MUSI 509a, Music and Mysticism of the Indian Subcontinent  Suhail Yusuf

In South Asia, music, melodic verse (chant, recitation), and the politics of spirituality have long been interlinked. While many elite expressive traditions reinforced caste hierarchies and imperial ideologies, some popular Bhakti (Hindu mysticism) and Sufi (mystical dimension of Islam) traditions critiqued orthodoxies, indignities, exclusions, and even patriarchies, constituting what some have termed as social movements. Looking through the lens of ethnomusicology, this course emphasizes the connections between musicians and mystics found in classical, vernacular (devotional and folk), and popular musical styles. An introduction to the history, theory, and practice of music as it relates to religion, sets the context for students’ to do musical practice along with academic study. We have guest musicians and films to watch.
W 9:25am-11:15am

MUSI 514a, Opera Studies Workshop  Gundula Kreuzer

A weekly workshop surveying the bourgeoning world of contemporary opera and performative musical multimedia as well as the field of opera studies, broadly conceived. We address recent publications of interest (including but not limited to opera, musical theater, dance, media, and performance studies), discuss current performances and programming trends, workshop our own in-progress writing, and engage with various guest speakers, including both scholars and practitioners. Parts of the workshop are also devoted to developing the next YOST (Y | Opera | Studies Today) conference in spring 2025.  0 Course cr
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

MUSI 526a / MDVL 526a, Theorizing Musical Time in the Medieval Islamicate World  Giulia Accornero

This class is an introduction to medieval Islamicate music theory, with a particular focus on the theorization of musical time, motion, and rhythmic patterns as proposed by polymath Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī. After a deep dive in al-Fārābī's music theory, we survey rhythmic theories and diagrams by Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and al-Urmawī. While focusing on music theory, we also learn about music performance in the Abbasid caliphate, the “translation movement” and the integration of Greek music theory (with a focus on Aristoxenus) and philosophy, and discuss historiographical issues. Prerequisite: Basic music theoretical knowledge and/or knowledge of medieval Islamicate culture/philosophy is expected.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

MUSI 546b, Histories of Music Notation  Anna Zayaruznaya

Systems of music notation are intimately linked with the histories of musical composition and performance. This course combines a study of musical paleography (i.e., how music is written down) with consideration of the historical and intellectual currents that shaped, and were shaped by, systems of music writing. Among the systems surveyed are the neumes used to preserve early plainchant, the increasingly specific rhythmic notations that recorded Western polyphony from the thirteenth century onward, and the notational puzzles and games of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Final papers may focus on medieval or later music notations.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

MUSI 559b, Nineteenth-Century Opera and Representation  Gundula Kreuzer

Throughout the long nineteenth century, opera was the most expensive, lavish, and politically implicated multimedia spectacle, with both its production and the act of opera-going offering prime opportunities to negotiate individual and collective identities. By looking at all of opera’s complex media—libretti, music, voice types, design, stage technology, architecture, etc.—this seminar addresses various operatic forms and techniques of representation related to such issues as gender, sexuality, class, race, nationalism, (dis)ability, the rise of the masses as political agent, and the operatic genre itself as a vehicle of colonialism. Following some introductory readings, each class focuses on one topic through the lens of one opera (or select scenes thereof), including works by Rossini, Weber, Meyerbeer, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Smyth, and Gershwin, as well as their representation on today’s stages. We may contrast the trajectory of these historical works with developments in contemporary opera. A visit to the Metropolitan Opera or other performance is anticipated (if possible). Knowledge of Western musical notation is suggested.
Th 9:25am-11:15am

MUSI 695b / AFAM 695b, The Study of African American Music  Braxton Shelley

This seminar explores the musical objects, critical debates, and scholarly methodologies that have shaped the study of African American music. How do artists, critics, and theorists differently define “Black music”? How do competing conceptions of Black musical traditions reflect and resist commercial and academic modes of categorization? In this course, we attend to the intersections and divergences that emerge from myriad attempts to define and discipline the musical products of black experience, converting Blues, Funk, Gospel, Hip-Hop, House, Jazz, Reggae, R&B, Soca, Soul, the Spiritual, and many other idioms, into a single knowledge-object. We investigate the intellectual genealogies and scholarly disagreements that arise from the interdisciplinary scope of Black music studies, including: cultural history, cultural studies, ethnomusicology, literary studies, historical musicology, music theory, sociology, and theology. Required for students in the Joint Ph.D. Program in Music and African American Studies, this reading-intensive graduate course brings together texts that have defined the interdisciplinary study of Black music and new work that is remaking the field.
HTBA

MUSI 697a, Proseminar: Ethnomusicology  Ameera Nimjee

A survey of the major works, topics, issues, and techniques of ethnomusicological research as it has developed over the past century. We consider the position of the field within the broader contexts of society and the academy and provide a bibliographic foundation for further work in the field.
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

MUSI 698b, Proseminar: Music Theory  Ian Quinn

A survey of the major works, topics, questions, and techniques of research in the field of music theory as it has developed over the past half-century. We consider the position of the field within the broader contexts of the academy and provide a bibliographic foundation for further work in the field.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

MUSI 714a, Exploratory Readings in Music and Drugs  Anna Zayaruznaya

Since at least the fifteenth century, drug cultures and music cultures in the West have often been imbricated. Not only have the social aspects of drug cultures shaped the ways in which music is consumed, but also the altered perception induced by drugs has offered novel temporalities and subject-positions to composers and performers alike. Music-historical accounts of this topic are relatively rare, however, and few broader theories have been advanced to account for the ways in which pharmacological and musicological accounts can intersect. This seminar explores this relatively uncharted territory through a set of case studies with broad historical scope. Topics to be covered include, among others, Bach’s Coffee Cantata (Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211, of the 1730s); Romantic composers’ opium habits and depictions of intoxication (e.g., Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique of 1830); Louis Armstrong’s many statements about cannabis; and contemporary dance genres such as EDM, which are often consumed under the influence of drugs such as MDMA.
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

MUSI 812a or b, Directed Studies: Ethnomusicology  Ian Quinn

HTBA

MUSI 814a or b, Directed Studies: History of Music  Ian Quinn

By arrangement with faculty.
HTBA

MUSI 852b / EMST 695b / HIST 958b, Temporalities: Early, Modern, and Otherwise  Maura Dykstra and Marlene Daut

What is the relationship between history and temporality? Perhaps a better question might be: what different relationships have there been between histories and temporalities, and how can interrogating those epistemic shifts generate new ways of “doing” history in the present? This interdisciplinary graduate seminar undertakes a critical genealogy of “history” itself, approaching the Enlightenment and the early-mid-twentieth century as two pivotal moments in the conceptual solidification of the relationship between time (singular) and capital-H history. Readings describing and utilizing foundational theories about time, periodization, and historicism, are juxtaposed against critiques and alternative imaginings in post/de-colonial studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, and various traditions outside of (or opposed to) the canon of modernity. The syllabus includes texts by early modern theorists of history, twentieth-century social theorists, and the critical theoretical engagements that assailed and critiqued them.
HTBA

MUSI 914a or b, Directed Studies: Theory of Music  Ian Quinn

By arrangement with faculty.
HTBA

MUSI 998a, Prospectus Workshop  Ameera Nimjee

F 9:25am-11:15am

MUSI 999b, Dissertation Colloquium  Giulia Accornero

F 9:25am-11:15am