Music

Students explore some of the repertoires that are at the heart of post-war American pop music, including mainstream pop, the blues, hip-hop, funk, country, and rock. Students consider the extent to which American popular music has influenced other pop music cultures, and how a sense of American identity is both fostered and communicated in its music. Students also connect specific kinds of repertoire to major events in American history, such as the Civil Rights Movement. The course is organized according to topics such as the music industry, the blues continuum, identity in country music, urban music, and Afrofuturism. Students learn to identify and describe a range of American popular music genres, and position them in their socio-historical context. 

In this course, students explore some of the exciting and experimental developments in film music practices emerging in the second half of the 20th century. During this time cultural changes and expectations were reflected in greater experimentalism and innovation across society and art forms. This includes film music and sound, following the so-called Golden Age of classical Hollywood film scores in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. Students will begin with a brief review of Golden Age film music and the established continuity system of musical editing. Students then examine case studies of film scores from several different countries, including USA, Britain, France, and the former Soviet Union. Students consider fragmented, composite, formalist, and popular music solutions. Finally students consider the growing influence of sound design and the blurred boundaries between music and sound in some contemporary cinema.

This course involves singing with the choir of the University of Bologna. Students are invited to join the choir after they pass an audition with the Choir Director. The course involves weekly and biweekly practices as well as public performances. There are about 60 members in the choir every year, and musical selections change yearly. Local performances are held in various locations around Bologna.

This seminar explores the interface between queer identity, music, and history and investigates how musical spaces may serve as mirrors and critiques of societal norms. Students investigate the experiences of queer artists through a historical perspective and see how they use music as a form of social critique and expression. Beginning with operatic roles in the 17th century, through contexts like the 19th century cakewalk, the cabaret of the Weimar republic in the 1920s-1930s, as well as hip-hop culture, the seminar uncovers how gender transgressivity and performance art are reflected in music. Students analyze queer and transgressive music scenes as “heterotopias” (Foucault) – places of resistance against societal norms – and discuss the role of music in the construction of community and identity. Important texts by Audre Lorde, Michael Foucault, and Theodor W Adorno offer theoretical foundations through which the interventional power of music in the negotiation of identity and difference can be understood. Students develop their own case studies of queer artists and their visual, cultural, musical, and/or social moments of intervention.

The course focuses on learning analytical capacity and aesthetic sensitivity regarding musical interpretation, through the experience of systematically and regularly witnessing live concerts, on dates and places assigned by the course teachers. The classes address the expressive resources linked to the interpretation of music and listening modes, the process of assimilating a work, form, style and musical genre, among others.