Music

The course provides an orientation on the history of Swedish music in contemporary culture. Social and historical contexts are of central importance in this course. Emphasis is placed on popular music traditions (music production and technology) from the twentieth century, such as jazz and rock. The course considers both Sweden's historical and recent musical contributions to a wealth of national and international genres and cultural trends.

The course explores the evolution and development of Ghanaian Popular Music and performance since the 19th century to the present as well as the impact of traditional and imported performance norms.

This course consists of two parts: 1) analysis of compositional methods and musical languages of historical masterpieces, and 2) practical training in harmony and counterpoint. At the end of the course, students are encouraged to compose a musical piece in any style using any compositional technique. Prerequisites: completion of the Basic Study of Music II or equivalent knowledge and skills.  

This course is an experimental exploration into what the study of music and sound can contribute to a planet in crisis. Due to the continuous unfolding of our planet’s environmental emergency, this course grapples with very new, very urgent, and sometimes seemingly impossibly big ideas. This course emphasizes inter-disciplinary co-learning, radiating outwards from recent discussions regarding the chrono-stratigraphic naming of the “Anthropocene” as a geological epoch in which humans have become a decisive geological force that impacts the earth’s ecosystems. It seeks inspiration from the various fields of ecomusicology, ethnomusicology, sound studies, and environmental humanities, to engage with and channel knowledge into an applied form and collaborate on creative, educational, and/or activist projects for addressing the challenges of our collective future on this planet.  
 
Students can also choose to take the same course titled “Applied Musicology for the Anthropocene 02” if they are interested in exploring the course subject with more in-depth discussions in class.  

This course examines one style, historical period, or geographical location of Jewish musical expression.

The course explores the musical heritage of the African-Americans including Blues, Spirituals, Gospel, Ragtime, and Jazz, as well as early and contemporary African-American composers and performers. Caribbean and Latin American Music, popular (calypso, skar, reggae, soca), religious (cult), and other music genres are also explored.

This course takes a critical and historiographical approach to the study of music from the Middle Ages to the late 18th century. It explores the emergence and development of new styles of music through this period and the ways in which they develop from and reflect the societies that produced them. It also focuses on the ways in which we have constructed our histories of these periods: what pieces, and what stories about them, are included, and which are not? Score-reading skills are a prerequisite for this course.

This course introduces students to the description, analysis, and interpretation of popular music. We will focus mainly on the music of popular music, exploring (1) how it is structured, patterned, and organized, and (2) how it achieves its effects. We will consider various stylistically relevant musical features, such as form, melody, harmony, timbre, rhythm, and sound design. Students will build their skills in identifying and describing salient features in popular works, and they will learn to produce their own critically informed close readings of individual popular songs. We'll also look at ways others have modeled these skills. A wide range of musical styles will be discussed, though the course is not intended as a historical survey.

This class introduces the history of jazz and increases one's understanding of and appreciation for jazz music. Jazz music has stylistically changed over the last 100 years; this course covers the history of jazz from the beginning of jazz to the present styles.

Those who are interested in jazz music and those learning how to play jazz will benefit from taking this course. 

The course Poetry and Pop Songs reads English and American poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries Works are unraveled from a variety of older and newer music artists, ranging for example from U2 and Coldplay to Rihanna and Pink.  Students learn how to interpret poetry and popular music in a systematic and sophisticated way, and to write an in-depth analysis of a song or poem. The focus is on the analysis of the lyrics or ‘text’ of the poems and songs by using insights and tools from literary theory to find out how (specific) poems work, which effects they evoke, and what they mean. Students also apply these tools to the analysis of song texts. The course focuses on contemporary popular music, which means including other genres than just conventional pop music, such as rap, hip-hop, and rock.