge of musical notation or instrumental expertise is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC117 Musicking Body

"What is this thing called music?" asks Christopher Small in his book "Musicking" (1998) and observes, "Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do." Taking a cue from Small's concept of "musicking" as an inherently social and physical process, this course will explore the role of the human body in the act of music performance and the creation of musical meaning. We will discuss interdisciplinary approaches to the study of music as embodied experience, drawing insight from fields as diverse as philosophy, feminist and performance studies, anthropology, ethnochoreology, and ethnomusicology. We will examine the modes, aesthetics, and cultural connotations of bodily expression, movement, and gesture in a variety of music and dance traditions worldwide--from Sufi-shamanic rituals in Central Asia to Indian classical vocal music, and from drumming and martial arts in East Asia to African American popular genres. By engaging with a range of theoretical perspectives and case studies of embodied sounds, we will reflect on the corporeal, sensory aspects of music performance and perception, the tacit nature of learning and transmission, the intersections of human musicking with the environment and technology, and the ways in which the musicking body is entangled with the physical, social, spiritual, and political forces that shape our lives.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC117F Musicking Body (FYS)

MUSC118F Bob Dylan and His World: Sources and Legacies (FYS)

Bob Dylan's songwriting, recordings, and performances in the 1960s are widely recognized as causing a seismic shift in American music and in the youth counterculture. He did not exist in a vacuum, though, and drew deep from the wells represented by songwriter Woody Guthrie, mountain ballad singer Jean Ritchie, and blues musician Robert Johnson, among many others. His meeting with the Beatles and subsequent world tour with the Band caused unforeseen reverberations, such as the Beatles moving into increasingly sophisticated lyrical territory and Aretha Franklin covering a song by the Band. Many artists covered Dylan songs early on (Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke, the Byrds, and Sonny and Cher), and many credited Dylan with opening up new avenues of creative expression, including Joni Mitchell, who has been recognized as one of the most inspiring and accomplished singer-songwriters of any era. In this course we will explore (1) the sources of Dylan's art; (2) Dylan's albums, performances, and films throughout his career, with a primary focus on the 1960s; and (3) artists who have been touched by Dylan's legacy, including those outside of North America. We bypass hero worship in favor of understanding cultural and social currents that enable individuals like Dylan to blossom. In addition to collecting, interpreting, analyzing, and presenting evidence as part of written scholarly arguments, which will be stressed throughout the semester, either the midterm or final project may take the form of a creative work other than a paper.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC119F Jazz in the 1960s (FYS)

The 1960s were a turbulent but stimulating time for the world of jazz. The R&B-based soul jazz movement was at its peak and often at odds with the still-developing avant-garde aesthetic. Certain other influences, such as those of Brazilian and African music, were becoming widespread in jazz for the first time. Older forms of jazz like bebop, big band music, and traditional jazz (aka "Dixieland") were struggling to remain viable and relevant. Rock music's surge in popularity was threatening the commercial solvency of jazz while acting as a musical and cultural force to which all jazz musicians had to react in some manner. Meanwhile much of this decade's jazz is inexorably linked to the political and social upheaval of the era, particularly those aspects relating to Black Americans' sense of identity and struggles for equality.

In this course, we will broadly explore the various movements that made up the jazz of this decade. We will delve more deeply into the music of some of the most important figures in jazz during this time, such as Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Stan Getz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Jimmy Smith, Yusef Lateef, and Sun Ra. We will study musicians who typified a particular movement, those who assimilated several into a personal style, and those who moved freely among factions. All the while, we will be contextualizing the music within the social and political climate of the decade and the broader artistic and commercial landscape of music at the time.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC120F Music, Place, and Culture: An Exploration of African American Soundscapes and Traditions (FYS)

This course will explore African American soundscapes and traditions through the lens of New Orleans, a cradle of jazz, brass bands, Mardi Gras celebrations, and more. From the historically significant grounds of Congo Square to the mean streets of the Calliope; from the moving voice of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson to the edgy flows of southern hip-hop artist Mystikal; from the sweet trumpet sounds of jazz pioneer Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong to the emphatic full body twerk of bounce artist Big Freedia; from the inspiring soulful sounds of Tank and the Bangas to the powerful sonic echoes of parading brass bands, New Orleans is a place where music and culture bubbles up from the streets and travels throughout the world.

New Orleans is also a place of perpetual marginalization stemming from systemic racist policies that often lead to life-threatening forms of policing and gentrification. These policies disproportionately affect the very African American communities that provide the world such rich, and sometimes healing, iconic sounds. New Orleans serves as an ideal place--bearing strong African American musical roots--to study the manner in which culturally invested people understand, negotiate, and produce space musically. Course participants will immerse themselves in the varied genres of African American music-making traditions through reading and writing assignments, in-class discussions, active music listening, video screenings, creative projects, and possible guest artist engagement. Music genres to be studied include jazz, gospel, soul, funk, blues, hip-hop, rap, zydeco, and bounce.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC121 Queering Russian Music

How have the sexuality of a Russian composer Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky and international success of a popular music duo t.A.T.u. shaped the understanding of gender, sexuality, and queerness in the Russian context? This entry-level course introduces a variety of theoretical and journalistic approaches and presents a historical overview of Russian music centered around queerness, gender, sexuality, and power. Using methodologies of queer studies and queer theory, we will examine a variety of musical genres and musicians ranging from Imperial Russia to the present-day Russian popular and film music. The topics will focus on women composers, queer genres, queer sexual and musical identity.

Selected personalities examined in the course:

Catherine II (the Great), Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky, Vaslav Nijinsky, Sofia Gubaidulina, Galina Ustvolskaya, Alla Pugacheva, Zemfira, t.A.T.u, Pussy Riot, AIGEL, Little Big, Manizha, Oxxxymiron, ICEPEAK
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: REES221, RUSS221
Prereq: None

MUSC121F Queering Russian Music

MUSC122 Sample, Remix, Reuse, and Replay: Approaches to Musical Adaptation in Audiovisual Culture

Many of the musics we listen to and encounter are palimpsests, collages, and assemblages. Texts are layered upon and juxtaposed against pre-existing texts, creating polyvocal dialogues and contrasting and complementary systems of meaning. This class introduces students to questions and controversies of adapted and remixed musical media in 20th and 21st century society, analyzing the ways music and other texts and materials (e.g., paintings, plays, places, novels, technologies, genres, historical events, preexisting music) are adapted through processes of revision, remix, remediation, sampling, restaging, and reinterpretation to create new layers of meaning. The course will consider the roles of film, television, video games, music video, digital audiovisual formats and technologies, and related audiovisual media. We will journey from the recycling of preexisting classical music in video games to the remediation and transmission of live operas to the movie theater screen in the MET Live in HD series, from compositions that translate the visuality of iconic paintings into sound to the practice of remix and sampling in hip hop culture, from the digital adaptation of operatic conventions in Final Fantasy VI to cover versions that complicate listeners' expectations of gender performance, from the live performance of video game soundtracks by a symphony orchestra in Video Games Live and Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions to the compilation mixtape scores of Hollywood films, and from Tan Dun's Internet Symphony for the YouTube Orchestra to how the urban neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City is repurposed, staged, and cast as a central character in In the Heights or how American political history is adapted and revitalized in Hamilton. Themes in the course include, among others, the changing roles and responsibilities of musicians in an age of digital globalization; the power of musical media and referential texts to structure human experience; and the role of the composer and listener as manipulators and interpreters of musical meaning across comparative audiovisual texts. This seminar draws on the classroom community's interdisciplinary backgrounds and interests as well as readings and case studies that cross and challenge disciplinary boundaries. Students can achieve success in this course without previous musical knowledge.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC122F Writing about Sound: What the audible can teach us about our world

Sound speaks volumes, even if what it tells us can be tricky to put into words. If we listen critically, sound can teach us important lessons--like how technology is evolving, society changing, and what it means to be human. That is why sound has recently preoccupied the academic study of music, visual arts, media, ecology, race, disability, architecture, economics, and the history of science. Touching on each of these areas, this course blends core texts and case studies in the interdisciplinary field of sound studies to offer something interesting to all students, regardless of their chosen major. As part of Wesleyan's first-year seminar program, the course has two aims: to explore how philosophers, ethnographers, practitioners, and journalists have written about sound; and to help students cultivate good habits for putting their own arguments into writing. There are no prerequisites to join the class, and assignments will focus on developing weekly reading responses into longer-form essays.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC124F Mapping Culture (FYS)

What is a culture, how can it be intimately wrapped up in a location, and how can that be mapped out to better understand its inner workings? In the face of globalization and pervasive online communities, what can conventional wisdom--"location, location, location" and "All politics is local"--tell us about the importance of actual places in cultural formations? We will first orient ourselves with a wide range of music-mapping projects, as well as projects that directly address the significance of a location. From a base in the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology, we will then examine how scenes and subcultures can congeal in particular places and times, mapping them in New York City's Lower East Side (punk), Greenwich Village (urban folk revival), and South Bronx (early hip-hop). Deploying a broad conception of culture, we will cover other art forms (e.g., graffiti) and social formations. Haight Ashbury (San Francisco) 1960s counterculture, Laurel Canyon (L.A.) 1970s singer-songwriters, Chicago 1980s post-disco house, and London 1980s post-punk goth will provide complementary case studies. These examples will provide models as students embark on their own to map out a culture of their choice as their midterm and final projects, using Google maps, Story Maps, or some other interactive multimedia format. Readings on theories of place and of subcultures will provide blueprints for issues to be explored, including how group identity and a sense of community can be locally constructed and the significance of physical in-person contact in a world of increasingly virtual relationships.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC125 Music and Downtown New York, 1950-1970

This course will explore the history, interconnections, and simultaneous flourishing of four distinct music communities that inhabited and shaped downtown New York during two particularly rich decades in American culture: Euro-American experimentalists; African American jazz-based avant-garde; blues and folk revivalists; and Lower East Side rock groups. Much of the course will be devoted to understanding their points of convergence and divergence, especially in conversation with broader currents of the time (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement and related notions of freedom, shifting youth subcultures, and avant-garde aesthetics). We will read about and listen to recordings of a wide variety of musicians, identify aesthetic and cultural trends, and study the local industry that supported them. Student research, interpretation, and writing will be emphasized throughout the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC125F Music and Downtown New York, 1950-1970 (FYS)

MUSC126F Poetry and Song (FYS)

Students will read poems by major poets in English (including Yeats, Shelley, Shakespeare, many living poets) and study settings of these poets by composers (Ives, Barber, Britten, etc.). We will also study the lyrics of many recent popular songs that can be read as poetry, including lyrics of Steely Dan, Patti Smith, and of course The Beatles. The final topic of the class will be, pro and con--did Bob Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC127 C-Pop in the Shadow of a Rising China

Explore the emotional aspect of a rising China and understand the inner feelings of contemporary Chinese youth through C-pop. How did "red songs" from the Cultural Revolution become popular songs in the 21st century? How did an "extremely soft and feminine" voice threaten the Chinese Communist Party? Why do songs from the "jazz capital of the Orient" trigger nostalgia? How do underground rock and punk bands negotiate their existence? How is rap in China different from that of the US or anywhere else? How do Chinese artists deal with LGBTQ issues and ethnic minority issues in popular music? Why do TV variety shows matter? What future is there for China's burgeoning "internet songs"? Popular music in a rising China presents complex issues of state-sponsored popular culture intersecting with bottom-up popular taste and desire, the repressive collective "we" intersecting with the resilient individual "I" in artistic expressions, the imagined "ancient China" intersecting with contemporary sound and technology, and the intensifying nationalistic sentiment intersecting with China's expanding global ambition. This course offers students opportunities to explore aesthetic, political, and cultural meanings expressed in China's popular music from the 1980s to the present. Chinese language knowledge is not necessary.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS259
Prereq: None

MUSC128F Music and the Moving Image: From Music Video to Film to Digital Media (FYS)

On August 1, 1981--the day that a cable TV channel playing music videos 24/7 made its debut--the inaugural video aired on MTV by the band The Buggles announced to viewers, "Video Killed the Radio Star." Since the launch of MTV, music videos have shaped popular culture, and their production, narrative, multimodal, and editing aesthetics have influenced other musical screen media, including film, commercials, television title sequences and end credits, film trailers, live concert films, video games, YouTube fan remixes and more. The development of digital new media technologies made the production technologies once only accessible to commercial record labels and production companies available to fans and consumers on their computers, cameras, and mobile media devices. This course explores the relationships between music and moving images (e.g. television, film, computer, video games, mobile media, digital media), and how the music video format has influenced modes of music making, performance, reception, and circulation. Music videos have shaped the aesthetic style of a wide range of screen media genres, serving as a form of branding popular music and artists, introducing experimental and avant-garde techniques to a mass audience, and facilitating participatory fan musicking. This course thinks deeply about several key issues concerning music and moving images (e.g. virtuality, identity politics, cross-cultural exchange, participatory musicking, fandom, virtuosity, adaptation, branding, liveness, nostalgia), examining how screen media with their visual and auditory content can be listened to and read as cultural texts.

Case studies in this seminar range from the history, genre expectations, and experimentalism of music videos to ethnographic filmmaking, from the visual album (Beyoncé's LEMONADE) to fan produced video game music machinima, from the sound design of documentary film to the movie musical, from Hollywood compilation soundtracks to the pace, camera angles, and dance sequences of post-MTV Bollywood film, from 8-bit video game sound to the music pedagogy of children's television programs (Sesame Street's "Geometry of Circles" scored by Philip Glass), and from the use of pre-existing music in television commercials (United Airlines' use of George Gershwin's RHAPSODY IN BLUE, Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean/New Generation" for Pepsi), video games (ETERNAL SONATA, TETRIS), and mobile media apps (the Clapping Music app, the John Cage Prepared Piano app) to expressions of Indigenous musical modernity (Tanya Tagaq's multimedia collaboration NANOOK, the Anishinaabe singing mobile game app HONOUR WATER, the soundscapes of the Iñupiat Alaskan Native video game NEVER ALONE).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC129 The Art of Listening

Over the 20th century, the advent of electronic sound recording and transmission triggered rapid changes in all forms of auditory culture. We will examine this evolution through the different approaches to listening that emerge with the concepts of soundscape, sound object, sound art, and sound design. We will give particular attention to the artists and composers who explicitly shaped these concepts through their work. This includes figures such as writer William S. Burroughs, composer John Cage, singer Bing Crosby, pianist Glenn Gould, theatre director Elizabet LeCompte, filmmaker Walter Murch, artist Max Neuhaus, composer Pauline Oliveros, guitarist Les Paul, composer R. Murray Schafer, and theorist Pierre Schaeffer. In addition to readings, listenings, and viewings, class members will perform works by composers such as Maryanne Amacher, John Cage, Alvin Lucier, and David Tudor and create sound works of their own. The class should be of interest to anyone who anticipates working with sound in their creative endeavors, whether as a musician, artist, dancer, or filmmaker.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC130F Wagner and Wagnerism: Richard Wagner's Music and Influence from the 1840s to the Present (FYS)

Richard Wagner is perhaps the most influential composer who ever lived. Not only an influence on every musician who followed him, he has also had enormous influence on literature, the theatre, visual arts, and even politics. His music is beautiful but controversial. His ideas range from the most exalted, idealistic visions of the future and human possibility to some confused political notions and a particularly virulent antisemitism. In the words of one of his countless biographers, "Humanity has paid dearly for the Wagnerian patrimony." He was a particular favorite of Hitler, but also of W.E.B. Du Bois. Can Wagner and his legacy be redeemed? Should it? The first step is to understand exactly what this complicated man and his long shadow are all about.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC131F Gender and Sexuality in Hip Hop (FYS)

This survey course is designed to present students with a variety of issues pertaining to gender and sexuality in aspects of hip-hop music and culture, including music video imagery and artists such as Nicki Minaj and Missy Elliott. In addition to hip-hop music, students will examine other aspects of hip-hop culture such as DJing and graffiti, as well as perspectives from outside of the African-American community.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC133F Caribbean Connection: Music and Culture of Trinidad and Tobago Music (FYS)

MUSC 133F will examine the history and development of three major genres of music from Trinidad and Tobago: Calypso, Soca, and Chutney music. In this course we will explore issues relating to culture, tradition, colonialism, gender, identity, religion, and sexuality in Trinbagonian party music. We will survey scholarly material as we listen and analyze the lyrical and visual components found in popular music videos, as well as the party/fete arena, to gain a better understanding of how these styles of writing and visual portrayals have shaped Carnival music today. Additionally, we will begin this course with an introductory examination of the musical traditions within some of the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English-speaking Caribbean, ending the course by probing the many ways Caribbean countries connect culturally and historically.

Although this is not a performance-based course, students would have a firsthand opportunity to play the steelpan and auxiliary percussion instruments as we learn about the invention of the instrument, as well as hear directly from Trinbagonian musicians and other Caribbean musicians via zoom.

Some styles of music explored in this course are: Tamboo bamboo, calypso, soca, chutney, chutney-soca, Jamoo, shango (orisha), tassa drumming, rhythm sections (folk drumming), steelpan, extempo, parang (parranda), parang-soca, zess, zouk, ska, rocksteady, reggae, reggaeton, afro-cuban, merengue, bachata, and vodou-jazz.

N.B. This course is open to ALL students and requires no prior knowledge of or experience in Caribbean music.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC201 Tonal Harmony

This course continues the work of Materials and Design, with a greater focus on the analysis of Western European music from the Common Practice period (1700-1900). Through activities such as model composition, listening assignments, and written exercises, students will deepen their understanding of harmony, melody, and form idiomatic to music of the late Baroque, Classical, and early Romantic periods. Although the repertoire for the course is drawn predominantly from Classical music as a specific cultural practice, other topics for elaboration will include jazz and popular music, musical theatre, and others at the suggestion of the students. In weekly labs, students will acquire greater agility with sight-singing, dictation, and keyboard skills, using solfège.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC103

MUSC202 Theory and Analysis

This course focuses primarily on two aspects of Western tonal music: harmony and form. Harmony is the study of chords: their individual qualities and configurations, their relative importance and function within a given musical context, and ways of moving between them. We will review the treatment of diatonic harmonies and then expand our palettes through sonorities that borrow from or lead to new key areas. Forms, treated in the latter part of the course, are common patterns of repetition and contrast used to structure diverse musical works from pop tunes to symphonies. Working from detail to whole, we will learn how composers and songwriters construct motives, melodies, songs, and large-scale pieces. In addition to these topics on pitch relations and structure, this course contains a short unit on rhythm and meter. While we'll focus predominantly on European art music repertoire, we will also examine how harmony, rhythm, and form function in other musical traditions. Assignments and activities will include reading texts by composers and scholars, analyzing scores and recordings, composing, listening, singing, and keyboard playing.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC201

MUSC203 Chromatic Harmony

This course is an investigation of the tonal system as it functions in extreme situations: selected highly chromatic passages in Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; the more adventurous compositions of Chopin and Liszt; Wagnerian opera-drama; and late-19th-century works in which the tonal system approaches collapse (Hugo Wolf, early Schoenberg). Recently developed models from the music-theoretical literature will be introduced. Chromatic harmony will be considered from both technical and expressive points of view.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC201 OR MUSC202

MUSC204 20th Century Compositional Techniques

Students will write short pieces in various 20th-century styles, using atonal, polytonal, modal, serial, minimal, repetitive, and chance techniques.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC109 OR MUSC201 OR MUSC202

MUSC205 Song: Music and Text

This course is an investigation of different sorts of song, in which the music and the words are more or less equal partners. Composers and poets to be discussed include: Franz Schubert; Hugo Wolf; Charles Ives; various settings of Langston Hughes; George and ira Gershwin; The Beatles; Paul Simon; Kanye West; and Bob Dylan (did he merit the Nobel Prize?).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC103 OR MUSC201

MUSC206 18th-Century Counterpoint

This course is a study of the contrapuntal practice of J. S. Bach and other 18th-century composers, with emphasis on writing in the style of the period.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC202

MUSC207 Orchestration

Students will write for the various groups of the orchestra (strings, winds, brass, percussion) and for the entire ensemble.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC201 OR MUSC202

MUSC208 Post-Tonal Music Theory

At the dawn of the 20th century, European composers began to experiment with a radically new and completely decentered tonal language. Leaving the practice of tonality behind them, these composers used unorthodox numerical relationships to create formal links and motivic connections between the sounds of their compositions. Post-tonal theory represents the body of scholarship that attempts systematically to examine the formal procedures and properties associated with this modernist music; it also represents one attempt to understand the relationships between musical pitches that hold outside the framework of tonality. This course will serve as a general introduction to post-tonal music theory and will also serve as an introduction to the music of the Second Viennese School: Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Beyond the music of these composers, we will also contemplate applications of post-tonal theory to more recent music.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC201

MUSC210 Theory of Jazz Improvisation

This course concentrates on the vocabulary of improvisation in the African American classical tradition. Rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic knowledge will be approached through the study of scales, chords, modes, ear training, and transcription. Theoretical information will be applied to instruments in a workshop setting. Intensive practice and listening are required. This course may not be repeated for credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM386
Prereq: MUSC103

MUSC212 South Indian Music: Solkattu

Solkattu is a system of spoken syllables and hand gestures used to teach and communicate rhythmic ideas in all of South India's performing arts. It has been part of Wesleyan's program in karnatak music for more than 40 years. Students of many different musical traditions have found solkattu valuable for building and sharpening rhythmic skills and for understanding the intricacies of karnatak tala (meter). Building on the fundamental skills acquired in MUSC110, students will learn increasingly advanced and challenging material in a variety of talas. An extended composition, developed for the group, will be performed in an end-of-semester recital.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS212
Prereq: [MUSC110 or GSAS110]

MUSC219 I am the Loudest Sound in This Room // I am the Softest Sound in This Room

I am the Loudest Sound in This Room // I am the Softest Sound in This Room (MUSC 219) examines the use of feedback-based systems in performance, composition, and sound art. Particular emphasis will be given to the creation and exploration of recursive systems, starting with Alvin Lucier's seminal work I am Sitting in a Room. The class will overlap with explorations of instrument design, acoustics, orchestration, improvisation, idiosyncratic electronic systems and programming, and performance. Students will be encouraged to create original work as part of the class. The class will use softwares such as Max/MSP, Reaper, and other systems as necessary for the class.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC220 Composing, Performing, and Listening to Experimental Music

This is a first course in experimental music composition with a focus on live electronic and electroacoustic music. The course uses freeware tools such as SuperCollider 3, Spear, and Audacity to enable students to work from their own computers. The course introduces those aspects of acoustics, psychoacoustics, and audio engineering relevant to composing music, designing interactive electronic instruments, and conceiving self-sustaining sound installations. Course work consists of weekly creative assignments taking the form of both short, original compositions and realizations or transcription of works by others, and two larger compositional projects. The online class session focuses on technical issues, while the extended session allows time for audition and discussion of assignments and relevant compositions from the literature.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC221 Live-Electronics for Composition, Improvisation, and Sound Art

This course delves in to Max with the goal of creating live-electronics sound-based systems. The class begins by looking at seminal works in experimental live electronics performance and interactive arts and quickly maneuvers into other arenas of performance and composition. Max for Live, Jitter, Mira, and experimental controllers will also be discussed and further pursued depending on individual student projects to be completed by the end of the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC109

MUSC222 Sound Art, Music, and Interactive Media

The focus of this course is on creative projects in digital media conceived in relation to historical considerations of these same techniques. Recording, amplification, and radio transmission have exerted a profound effect on musical practices of all forms since the beginning of the 20th century. In the period immediately after World War II, composers and artists began to focus on changing the relation of composers, performers, and listeners to sound in response to those techniques. We will consider those artistic strategies and the role they have played in shaping musical genres such as musique concrete, serial and spectral composition, interactive computer music systems, circuit bending, and entirely new genres such as sound, video, and performance art. Student projects will be focused on the creation of music, installations, and performances that respond to those ideas and issues. Our primary tool for those projects will be MAX/MSP/Jitter, a software environment designed to enable the composition of real-time interactive sound, video, and network connections.

The fundamental goal of this course is to develop the combination of technical skills and historical awareness needed to creatively engage the ever-expanding accumulation of data and social media that is currently enabling a new period of change in artistic practice.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC223 Music, Recording, and Sound Design

This technical and historical introduction to sound recording is designed for upper-level students in music, film, theater, dance, and art. The course covers the use of microphones, mixers, equalization, multitrack recording, and digital sequencing. Additional readings will examine the impact of recording on musical and filmic practice. Participation in the course provides students with access to the Music Department's recording facilities in the music studios.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: DDC223
Prereq: MUSC103 OR MUSC201

MUSC225 Sound Systems and Chamber Electronics

A course in live electronic music centered on the transformation and spatial redistribution of sound. Coursework includes individually creating interpretations of fixed media work (by a composers such as Eliane Radigue, Luc Ferrari, Robert Ashley) for specific spaces using a sound system designed for that space and that piece. Collectively we will prepare realizations of ensemble pieces that played a pivotal role in the development of this music (such as John Cage's Cartridge Music and David Tudor's Rainforest IV). Term projects will take the form of concert music or sound installation or other hybrid forms.

On a technical level we will explore different generations of electronic

instruments and instrumentation drawn from Wesleyan's World Instrument Collection. This ranges from found objects such as slinky's and bird calls to Moog and Arp synthesizers and guitar pedals and other idiosyncratic synthesis devices. We will expand this vocabulary with digital sound techniques using SuperCollider 3, a free music programming environment that extends the DIY sensibility to software.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC226 Field Recording

Behind every sound we hear while listening to music, watching television, playing games, or browsing the internet, an incredible amount of thought went into how to best capture and reproduce it. There are so many amazing sounds, and having the skillful ingenuity to capture those moments, often outside the convenience of a studio, is key to ensuring the ephemeral sonic elements in our world are incorporated into the lives of anyone who wants to listen. The practices discussed in this course will be focused on both the flexibility and practical considerations of creating from a home studio in the 21st century, and framed to fit a range of artistic and professional endeavors such as album production, broadcasting, ethnographic documentation, and sound recording for visual media. This course will illuminate every step of that process, from choosing equipment for making a particular recording, to editing, cleaning up, and mastering the deliverable result, while also touching on specific historical and technical elements of recording technology. By the conclusion of this course, students will have the foundations to share the sounds they hear--in the way they want them to be heard--with the world.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-DDC
Prereq: None

MUSC227 Sound Production

Presenting art conceived as sound goes far beyond setting up a pair of speakers. With the immersive potential of new audio technologies, artists are empowered to think outside the box and create unique super-systems to express themselves. These endless possibilities can be immensely exciting or potentially overwhelming, depending on how much an artist is able to internalize where art and technology overlap. This course will prepare creative thinkers to incorporate audio into their work by establishing a fundamental understanding of modern speaker/transducer designs and configurations, FOH mixers and large-scale audio routing/processing technologies, control interfaces/protocols for producing and interacting with sound, basic room acoustics and strategies on maximizing the potential of a space, and methods of incorporating microphones/live audio into a project. By the end of this course, students will have the tools they need to set up and manage unique and complex audio systems, and better realize their relationship between art and technology.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-DDC
Prereq: None

MUSC230 Music Theater Workshop

This class will be a collaborative, hands-on workshop for playwrights and composers who will work together throughout the semester, simulating the real-world process of writing a piece of musical theater. Students will explore standard works in the musical theater canon as well as less traditional pieces, concentrating on dramaturgical elements specific to the form (opening numbers, "I Want/I Am" songs, extended musical sequences, act one finales, 11 o'clock numbers, etc.). Students will then apply this knowledge to their own work as they generate scenes, songs, and outlines for libretti. Students will leave the class with a grasp of the classic components of this art form, hopefully inspired to follow or bend the "rules" to suit their own creative instincts.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-THEA
Identical With: THEA279
Prereq: THEA199 OR MUSC103 OR MUSC201

MUSC231 Performing Arts Videography

This course provides an introduction to shooting and editing video and sound with a particular focus on the documentation of dance, music, and theater performance. Additional consideration will be given to the integration of videographic elements into such performances. Students will work in teams to document on-campus performances occurring concurrently. Related issues in ethnographic and documentary film will be explored through viewing and discussion of works such as Wim Wenders's Pina, Elliot Caplan's Cage/Cunningham, John Cohen's The High Lonesome Sound, and Peter Greenaway's Four American Composers.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: DANC231, THEA213
Prereq: None

MUSC232 Instrument-Body

The ancient Greek word organon meant both instrument and sense organ, hence the development of a shared word in English for organ (as in a Hammond B3 organ) and organ (as in a kidney). This etymological overlap opens onto a set of generative questions into the nature of instruments: Are they inside or outside the body? Is the body an instrument? If the body is an instrument, who plays it? If an instrument is outside the body, what kind of object is it--a fetish? a prosthetic? an enhancement? an extension? a tool? a commodity? a technology?--and what does it do to the player? Can experimenting with new body-instrument relations become a pathway towards re-organ-izing the body and its relations? Instrument-Body is both a seminar and a studio course that takes these questions as a point of departure for creative and critical experimentation. We will read widely across the fields of musicology, art history, performance studies, queer studies, and critical race studies to investigate questions of instrumentality, embodiment, and technology. In addition, we will create performances across three units: "make an instrument," "break an instrument," and "make yourself an instrument." Students who already play instruments are encouraged to enroll, as are students that have no preexisting relationship to musical instruments.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: THEA232
Prereq: None

MUSC240 Visual Sounds: Exploring the Landscape and Architecture of Musical Notation

This course examines a diverse range of musical works seeing their notation as a process of translation, transformation, provocation, and imagination. Tracing a thread from medieval notations through to contemporary scores, we investigate the shifting tensions between the sonic and the visual over the long arc of music history. Why were sounds inscribed in the ninth century? How do 1960s scores reflect the radicalism of their era? Connections across centuries help shed light on musicians for whom the creative potential of notation surpasses its descriptive and prescriptive functions. Featured composers will include Hildegard of Bingen, Guillaume de Machaut, La Monte Young, George Brecht, Earle Brown, John Cage, Cornelius Cardew, Cathy Berberian, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Mark Applebaum, and Claudia Molitor. Complementary materials comprise visual art, concrete poetry, and live theater. One of the reasons composers started to experiment with open scores in the 1950s and 60s was to develop a kind of musical notation that could be read, and therefore performed, even by those who did not identify as musically literate. This course is, accordingly, open to all students. No prior knowledge of musical notation or instrumental expertise is required. Meetings will involve discussion of a wide range of readings with the goal of expanding understanding of multiple relationships between music and visual materials. Learning Objectives: To gain familiarity with the diversity of forms of musical notation. To recognize the variable relationships between inspiration, transcription, performance, and recordings. To consider musical notation as a form of design, a language code, and a form of translation. To develop creative processes and understand the creative processes of others.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: COL233
Prereq: None

MUSC241 Mystical Visions, Medieval Women, and the Performance of Early Music

This course challenges the traditional male-dominated history of early music by focusing on the women who commissioned, performed, heard, and composed music in pre-modern times. Discovering love lyrics that express desires, conflicts, and sufferings that seem equally true today helps collapse the notion of linear time. In addition to finding similarities across centuries, we will draw from multiple disciplines, including comparative literature, religion and cosmology, and gender and sexuality studies. An interdisciplinary approach will guide our investigation of the mystical and visionary aspects of medieval music. Topics to be explored include communal music-making practices, authorship, power and politics, and the multiple civic and social functions of music. We investigate how the music of worship differs from that of romance, public ceremony, and private entertainment. These inquiries help to cultivate skills not only to appreciate our musical heritage but also to better understand contemporary social and cultural practices.

Various "medievalisms"--modern interpretations of the medieval--are explored, to show how musicians continue to interact with early practices in new and exciting ways. This allows us to talk not only about performers of historical early music, but also about composers like Kaija Saariaho, folk groups like Vulcan's Hammer and Folkal Point, and pop artists like Janelle Monaé and Florence Welch. The creation of medievalist music for films and video games is also relevant, as an arena where musicians reimagine the medieval for new audiences.

Coursework involves learning through performance, examination of manuscripts, research, writing, transcription, and editing. There are also weekly listening assignments and readings.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MDST221
Prereq: None

MUSC242 Baroque and Classical Music

This discussion-based seminar provides an overview of the history of Western European music from the Baroque and Classical periods (roughly 1600 to 1800). More than a survey course, however, it engages students in some of the significant debates around the character and function of music, with a special focus on music's role in defining the modern era. Together, we will consider (and in some cases, reconsider) the following questions: How does music express? What were some of the paradigms for conveying meaning with music? Why does music feature so prominently in contemporaneous discourses as varied as the natural sciences, aesthetics, rhetoric, and others? By the end of the semester, students should expect to acquire some techniques for articulating their experience of music and relating that experience to compositional procedures idiomatic to the style. Repertoire to be considered will include works by Monteverdi, Lully, J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. We will also devote time to exploring the role of this music in cultural exchanges in Asia and the Americas. Facility with musical notation is expected.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC243 Music of the 19th Century

The nineteenth century is a time of great change--politically, socially and artistically. We will study many of the major composers, and major trends, through their relationship to Richard Wagner. Wagner's life intersects with almost every major figure in nineteenth century music, in one way or another, and his legacy defines much of the twentieth century, extending all the way to today. In addition to European composers, we will study selected composers in the United States as well. Europeans include Beethoven, Chopin, Berlioz, Schubert, Liszt, Louise Ferenc, Brahms, Arthur Sullivan, and Hugo Wolf. Americans include Frank Johnson (the first published African American composer), Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and "the Beethoven of America," Anthony Philip Heinrich.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC244 Music of the 20th Century

In the 20th century, European and American art music (classical music in common parlance) became increasingly fragmented. Composition splintered into diverse idioms and methods: the minimalism of Steve Reich, impressionism of Claude Debussy, and indeterminacy of John Cage, to name only a few. Often, the proponents of one school vehemently rejected the techniques of the others. Perhaps as a result of such schisms, the audience for classical music--particularly contemporary composition--diminished in size, to the point that critics were hailing the "postclassical era" by the 1990s. The concert hall ceased to be a showcase for contemporary compositions and became a kind of museum devoted to preserving (and occasionally reinventing) canonic works of the past. Commercial popular musics such as jazz and rock eclipsed classical music in audience appeal and relevance. While some composers attracted listeners through their interface with folk and popular musics or with film (e.g., Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein), others preferred to cultivate small but devoted audiences of initiates for their challenging works (e.g., Milton Babbitt, Arnold Schoenberg). Meanwhile, the advent of mass-produced sound recordings enabled music from distant times and places to be preserved, transported, and heard on demand, with profound consequences for the creation, performance, and consumption of music. In this course, we will explore the many trends that have marked classical musicking in the 20th century. Through extensive listening assignments and primary source readings, we will meet many of the century's influential composers, performers, critics, record producers, pedagogues, patrons, and listeners. In discussions and writing, we will explore what the past century's legacy means for us as musicians and listeners today. While previous experience with music is useful, it is not a requirement for success in this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC245 Music in the United States in the Nineteenth Century

The musical culture of the United States in the nineteenth century is very rich and diverse. American composers of the period are far better, and more interesting, than is generally assumed. This course will focus on music of the concert hall, church music, and popular music. Composers studied will include Anthony Philip Heinrich ("the Beethoven of America"), George Bristow, Francis "Frank" Johnson (the first published African American composer), and the early compositions of Amy Beach, Charles Ives, and others whose careers spill over into the twentieth century.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC246 The Symphony: Evolution of Genre

This course will explore cultural settings and key elements in development of the orchestra as a performing force, conducting as an art form, organology, and music history, by means of tracing the evolution of a single genre: the symphony (from 1750s through 1950s). Preliminary list of composers includes J. Haydn, W. A. Mozart, M. Martines, L. v. Beethoven, J. Bologne, F. Schubert, F. Mendelssohn, H. Berlioz, P. Tchaikovsky, J. Brahms, A. Dvorzak, A. Beach, L. Farrenc, G. Mahler, J. Sibelius, F. Price, W. Grant Still, R. Vaughan Williams, D. Shostakovich, S. Prokofiev.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC248 Music in Outer Space

Very few people have traveled out of the Earth's atmosphere, but many composers have voyaged extensively in the conceptual realms of outer space. Throughout human history, musicians have been inspired by the "harmony of the spheres," knowledge of the universe, celestial bodies, and planetary motion. From Pythagorus, Boethius, Philippe de Vitry, John Dunstaple, Johannes Kepler, Gustav Holst, Györgi Ligeti, John Cage, Judith Weir, Alvin Lucier, Brian Eno, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Sun Ra, and Jeff Mills to the 1977 Voyager Golden Record, Hawkwind, David Bowie, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, John Williams, Kraftwerk, and the Beastie Boys, we explore the importance of constellations to musical creativity, and the ways in which cosmic sounds have influenced artists. The course will approach the topic through various interpretative lenses. Readings are drawn from a wide range of sources--theoretical, scientific, poetic, and experiential. Discussion topics will include theories relating to the music of the spheres, the study of geometry and proportion, astro-acoustics, sonification, the use of metaphor (in naming the planets in our solar system, lunar and solar imagery), and the influence of imagined and documented sounds of space on composers past and present. Students will each construct their own soundscape of space in the near future. Musicians, astronomers, theorists, and composers: All are welcome.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC249 Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing: Music Journalism and Public Musicology

The internet has revolutionized how people consume music, how they read and write about it. This course will offer an introduction to music journalism as a practice of public musicology, one that has become central to contemporary life. Students will analyse and apply techniques used to write about music for the wider public, learn how to develop ideas, sharpen critical skills, and complete a series of reporting assignments. We will look at the history and function of music criticism, assess different kinds of music writing, discuss changing perceptions of music as a public art form, and the role of journalism in cultural preservation. The class will write and collaboratively edit a series of reviews, and make a short radio feature in collaboration with WESU (88.1FM). The reviews will focus on recordings, live events, and books on musical cultures. Students will have the opportunity to engage with professional music writers, which will help to prepare them for later work in music journalism, or in arts or media organizations.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC250 Film and Folk Music of India

What is film music culture in India? What is folk music in India today? How do these genres interact and influence one another? Most research on the music of India has focused on the classical systems. However, for many people, the most important musical expressions found in their personal and social lives are film and folk musics. Even though film music is considered to be entertainment, it reflects almost all aspects of Indian music and culture. Students will be introduced to the culture and heritage of India. Film and folk music will be analyzed with reference to ancient and modern musical treatises. Topics covered will include the diverse cultures within India and its global diaspora. Students will be encouraged to sing or play the pop and folk songs of India.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC252Z Expressions of Indigeneity in Music and Sound

What would an opera about Thanksgiving composed by a Native American artist sound like? To explore the politics of representation in Indigenous sound and music, this course draws students into a global dialogue about Indigeneity. Topics include the interplay of tradition and modernity, the impact of colonization, music production and consumption, and the politics of knowledge production through various media. In addition to reading and listening assignments, the students will engage in a local ethnographic project--creating an Indigenous sound map in the locale of their choice. For the final project, informed by readings and listening in class, students can choose their formats, either a research project, a creative project, or a combination of both.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC261 Music and Modernity in China, Japan, and Korea

This course examines the relationships between music and modernity in China, Japan, and Korea and the interactions between the impact of Western music and nationalism and contemporary cultural identities. In particular, it explores the historical significance of the Meiji restoration on Japanese music tradition; the Japanese influence on Chinese school songs; the origins of contemporary music in China, Japan, and Korea; the adaptation and preservation of traditional music genres; and the rise of popular music and the music industry. We will focus on the cultural conflicts encountered by East Asian musicians and composers and their musical explorations and experiments in searching for national and individual identities in the processes of nation-building and modernization. The course aims to provide knowledge on East Asian music genres, insight on the issues of global/local cultural contacts, and a better understanding of music's central role in political and social movements in 20th-century East Asia.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS268
Prereq: None

MUSC262 Korean Music from Shamanism to Television (CLAC.50)

This course is open to intermediate learners, advanced learners, and native speakers. The discussion topics will be broadly approached, utilizing various music video examples as vehicles to deeper social, religious, and cultural understanding. These various music examples are from ancient to current Korean music practices. Historically, Korean music was integrated with dance, literature, art, song, and ceremony. Therefore, music (sound) was not separated from other elements but was essential to daily life, community activities, religious practice, artistic collaboration, costumes, food, and the very soul of the Korean people. Traditional Korean music is imbued with the history of court ritual, folk village stories, and myths, in addition to religious rituals of Confucianism, shamanism, and Buddhism. The music is central to a broad range of cultural, social, and humanitarian aspects of Korean life.

Korean traditional music has been evolving for over 2,000 years, and it is now rapidly moving in many directions with contemporary life and influence from Western culture. Historically, music was created as a group activity by village people oftentimes working with a spiritual leader shaman. Currently, the most acceptable music is created and performed by individual performers as a repertoire for TV programs. In the 21st century, as society changes, Korean music is changing also, with differing values of popular culture brought in through recordings, film, and of course the internet. Young musicians go beyond traditional music and are developing a new repertoire that mixes Western instruments or electronics with various traditional instruments. This is a new Korean identity. Newly created Korean ensembles and bands such as K-pop are successfully beginning to dominate the international music scene. In contrast to the formerly inner-looking "Hermit Kingdom," Korea has now entered into instant global communications with the production of more individual music in various styles.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CGST262, KREA262
Prereq: None

MUSC264 Singing in a Strange Land: An Examination of the History of Black Sacred Songs

This new course (developed as alternative to Ebony Singers during COVID-19) is a brief survey of the history of African American sacred music from slavery to the present. Much attention will be paid to the direct experience of listening to music and the inspiration derived therefrom. Class consists of lectures, listening labs, and impression papers.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC448

MUSC265 African Presences I: Music in Africa

This is a team-taught course, with instructors Charry and Dankwa bringing their complementary areas of expertise for a wide-ranging, interactive, and engaging immersion into the music, history, and cultures of Africa. We will explore the diversity of musical expression throughout the African continent with a combination of intensive reading, listening to recordings, viewing videos, discussion, and hands-on performance (all levels welcome). We will survey the continent as a whole, explore regional features, discuss in depth specific pieces, genres, and countries, and look at the social and political horizons of music, including its role in everyday life and rituals and how musical experiences have changed in contemporary life. We will also explore the presence of African music in social media, including the spread and impact of African rap and hip hop.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC265Z African Presences I

One of the assets of Africa's music scene is its vast plurality. Traditional music conceived, developed, and performed in Africa over many centuries coexists and interacts with contemporary art and popular music. Through readings, classroom discussions, listening, viewing, and practical performances, this course will examine some selected musical traditions linked geographically and historically to various areas of Africa. The course highlights several themes: structure and style; interconnection of traditional, popular, and art music forms; circulation of African music; and music's role in shaping African identities in the globalized world.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC268 The People's News: The Convergence of Gospel and Hip Hop in Modern Thought

The Convergence of Gospel and Hip Hop will survey the words and power of Gospel Music and its foray into Hip Hop. How do the words used within a culture develop and/or determine the message and meaning of said culture. If words have power, how is that power used? We will also consider the rejection of Gospel Singers who embraced the unholy and how the message evolved to expand into the formerly non sacred expanse of Hip Hop, and if it has been successful or a lesson in futility.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC264

MUSC269 Sacred and Secular African American Musics

A fluid, multiconceptual approach to musicology will be introduced to view African American sacred and secular music traditions.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM249
Prereq: None

MUSC272 History of Jazz in American Culture

This course will provide students with a broad-based literacy in the history of jazz while examining its significance and impact within American culture. As a musical style, jazz has been a staging ground for working out some of the most defining issues and aspects of American culture, including the dynamics of race relations, the articulation of gender roles and class distinctions, artistic expressions of freedom and democracy, the creative possibilities of the encounter of European- and African-based cultures on American soil, assimilation versus appropriation, and an extraordinarily influential aesthetic of cool. Jazz was the dance and listening music of choice for most Americans from the 1920s through the '50s, until it was displaced and pushed to the margins by rock and soul in the 1960s. But it has remained an inspiration for diverse artists in rock and rap up to the present day, including Kendrick Lamar's jazz-drenched "To Pimp A Butterfly" and Janelle Monae's 21st-century Afrofuturism deeply indebted to Sun Ra.

We will explore the early 20th-century origins of jazz in New Orleans, its rise as America's popular dance music in the 1920s and '30s, a shift to a more concert art-oriented form in the 1940s and '50s (representing the epitome of cool and hipness), avant-garde expressions of the 1960s (representing a new kind of universal spirituality), its move into rock and the growth of artist-based collectives of the 1970s, and its emergence in hip-hop samples in the 1990s. We will learn about major artists and their classic recordings, including Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Miles Davis, among many others, as well as new directions from recent generations (bringing in guest music department faculty). We will immerse ourselves in a combination of listening to recordings, viewing videos, reading, discussion, and in-class performances. Throughout the semester we will pursue the parallel goals of using jazz history to understand American history and vice versa. This is a jazz history course with a difference, able to accommodate curious newcomers as well as aficionados and those interested in social and cultural dynamics as well as the musical materials.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AMST283, AFAM272
Prereq: None

MUSC273 BlaQueer Sounds: Queer Negotiations in African American Music

The term "BlaQueer," first coined by Tabais Wilson, is an invention of the intersectionality era; an acknowledgment of the unique and multifaceted experiences/identities formed at the nexus of racial, gendered, and sexual marginalization. In creating the portmanteau BlaQueer, Wilson underscores that, for people who are both Black and queer, these identities are inseparable, immutable, and irreducible. While the term BlaQueer, and by extension the concept it represents, is fairly new, there are long histories of Black queer people navigating and negotiating identity, revolutionizing and contributing to discourses on race, class, and gender. This course offers an exploration of the BlaQueer expressions, movements, and (most importantly) people that transformed American culture through music. While this course follows a historical arc, the primary aim of this course is to engage BlaQueer musical lineages through a critical interdisciplinary academic lens; accordingly, this course incorporates gender/women's studies, African American studies, performance studies, queer studies, and musicology.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: SBS-AFAM
Identical With: AFAM273, THEA273
Prereq: None

MUSC274 Hymnody in the United States Before the Civil War

This course will examine the singing of hymns and psalms in the United States, concentrating on the first half of the 19th century. Three parallel traditions will be examined: Anglo-American psalmody, as exemplified in The Sacred Harp; the African-American spiritual, as documented in "Slave Songs of the United States"; and Native American hymn tunes as exemplified in the music of the Brothertown Indian Nation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC275 Music and Downtown New York

This course will explore the history and flourishing of four distinct music communities that inhabited and shaped downtown New York City during two especially rich decades (the 1950s and 60s): urban blues and folk revivalists; an African American jazz-based avant-garde; Euro-American experimentalists; and Lower East Side rock groups. These four vanguard musical movements--at the heart of major cultural shifts at the time, with reverberations and legacies that remain relevant up to the present day--are an essential part of U.S. history. We will uncover their points of convergence and divergence, especially in conversation with broader contemporaneous currents, including the Civil Rights Movement and related notions of freedom, shifting youth cultures, music and politics, and avant-garde aesthetics. Drawing from primary sources, we will read about and discuss recordings of a wide variety of musicians, view a broad cross-section of film, identify aesthetic and cultural trends, and study the local industry that supported them. A key theme will be the importance of a place. Projects throughout the semester can include written papers, recordings, artwork, culture mapping, or other creative endeavors somehow related to each of the four topics.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM265
Prereq: None

MUSC277 Jazz Avant-Gardes

What is an avant-garde and what does it mean in the context of jazz? This course will explore this question focusing on the 1950s and 60s and beyond. We will take a holistic approach, examining the music and its surrounding community within the broader social and cultural currents of the times. These currents include European-inherited avant-garde aesthetics, the increasingly urgent civil rights movement and changing conceptions of freedom, artist collectives, and Afrofuturism. Three key artists will provide a focal point: Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Sun Ra. Others will expand our view, including Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Yoko Ono (a non-jazz artist who contributed to an experimental sensibility in NYC), and others. We will immerse ourselves in a combination of reading, listening to recordings, viewing videos, discussion, and some in-class performances. Throughout the semester we will pursue the parallel goals of using this movement in jazz to expand our understanding of avant-garde movements in general and using historical avant-garde movements to expand our understanding of how the phenomenon has played out in jazz. The first two weeks will function as a Jazz 101 boot camp, so no prior experience in jazz is necessary.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AMST267
Prereq: None

MUSC278 Survey of Jazz Styles

This course is a study of how jazz works, developing the awareness and tools that allow us to understand and evaluate what we are hearing when we listen to live or recorded jazz--how and why the musicians do what they do and the larger context into which a performance fits. We explore historical developments and chronology, the structures that govern jazz improvisation and other performance practices and the instrument roles and sub-styles that typically make up the music. Though there will be ample relevant information for musicians, a background in music theory or performance is not at all necessary for this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC278Z Survey of Jazz Styles

This course is a study of how jazz works, aimed at developing the awareness and tools that allow us to understand and evaluate what we are hearing when we listen to live or recorded jazz, how and why the musicians do what they do, and the larger context into which a performance fits. We explore historical developments and chronology, the structures that govern jazz improvisation and other performance practices, and the instrument roles and sub-styles that typically make up the music. Though there will be ample relevant information for musicians, a background in music theory or performance is not necessary for this course.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC279Z Music and Wellbeing

IN-PERSON COURSE: 10:00am-noon and 4:00pm-6:00pm, Monday through Friday. Please note: Students should expect some readings and assignments to be due during winter break, prior to the beginning of Winter Session class meetings. Music has been, and continues to be, an essential component of the practices of traditional healers in most indigenous cultures. Methods vary greatly from culture to culture, and from ancient to modern times. Hindustani (North-Indian art) music is unusual in having a very well-established written record, as well as an oral history. But although knowledge of the medicinal effects of Hindustani musical tones and modes was once integral to understanding and selecting the rags (melodic systems) that make up this music, much of this knowledge has been lost. The sarangi (North-Indian viol) is an instrument closely associated with musical healing. Oral history transmitted through generations of sarangi players makes it possible to trace a lineage of music's medicinal purposes back to the Mughal era.

This course draws on my experience and knowledge as a Hindustani music scholar and an eighth-generation sarangi player from a hereditary musical family to open up a space for the development of community-focused performance methodologies. It looks at ways that my inherited tradition can provide a model for musical healing in contexts outside of India. Acknowledging the capacity for music to activate and influence autonomic system responses, components of the course involve research into the neuroscience of musical healing, public health initiatives, and the relationship to composition and to improvisation.

An integral part of the course, the "lab" will teach you strategies for listening and learning songs composed in rags. It will include structured breathing and yogic-postural forms, combined with healing strategies drawn from diverse sound-based creative practices. Borrowing tools from ethnomusicology, music-therapy, and medical anthropology, the course will extend the listening part of the lab to draw comparisons and analyze music healing practices. In addition, students will be encouraged to investigate, compare, and draw parallels to their own culture(s) and the discipline of music(s) they belong. Detailed and guided listening will make it possible for you to integrate emerging understandings of the relationships between ritual, music, and the health care. The course goal is to broaden your understanding of music as therapy, while raising awareness of the cultural processes that are constructed through musical practice. Syllabi for Winter Session courses will be posted to https://www.wesleyan.edu/wintersession/courses.html as soon as they are available.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC285 Global Hip Hop of the Non-Anglophone World (CLAC .50)

Proficiency in a language other than English is required. Each student will present to the class a single piece of their choice in a non-English language every other week (for a total of five presentations). Presenters will provide the class with written lyrics in both the original language and in English translation. In lieu of analyzing recordings by others, students have the option to compose their own non-English rap songs and record (or perform) them for in-class discussion. The final paper will tie the five presentations together in a single formal document (or website). Class discussion will be in English, but the topics will all be rap lyrics and hip hop/youth culture in the non-Anglophone world.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CGST285
Prereq: None

MUSC290 Research Skills in Ethnomusicology--IRL & Digital

This course provides an introduction to research methods in ethnomusicology, a discipline that studies all types of music (and sound), both in real life and digital, from diverse humanistic and social scientific perspectives. The course is organized around weekly hands-on exploratory and empirical mini projects moving from virtual field to real-world fieldwork to interviewing musicians to digital sound-mapping and music video editing, from learning about Wesleyan's wide-ranging music ensembles to writing album reviews to "composing" an ethnography, which will offer orientation to a discipline that has been central to Wesleyan's approach to music and sound for over 60 years.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC291 The Gendering of Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective

This course presents a critical examination of issues explored and debated in recent studies of gender, sexuality, power, identity, and music from diversified music traditions, including Western art music, popular music, and world musics. Drawing upon interdisciplinary discourse on theories of feminism and gender, gay and lesbian musicology, as well as queer theory in ethno/musicology, through case studies and analysis of various musical examples, we will investigate the following topics: women's multiple roles in the historical and contemporary practices of music; desire, sexuality, and women's images in music; and how gender ideology, contextualized by sociocultural conditions, both constructs and is constructed by musical aesthetics, performance practice, creative processes, and the reception of music.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: FGSS240
Prereq: None

MUSC293 Mapping Culture

What is a culture? How can it be intimately wrapped up in a location and how can that be mapped out to better understand its inner workings? In the face of globalization and pervasive online communities, what can conventional wisdom--"location, location, location" and "all politics is local"--tell us about the importance of actual places in cultural formations? We will first orient ourselves with a wide range of music-mapping projects, as well as projects that directly address the significance of a location (Nile Project, Playing for Change). From a base in the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology, we will then examine how scenes and subcultures can congeal in particular places and times, mapping them in New York City's Lower East Side (punk), Greenwich Village (urban folk revival), and South Bronx (early hip hop). Deploying a broad conception of culture, we will cover other art forms (e.g., graffiti and other street art) and social formations. Haight-Ashbury (SF) 1960s counterculture, Laurel Canyon (L.A.) 1970s singer-songwriters, Chicago 1980s post-disco house, and London 1980s post-punk goth will provide complementary case studies. These examples will provide models before students embark on their own to map out a culture of their choice as their final project, using either Google Maps or Story Maps. Readings on theories of place and of subcultures will provide blueprints for issues to be explored, including how group identity and a sense of community can be locally constructed and the significance of physical in-person contact in a world of increasingly virtual relationships.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC293Z Mapping Culture

What is a culture, how can it be intimately wrapped up in a location, and how can that be mapped out to better understand its inner workings? In the face of globalization and pervasive online communities, what can conventional wisdom--"Location, location, location" and "All politics is local"--tell us about the importance of actual places in cultural formations? We will first orient ourselves with a wide range of music mapping projects, as well as projects that directly address the significance of a location (Nile Project, Playing for Change). From a base in the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology, we will then examine how scenes and subcultures can congeal in particular places and times, mapping them in New York City's Lower East Side (punk), Greenwich Village (urban folk revival), and South Bronx (early hip hop). Deploying a broad conception of culture, we will cover other art forms (e.g., graffiti and other street art) and social formations. Haight Ashbury (SF) 1960s counterculture, Laurel Canyon (LA) 1970s singer-songwriters, Chicago 1980s post-disco house, and London 1980s post-punk goth and early 2000s grime will provide complementary case studies. These examples will provide models before students embark on their own to map out a culture of their choice as their final project, using either Google maps or Story Maps. Readings on theories of place and of subcultures will provide blueprints for issues to be explored, including how group identity and a sense of community can be locally constructed and the significance of physical in-person contact in a world of increasingly virtual relationships.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AMST294Z
Prereq: None

MUSC294 Queer Opera

Opera is a total art: It weds elaborate fashions with scene design and lighting to create incredible dramas set to music. For this reason, opera forces us to think interdisciplinarily about the narratives it portrays. Every action, every emotion, every decision and recognition in the drama is conveyed to the audience in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways. Operas are also fantastic living experiments in the performative representation of human sexuality. In addition to all of the love and sex that occurs explicitly on the opera stage--and there is plenty of that--operatic narratives also bear witness to changing structures of normativity; regimes of social control are thematized, sometimes lampooned, and often transgressed within the drama, and operas allow us to see how this unfolds within an interconnected ensemble of media. This course serves to introduce students to the world of the opera stage and, through that world, the foundational texts of queer theory. Together we will explore operas from the 17th century to the present day, opera theory of the past century, and queer theory of the past three decades to ask what these bodies of knowledge have to teach each other.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: FGSS295
Prereq: None

MUSC295 Global Hip-Hop

Over the past two decades, hip-hop, in its various facets of rap, deejaying, dance, visual art, fashion, and attitude toward authority, has gradually taken over as a primary medium of expression for youth around the world. Used as mass entertainment, elite aesthetic statement, social and political commentary, tool for education and social change, vehicle for economic opportunity, and as the core of a cultural movement, hip-hop has proven malleable enough to thrive embedded in scores of different languages and cultures around the world and effectively speak to local needs. Yet its local manifestations have also managed to retain their membership in a global hip-hop culture.

In this seminar we will study the global spread of hip-hop from an interdisciplinary approach, examining its varieties of expression from aesthetic, cultural, social, musical, linguistic, kinetic, economic, and technological perspectives. We will first come to an understanding of the rise and dispersion of hip-hop culture in the United States. Then, beginning with France, where it first took hold, we will move around the world examining local case studies and their more global implications.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC296 Soundscapes of Islam

From the melodious recitation of the Qur'an and Sufi-inspired sung poetry to popular soundtracks of religious revival and resistance, the world of Islam has generated myriad sonic expressions across its diverse historical and geocultural milieus. While recognized for its affective and transformative powers, music has also been the subject of a longstanding polemic in Islamic societies, its moral and ethical status being debated and contested. This course will survey the soundscapes and ideoscapes of Islam, exploring the manifold roles and meanings assigned to music among Muslim communities. It will examine a range of sound practices and related discourses to discover the ways in which locally distinct religious and social customs have shaped concepts of music and sonic articulations of Muslim identity. We will locate the varied and shifting attitudes toward music and musicians within the context of political censorship, colonialism, nationalism, and cosmopolitan modernity, and consider the impact of current conflicts and migratory processes on the local-global circulation of religious ideologies and sounds. Drawing from selected case studies of sacred and secular performance, we will explore the musical construction of gender, place, and architecture; the role of media in the formation of Muslim 'counterpublics'; and the mediation of aesthetic sensibilities through style. Topics covered will include: views on music within the Islamic tradition (the Qur'an and Sunna, shari'a law, theology, and Sufism); philosophies and cosmologies of music in Islam; music at the courts of Islamic rulers; religious chant and art singing in the Middle East; sound, healing, and exorcism in North Africa; ritual, devotional, and mystical practices in Central Asia; Islamic performing arts in Indonesia; Sufi world music and Muslim pop and hip-hop across Asia and Africa, and among immigrants and refugees in Europe and North America. Throughout the course, Islam will be encountered as a widely diverse spiritual and sociocultural system that has been a source and stimulus for creativity among Muslim peoples worldwide.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: REES296, COL294
Prereq: None

MUSC297 Music of Central Asia: From Throat-singing to Heavy Metal

The music of the Hu was chosen as the soundtrack to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order because it sounded otherworldly to Western audiences. In fact, the Hu draw on ancient musical traditions from Central Asia, one of the most culturally and musically diverse areas of the world. This course introduces students to a wide range of music practices, genres, and styles in historically nomadic and sedentary regions of Central Asia: throat-singing, sounds of shamanic and Sufi Islamic rituals, epic performance, narrative instrumental playing, oral poetry competitions, folk and art singing, Western-influenced classical and popular music genres, including Central Asian repertoires of opera and symphony, Azerbaijani jazz, Uzbek estrada, Kazakh Q-pop and crossover music, Mongolian heavy metal, and hip hop. The roles and meanings of music are discussed in relation to wider aspects of culture and social life, the impact of Soviet culture policies, post-Soviet national revival, and globalization.

The course includes a performance component. Students learn to play a variety of Kazakh and Kyrgyz musical instruments, including plucked and bowed lutes, a plucked zither, clay ocarinas, jaw harps, and percussion instruments. Previous musical training is not necessary. The course draws on extensive audiovisual materials and is open to students of all levels.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: REES297, RUSS297, COL298
Prereq: None

MUSC300 Seminar for Music Majors

This seminar will provide music majors an opportunity to understand one or more of the world's musical traditions by studying them in-depth. The topic of the seminar will vary from one semester to the next.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC304 Arranging and Composing for Jazz Orchestra

This course is an examination of techniques of arranging, composing, and orchestration for the jazz orchestra. The language of the jazz orchestra will be analyzed from all relevant perspectives.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC308 Composition in the Arts

Composition, the manner in which elements are combined or related to form a whole in space and time, is a basic practice in all the arts. This course brings together practitioners from diverse art forms and traditions to address the basic issue of composition.

In this seminar, we will explore the compositional process through assignments that address the interacting concepts of site and information. By "site," we mean a semantic field extending through corporeal, environmental, and social dimensions. By "information," we mean representations abstracted from sites, "meaningless" when independent of any specific semantic interpretation. Participants will compose individual and collaborative interventions in a wide range of sites--public, private, physical, and electronic--in response to the problems posed.

This course is permission-of-instructor, and is intended for upper-level majors in Art, Dance, Film, Music, and Theatre, and others with sustained compositional practices suitable to the course.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: ARST308, THEA308
Prereq: None

MUSC309 The Winslow Archives: Composition, Education, History

Richard Winslow taught at Wesleyan from 1949 to 1983, where he was the key figure in establishing the World Music Program and Wesleyan's continuing commitment to experimental music. In retirement, he remained very active as a composer and thinker. His long life ended in 2017, a few months short of his 100th birthday. In 2019, the family donated his papers and other materials to the Wesleyan archives; these have now been processed, and a basic but complete finding aid is available at https://archives.wesleyan.edu/repositories/sca/resources/richard_k_winslow_papers.

Partly to honor his work, but mostly because he was such an extraordinary composer and thinker, Wesleyan is initiating a more detailed study of the archival materials, together with a series of performances. This seminar helps students gain a closer familiarity with Winslow's life and work through hands-on study of manuscripts, correspondence, and recordings. It will be of interest to composers, who will study Winslow's techniques as revealed in sketches, scores, and annotations; to musicologists and historians, who will help construct a complete chronology of Winslow's life and especially of his activities as a Wesleyan professor; and to archivists, librarians, and digital humanists, who will gain first-hand experience with the problems that attend categorizing, describing, and disseminating archival materials in a variety of media.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC403 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

MUSC404 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC405 Private Music Lessons for Nonmusic Majors

Private instrumental and vocal lessons meet once a week at a regularly scheduled time. Permission of the instructor is required. Students contract to take 12 lessons. Each instructor sets his or her criteria for accepting students. Returning students may register during pre-registration. Students new to the Private Lessons Program must contact the instructor to determine whether an interview during the first week of classes is required. This course may be repeated four times for credit towards graduation regardless of section or combination of sections.

Each section is for different instrument or voice lessons. Please see each section for the instrument/voice lessons taught by that instructor. (Section 01 is only for Bass lessons). A full list of instructors and their instruments can be found under the Private Lessons section of the Music Department website.

In most cases the student needs to provide their own instrument. Piano and drums are available to students for lessons, and certain other orchestra instruments may be available to private lessons students.

Course Fee: $780 for 12 lessons billed through the Student Account. Financial support may be available for those who qualify. Please see the Music Department web site under Private Lessons for details.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC406 Private Music Lessons for Declared Music Majors

This course is open only to declared junior and senior music majors. Music majors may count two semesters of MUSC406 towards their performance credits of the music major.

Private instrumental and vocal lessons meet once a week at a regularly scheduled times. Permission of the instructor is required. Students contract to take 12 lessons. Each instructor sets his or her criteria for accepting students. Returning students may register during pre-registration. Students new to the Private Lessons Program must contact the instructor to determine whether an interview during the first week of classes is required. This course may be repeated four times for credit towards graduation regardless of section or combination of sections.

Each section is for different instrument or voice lessons. Please see each section for the instrument/voice lessons taught by that instructor. (Section 01 is only for Bass lessons). A full list of instructors and their instruments can be found under the Private Lessons section of the Music Department website.

In most cases the student needs to provide their own instrument. Piano and drums are available to students for lessons, and certain other orchestra instruments may be available to private lessons students.

Course Fee: $780 for 12 lessons billed through the Student Account. Financial support may be available for those who qualify. Please see the Music Department web site under Private Lessons for details. A waiver for a portion of the private lessons fee is available for junior and senior music majors.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

MUSC408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

MUSC409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC413 Korean Drumming and Creative Music Ensemble

This course is an experiential, hands-on percussion ensemble with the predominant instrument in Korean music, the two-headed janggo drum. Students will learn to play a range of percussion instruments including janggo, barrel drum (buk), hand gong (kwenggari), and suspended gong (jing).

Through the janggo, drumming students gain first-hand experience with the role music plays in meditation and the benefits it offers to develop a calm, focused group experience. In the end they integrate their focused mind, physical body energy, and breathing through a stream of repetitive rhythmic cycles.

The students will be introduced to traditional folk and court styles of janggu drumming. The ensemble plays pieces derived from tradition and new ideas, and creates new works exploring imaginative sounds on their instruments. If there is an opportunity during the semester, the students will have a creative collaboration with a dancer(s) or musician(s) from other cultures. The ensemble will experience a deep respect for the diverse cultural backgrounds of the students developed from the efforts of teamwork and creating music together through Korean drumming. The semester will end with a live performance for the public.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS413
Prereq: None

MUSC414 Korean Drumming and Creative Music Ensemble Advanced

This class offers more advanced techniques for those students who have taken the beginner course or who have some basic experiences in Korean drumming or who have long-term drumming experiences of any other cultures including Western drum set. Attendance and additional practice time are mandatory. In comparison to the beginner class, the advanced class will play rapid, vigorous, and seamless rhythmic patterns on janggu, buk, and kwenggari. Students are expected to be creative in utilizing materials given during the semester.

Each student will focus on a lengthy solo work on any of these instruments, as well as ensemble playing. Students will explore both traditional and new emerging styles of Korean drumming. In the end, they will integrate their solos in the ensemble piece and create a new piece. The ensemble will experience a deeper level of drumming from contributing solo work to the ensemble and the efforts of teamwork. They will learn about group activity in music-making through sharing ideas and assisting each other. The semester will end with a live performance(s) for the public.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS414
Prereq: MUSC413

MUSC416 Beginning Taiko--Japanese Drumming Ensemble

This course introduces students to Japanese taiko drumming. The overarching goal of this class is to gain a broad understanding of Japanese culture by studying the theory, performance practices, and history of various genres of classical, folk, and contemporary music traditions. Students will gain a better understanding of the spirit behind the matsuri (festival) and Japanese performance arts through learning basic taiko technique and one or two pieces on the Japanese taiko drum. Students should wear clothes appropriate for demanding physical activity (i.e., stretching, squatting, various large arm movements). Students with a musical background might find MUSC 417 Intermediate Taiko to be a suitable alternative, as it covers the same theoretical and historical content but at an accelerated pace and includes additional repertoire.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS416
Prereq: None

MUSC417 Intermediate Taiko--Japanese Drumming Ensemble

This course introduces students to Japanese taiko drumming. The overarching goal of this class is to gain a broad understanding of Japanese culture by studying the theory, performance practices, and history of various genres of classical, folk, and contemporary music traditions. Students will gain a better understanding of the spirit behind the matsuri (festival) and Japanese performance arts through learning basic taiko technique and a couple of pieces on the Japanese taiko drum. The distinction between this course and MUSC 416 Beginning Taiko lies in the pace of instruction and the quantity of musical pieces covered. Students should wear clothes appropriate for demanding physical activity (i.e., stretching, squatting, various large arm movements).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC418 Taiko II: Japanese Drumming Ensemble

This is course is for students who have taken Beginning Taiko. Acceptance to this class is at the discretion of the instructor. Students will learn more advanced techniques in taiko drumming by learning pieces from the Matsuri and kumi daiko performance repertoires.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS418
Prereq: None

MUSC419 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

MUSC420 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

MUSC428 Chinese Music Ensemble

The Wesleyan Chinese Music Ensemble is a performance group dedicated to exploring the modern Chinese ensemble and a variety of Chinese music styles. It is made up of a number of traditional Chinese instruments, including plucked lutes and zithers, hammered dulcimer, bowered fiddles, bamboo and reed flutes, and percussion. The course is designed to be hands-on and experiential, encouraging students to explore the basic ideas of Chinese music and culture through weekly rehearsals, practices, and performances.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CEAS428
Prereq: None

MUSC429 Voice Technique & Improvisation

The ensemble is structured as a singing workshop, focusing on technical and artistic development. The warmup regimen covers breath support, resonance, diction, range extension, and expressivity. These skills are applied to group and solo projects which emphasize improvisation and collaboration, culminating in a performance of Syntactical Ghost Trance Music, a system for spontaneous composition developed at Wesleyan by Professor Emeritus Anthony Braxton. Ensemble members will have opportunities to use electronics to expand the scope of vocality.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC430 South Indian Voice--Beginning

Students will be taught songs, beginning with simple forms and increasing in complexity. There will also be exercises to develop the necessary skills for progress into the more complex forms.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS430
Prereq: None

MUSC431 South Indian Voice--Intermediate

This course is a continued exploration of the song forms begun in MUSC430, with emphasis on the forms varnam and kriti, the cornerstones of the South Indian concert repertoire. Specific exercises will also be given to prepare students for the improvisational forms they will encounter in the advanced class to follow.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS431
Prereq: [MUSC430 or GSAS430]

MUSC432 South Indian Voice--Advanced

Development of a repertoire of compositions appropriate for performance, along with an introduction to raga alapana and svara kalpana, the principal types of improvisation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC430 OR MUSC431

MUSC433 South Indian Music--Percussion

Students may learn mridangam, the barrel-shaped drum; kanjira, the frame drum; or konnakkol, spoken rhythm. All are used in the performance of classical South Indian music and dance. Beginning students will learn the fundamentals of technique and will study the formation of phrases with stroke combinations. Advanced classes will be a continuation of lessons in a variety of talas. Individual classes are supplemented by a weekly group section.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: [MUSC212 or GSAS212]

MUSC434 Improvisational Techniques in South Indian Music

This course will introduce advanced students of karnatak vocal music to raga alapana and svara kalpana, the most important forms of melodic improvisation. Students will begin by learning precomposed examples of these forms. As they become comfortable with idiom, they will progress to designing their own improvisations.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC435 Keyboard Techniques for Composers and Conductors

This course is intended for students who wish to master fundamental keyboard techniques. Through regular playing/performance assignments, this course will improve the students' ability to use the piano as a tool toward their musical careers.

Students will focus on harmonization, score reading, and their ability to accompany and lead from the keyboard. This course is performance-based and requires weekly practice. Basic conducting and rehearsing strategies will also make up part of the curriculum.

Students should have basic piano skills and a solid foundation in basic keyboard harmony.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC103

MUSC436 Wesleyan Concert Choir

This choral ensemble welcomes members of both Wesleyan and Middletown communities and is devoted to performance of standard choral repertoire from the 17th century to the present day, both accompanied and a cappella. Solo and leadership opportunities will be available for advanced singers.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC437 Singing to Your Instruments

Students will learn South Indian classical music by learning to sing and then applying this knowledge to non-Indian instruments they already play. They can then use their own instruments in recitals of South Indian music and dance. Beginners will be introduced to basic exercises and simple compositions. Advanced students will be introduced to improvisation in addition to different types of compositions in various ragas and talas. Students will form an ensemble that will be encouraged to participate in on- and off-campus performances.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS437
Prereq: None

MUSC438 Wesleyan University Collegium Musicum

The Collegium Musicum (literally "company of musicians") is a vocal performance ensemble dedicated to exploring and performing the diverse European repertories of medieval, renaissance, and baroque music. Emphasis is given to the study of musical styles, performance practices, vocal independence, healthy singing, and musicianship. Students investigate various cultural aspects of the production of music, including primary sources, acoustics, and cultural heritage. Outreach projects include singing with and for seniors.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: MDST212, COL138
Prereq: None

MUSC439 Wesleyan University Orchestra

The Wesleyan University Orchestra is a student-community ensemble that is open to everyone with a passion for orchestral literature. Prospective members should have an intermediate-to-advanced skill level of performance on an orchestral instrument. The orchestra performs music from all genres and time periods, ranging from the 18th-century "classics" to contemporary academic and popular compositions. The orchestra presents three concerts each year: a "masterworks" program in early December, often featuring one of the department's private lessons instructors or a guest artist as a soloist; a children's concert in early March; and the Student Concerto Competition concert in early May. The orchestra occasionally collaborates with the Wesleyan Concert Choir. For more information about the orchestra visit: https://orchestra.site.wesleyan.edu/
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC440 Instrumental Conducting

The theoretical portion of the course will highlight key events in historical development of orchestra and conducting. The practical portion will focus on aspects of basic baton technique, score study strategies, score analysis, rehearsal techniques, interpretation, style, and performance practice, all on examples from standard orchestral literature.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC103

MUSC441 Piping Performance: An Exploration of Artistic Expression through the Pipe Organ

With the ability to create the most delicate and jarring of timbres, and to fill the space with "other-worldly" soundscapes, the pipe organ is a vehicle that transports one toward artistic and musical growth. This course will introduce students to the history and development of the instrument, while fostering other musical skills and studies that assist each student to find their voice as an artist-creator.

This multi-track course allows students to select their focus in one or more organ-related disciplines: improvisation, composition, performance practice, repertoire playing, church music, musicological research, etc. Students utilize their growing knowledge of the organ to complete three musical performance or research-related projects that they develop over the course of the semester. Final projects are publicly presented. A lab time in the form of private lessons, consultation, and individual practice is required.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC442 Chamber Music Ensemble

This course may be repeated for credit. A variety of small chamber music ensembles will be coached by instrumental teachers.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC443 Wesleyan Wind Ensemble (WesWinds)

Rehearsals will combine intensive concert preparation with occasional readings of works not scheduled for performance. Open to all members of the Wesleyan/Connecticut community.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC444 African Popular Music Performance

This course aims at bringing together students with diverse musical skills to explore the riches of African popular music (broadly defined to include a range of styles such as highlife, hiplife, hip-hop, dancehall, reggae, azonto, and gospel highlife) through performance. Popular music, first and foremost, is an urban genre. Its origins go back to the early 1900s when, because of European presence in the coastal areas of West Africa, and later spreading to other parts of the continent, new musical instruments, ideas, and imaginings became available. Today, popular music is the driving force of the music industry in Africa. Through intensive studio practice, reading, listening, viewing, and individual and group rehearsals, the goal of the course is twofold: to develop proficiency in African pop music performance and to become familiar with the intellectual discourse on African popular music, its interactions with traditional African music, and its role in the formation of generational identities. The course is fundamentally performance-based; hence, enrollment is limited to skilled musicians with some proficiency in singing and the following instruments: guitar, keyboard, drum sets, bass guitar, saxophone, trumpet, and trombone.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC445 West African Music and Culture: Beginners

This is a performance-based course that focuses on West African music. The course is designed to provide a practical and theoretical introduction to traditional West African music and culture. Students experience the rhythms, songs, movements, and languages of Ghana and its neighboring countries through oral transmission, assigned readings, film viewing, and guided listening to commercial and/or field recordings. This interdisciplinary approach to learning is in keeping with the integrated nature of drumming, dancing, singing, and hand clapping in West Africa. Students learn to play a range of instruments, including drums, metal bells, and gourd rattles.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC446 West African Music and Culture--Intermediate

This course is designed to build on the skills developed in MUSC445. The beginner repertoire is reviewed, and more demanding call-and-response patterns are learned, along with new, more challenging repertoire. Students may be asked to perform on and off campus.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC445

MUSC447 West African Music and Culture--Advanced

This course is designed to build on the skills developed in MUSC445 and MUSC446. Complex repertoire is learned and brought to a higher performing standard. Students experience the intricacies of dance accompaniment while drumming and singing with the advanced West African dance class. The student ensemble will be asked to perform on (and possibly off) campus.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: MUSC446 OR MUSC445

MUSC448 Ebony Singers: Gospel Music

This course will be a study of African American religious music through the medium of performance. The areas of study will consist of traditional gospel, contemporary gospel, spirituals, and hymns in the African American tradition. The members of the group will be chosen through a rigorous audition (with certain voice qualities and characteristics).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM241
Prereq: None

MUSC450 Steelband

This is an ensemble course in the musical arts of the Trinidadian steelband. Students learn to perform on steelband instruments and study the social, historical, and cultural context of the ensemble. We also address issues of theory, acoustics, arranging, and composing. Readings, recordings, and video viewings supplement in-class instruction. The ensemble will present public performances.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM450
Prereq: None

MUSC451 Javanese Gamelan--Beginners

Dominated by colorful bronze percussion instruments, the Gamelan ensemble features gongs, bronze and wooden xylophones, drums, and vocalists. Other instruments include bowed- and plucked-string instrument and flute. Some of the instruments date back to the 12th century in Java, Indonesia. The main content of the course is the instruction of various levels of difficulty in the playing techniques of different instruments and singing. Previous formal music instruction is not necessary.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS451
Prereq: None

MUSC452 Javanese Gamelan--Advanced

Dominated by colorful bronze percussion instruments, the Gamelan ensemble features gongs, bronze and wooden xylophones, drums, and vocalists. Other instruments include bowed- and plucked-string instrument and flute. Some of the instruments date back to the 12th century in Java, Indonesia. This course is advanced-level performance of central Javanese gamelan. Emphasis on the classical repertoire.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: GSAS452
Prereq: MUSC451

MUSC453 Keyboard Techniques II: Conducting and Score Reading

This course is intended for advanced piano students who wish to master advanced keyboard techniques. Through regular playing/performance assignments, this course will improve the students' ability to use the piano as a tool toward their musical careers. Students will focus on harmonization, score reading, and their ability to accompany and lead from the keyboard. This course is performance-based and requires weekly practice. Basic conducting and rehearsing strategies will also make up part of the curriculum. Students should have taken Keyboard Skills 1
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC455 Jazz Ensemble

This course builds small-group performance skills including improvisation, accompaniment, pacing, interaction, repertoire, and arrangements.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC456 Jazz Improvisation Performance

In this extension of MUSC210, Theory of Jazz Improvisation, all materials previously explored will be applied to instruments in a workshop setting. Intensive practice and listening are required.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM390
Prereq: None

MUSC457 Jazz Orchestra I

This course is for those with commitment to the American musical tradition called jazz. Skill and experience are highly desirable but, consistent practice is the biggest prerequisite. Small and large-ensemble repertoire composed by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Fletcher Henderson, John Coltrane and many other composers will be deeply engaged. Intensive practice and rehearsal of the compositions, as well as class presentations of readings, will lead to development of ensemble and solo skill. The commitment to rehearsal of the compositions, as well as listening and reading assignments, will culminate in an end of semester public concert.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM396
Prereq: None

MUSC458 Jazz Orchestra II

A continuation of MUSC 457, this course is for those with commitment to the American musical tradition called jazz. Skill and experience are highly desirable but, consistent practice is the biggest prerequisite. Small and large-ensemble repertoire composed by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thad Jones, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Fletcher Henderson, John Coltrane, and many other composers will be deeply engaged. Intensive practice and rehearsal of the compositions, as well as class presentations of readings, will lead to development of ensemble and solo skill. The commitment to rehearsal of the compositions, as well as listening and reading assignments, will culminate in an end of semester public concert.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: AFAM397
Prereq: None

MUSC459 Methods of Improvisation Ensemble

The ensemble is open to musicians of all backgrounds, stylistic orientations, and traditions seeking to develop their improvisational abilities. All instruments are welcome. Weekly rehearsals will explore improvisation from a method-based perspective in order to develop the skills needed to create spontaneous compositional works as an ensemble. Each student will learn how to develop their musical foundational skills to be able to create unique rhythmic and sonic environments as both a soloist and an ensemble member. Traditional notations will not be used. Instead, graphic- and prose-based notations will be employed to facilitate the forging of a musical language unique to the ensemble.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC461 Sound Systems: The How of Hearing

Since the late 19th century artists, corporations and composers have all proposed, developed, presented, and occasionally commercialized physical systems that reconfigure how sound can be experienced. The early impact of the entertainment industry ranged from the introduction of stereo to movie theaters in Walt Disney's Fantasia to the development of close miking for the crooning of Bing Crosby to McCune sound service's introduction of stage monitors for the benefit of Judy Garland. Artists and composers used related methods to propose entirely new understandings of how music can be. Futurist Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori of 1913 proposed an Art of Noise, while Pauline Oliveros' concept of deep listening developed listening as a foundational form of music making. R. Murray Schafer's concepts of soundscape and acoustic ecology project a music of environmental relations mediated through sound, while Maryanne Amacher's sound characters create individual sounds understood as capable development and change beyond the expanse of any one performance or composition.

This class will be a performing ensemble focused on "sound systems" as musical instruments and musical practices performing live and fixed media sound pieces through sound systems we will configure for different sites on campus. Together with developing the technical skills required to mount these pieces, we will also investigate and discuss the varied musical, social, acoustical, and psycho-acoustical understandings of music and sound that influenced their shaping.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Identical With: CHUM347
Prereq: MUSC109

MUSC463 Teaching Music Lessons to Children in Local Schools

This is a service-learning course. Wesleyan students will teach private and small group music lessons to local children. These sessions will be augmented by a weekly classroom session in which readings and the student teachers' journals will be discussed. Some of the Wesleyan Department of Music's private lesson instructors may visit to answer questions and guide the student teachers through the issues, musical and extra-musical, that the lessons will raise.

Written assignments will include responses to weekly readings, regular journal entries, and an end-of-semester paper. There will also be a recital by the school children at the end of the semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC464 Laptop Ensemble

This course promotes knowledge and skills in live electronics performance, cultivates new musical repertoire for the group, and increases public awareness of new forms of working music technology while developing overall technological and troubleshooting proficiency. The course accomplishes this through regular rehearsals as well as a combination of required group and "satellite" performances. A range of repertoire is curated over the course of the semester involving new pieces created for the ensemble, as well as the reinterpretation of historical works using live electronics.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC465 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

Students must consult with the department and class dean in advance of undertaking education in the field for approval of the nature of the responsibilities and method of evaluation.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC466 Education in the Field, Undergraduate

MUSC470 Independent Study, Undergraduate

Credit may be earned for an independent study during a summer or authorized leave of absence provided that (1) plans have been approved in advance, and (2) all specified requirements have been satisfied.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC500 Graduate Pedagogy

The elements of good teaching will be discussed and demonstrated through lectures, practice teaching sessions, and discussions of problems encountered in the actual teaching environment. The staff consists of faculty and experienced graduate students. An integral part of the course is a required one-day workshop BEFORE the first day of formal classes.

Training in pedagogy in the first semester of attendance is required for all incoming Wesleyan MA and PhD students who have not already fulfilled this requirement at Wesleyan. BA/MA students are not required to get training in pedagogy but may choose to do so.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: None
Identical With: ASTR500, CHEM500, BIOL500, E&ES500, MB&B500, PHYS500, PSYC500, MATH500
Prereq: None

MUSC501 Individual Tutorial for Graduate Students

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC502 Individual Tutorial for Graduate Students

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC503 Selected Topics, Graduate Sciences

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. A seminar primarily concerned with papers taken from current research publications designed for, and required of, graduate students.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC504 Selected Topics, Graduate Sciences

MUSC505 Topics in Applied Ethnomusicology/Public Musicology

Work in applied ethnomusicology and public musicology includes a wide range of activities and formats, including: blog posts, magazine articles, public community music performances, tweets, podcasts, pre-concert and public lectures, forensic testimony, and the development of digital open-access tools and resources. What unifies these and many other possible forms is a desire by scholars to convey the cultural relevance and influence of music by engaging audiences outside the academy. Many are concerned with the social responsibility of the university, and developing methods and projects to collaborate with and give back to the communities in which we live, work, and research. The seminar will also address what the tools, methods, and values of the interdisciplinary field of digital humanities can offer applied ethnomusicology and public musicology. We will apply a suite of open-source analytic, pedagogical, networking, research, and presentation tools developed by digital humanists to our own projects. Through readings and research-creation projects we will better understand the work of institutions for cultural preservation, the role of activist and political scholarship, how to write accessibly for all readers, and how to convey our ideas in a number of different formats (e.g. blogs, "think pieces" or online articles, pre-concert lectures, open-access digital archives and research webspaces).
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC506 Reading Ethnomusicology

As one of the two core introductory courses to ethnomusicology, this course lays a general intellectual groundwork for MA students with a concentration in ethnomusicology through in-depth reading of some of the most important writings in ethnomusicology. Focusing on both intellectual history and current issues, the course evolves around the key concepts and themes that have defined, expanded, or challenged the field. Students will critically and comparatively discuss the approaches and contributions of each work they study. At another level, this course also aims at broadening students' knowledge of world musics through studying a wide range of music ethnographies.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC507 Practicing Ethnomusicology

This course provides a broad introduction to the research methods of ethnomusicology. The theory and practice of musical ethnography are examined, including techniques of face-to-face and remote fieldwork, ethnographic writing, research ethics and representation, bi-musicality, approaches to the transcription and analysis of musical sound, ownership, repatriation, and dissemination of ethnographic materials. Students acquire practical skills of ethnography-based research.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC508 Graduate Seminar in Composition

This course is designed for first- and second-year composition students in the Graduate Program. We will discuss and analyze works covering a broad range of compositional styles and techniques, inviting composers to share their original work and research. In addition, students often perform their own works and those of fellow course members. Special guest composers and ensembles interact with the course when possible.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC509 Special Topics in Contemporary Music

Offerings of this seminar focus on different issues of specific relevance to contemporary music compostion.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC510 Graduate Proseminar in World Music Studies

This introductory seminar is offered every fall as a required course for all first-year music MA students. The primary focus is developing research, writing, and critical interpretive and analytical skills necessary for initiating and completing the MA thesis projects. Students will be exposed to the breadth of the music department's specialties, and we will identify and discuss current issues that cut across concentrations within the department.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC511 Group Tutorial, Graduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC512 Group Tutorial, Graduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC513 Improvisation in Cross-Cultural Perspective

This course will explore musical improvisation around the world from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives. Readings on theories of improvisational processes, as well as on specific musical traditions in the United States, India, Indonesia, Africa, and elsewhere, will complement practical transcription and analysis projects.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC515 Mapping Music as/in Motion: The Cartographies and Circulation of Aural Culture

Music circulates, moves, and is mapped through places, pathways, materials, bodies, and technologies. Together, we will encounter a series of conceptual frameworks and case studies that map the nodes, pathways, boundaries, and movements of sonic phenomena and musical life. How do the movements of music and musicians, the places they occupy, and the boundaries they negotiate communicate spatial information about music practices? How they circulate physically and virtually? What are the different methods that ethnomusicologists use to represent and map these circulating sounds? This seminar not only discusses the physical cartography and circulation of music cultures, but also, the virtual spaces music moves through. In the opening decades of the 21st century, new media practices and Web 2.0 modalities (e.g. Spotify, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook) have enabled new cartographies, patterns, and pathways of circulation, and engendered new approaches to participatory musicking. The seminar also raises questions of how technologies and modes of mobility interface with categories of identity, race, and gender.

In-class discussions foreground the role of movement and how musical movement is mapped and represented. The seminar addresses such topics as: musical movements by way of travel, habitation, refuge, trade, ghettoization, migration, or telecommunication; sonic geography; the ways sounds and music flow and vibrate through, in, and among places (e.g. urban streets and neighborhoods, spaces of protest, music scenes, performance venues); composition as travel writing; why some musics and musical actors are more mobile than others; how travel and migration shape music-making and musical senses of place; how the maps and cartographic representations of places are redrawn as music and musical actors move and aural culture makes claims to space; the place of border theory, cartography, migration studies, transnationalism, and human geography in ethnomusicology; the impact of travel, tourism, festivals, and tours on local music scenes; mobile media and technologies; how subversive and DIY cartographies of music cultures and their movements offer alternative representations to conventional social and political customs; and how the spatiality and materiality of musical mobility is experienced through aural, tactile, visual, and haptic sensations.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC517 Sex/Gender/Queerness in Music and Music Scholarship

This seminar is designed to involve all music graduate students, namely students in composition, ethnomusicology, and performance concentrations, from both MA or PhD programs. This course will examine the major ideas in the recent feminist, gender, and queer studies in the fields of composition, ethnomusicology, musicology, and popular music studies. The class will explore varied approaches in critical re/presentation of femininity/masculinity/transgender/queerness in composing, listening, performing, and analyzing music and sound. We will consider the significance of engaging feminism, gender studies, and queer studies in our varied relations with music. In so doing, each member of the class will have the opportunity to design their own final creative project and to develop a dialogue with the ideas presented in the readings.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC518 Music and Embodiment

This course will explore the role of the human body in music performance, transmission, and perception. Through discussion of interdisciplinary literature on embodiment, analysis of cross-cultural case studies, and ethnographic projects describing their embodied engagements with music, students will examine the biological and cognitive foundations of human musicality, the cultural and social dimensions of music as embodied practice and experience, and the body politics of musical expression and participation. Topics covered will include the role of movement and gesture in singing and instrumental playing; the interrelation of instrument morphology, body techniques, and music structure; the interplay of sound, space, and architecture; and intersections between human musicking, technology, and the environment.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC519 Current Issues in Ethnomusicology

This course concentrates on current scholarship, intellectual issues, and music ethnographies in ethnomusicology. It challenges the students with contemporary theoretical debates among ethnomusicologists, such as music and identity, music and gender, race and power, music and technology, and music and decolonialization. The course will closely examine the impact of interdisciplinary approaches on music ethnography through critical analysis of the readings.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-MUSC
Prereq: None

MUSC520 Explorations in Musicology

What is Musicology? How and why do scholars write about music? This course will investigate some of the motivation for making music a scholarly object of inquiry. After reviewing some of the methodologies through which scholarship has been constructed (archival research, reception history, historiography, practice-led research), we will assess and discover new ways to write about music and the cosmos. This topic will serve as a prism through which musicological debate can be understood, and contrasted with ethnomusicological and other approaches. We will draw on a range of musicological approaches and frameworks--cultural, historical, scientific, and environmental studies, posthumanism, mythology, and countercultural spirituality.

Course Objectives:

- To gain familiarity with diverse thinking about music inspired by the great beyond

- To understand some of the reasons why musicians turn to cosmology

- To develop cross-cultural understandings of the collaborations of musicians and astronomers

- To explore celestial motion as a form of design, or a mode of rationalizing

- To use musicology tools to find new ways of analyzing phenomena
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC521 Seminar in Interdisciplinary Studies

The course, one of the four core PhD seminars in ethnomusicology, examines a number of disciplines as they relate to general current theoretical issues and the interests of ethnomusicology. Visitors from other departments will present their disciplinary perspectives.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC522 Seminar in Comparative Music Theory

In this seminar we will take a deep dive into historical texts of music theory from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Because of its significant overlaps with physics, acoustics, aesthetics, and philosophy, music theory can serve as an important site for any inquiry into the history of ideas. Particularly distinctive in music theory of the 18th century and beyond are the linkages that join the empirical and physical sciences with speculative discourses on beauty and subjectivity. In addition to covering major figures in the canonic history of Western music theory after 1700, this seminar will focus in particular on moments of colonial encounter and exchange that occurred through music theory; our aim will be to understand how the modern, Western self was in part fashioned through its investigation of non-Western musical systems. For their final papers, students are encouraged to draw on their own research interests, placing them in dialogue with the historical texts and methodological concerns that we will explore together this semester.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC530 Department of Music Colloquium

This lecture series showcases new work by performers, composers, and scholars in ethnomusicology, musicology, music theory, sound art, and cultural history. The colloquia also invite dialogue with professionals working in arts education, curation, and administration. Typically, a 45-minute talk is followed by 30 minutes of questions and discussions.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.25
Gen Ed Area: None
Prereq: None

MUSC561 Graduate Field Research

Research in the field, normally on thesis project.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC563 Field Research or Academic Education (Graduate)

Graduate-level tutorial for field research or academic education.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC564 Field Research or Academic Education (Graduate)

Graduate-level tutorial for field research or academic education.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC565 Academic Education in the Field

Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC566 Academic Education in the Field

Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC591 Advanced Research, Graduate

Investigation of special problems leading to a thesis.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

MUSC592 Advanced Research, Graduate

Investigation of special problems leading to a thesis.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

2024-2025 Edition

Academic Catalog

Music (MUSC)

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