Music

This course explores significant genres, styles, and representative chamber works from the common practice period to the present day. It also covers relationships between chamber music and its socio-political and cultural contexts; the changing social function of chamber music and musicians; various performance contexts; trends in musical aesthetics; and the evolution of chamber music’s languages and styles. Students undertake individual research projects on selected chamber works, and lead discussions on their chosen work in weekly seminars. 

This course provides a broad foundation in architectural acoustics and the human perception of sound ("psychological acoustics", or "psychoacoustics"), that may be grasped by students from a range of backgrounds. The course brings these subjects together through both theoretical study and a range of practical applications. For example, students explore how the principles of architectural and psychological acoustics have recently come together to drive a revolution in the world of augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) systems. This course provides a broad foundation in both architectural and psychological acoustics that combines aspects of acoustics, architecture, engineering, informatics, and music. Whether you are a student of one of these subjects or not, the only formal requirement is that you should have achieved a good pass in mathematics at Higher/A-Level.

The course focuses on mapping and listening to acoustic territories in Berlin. It allows academic research for exploring and understanding the city by sensing aural environments. Structured in theory and practice, the central questions of the course are: Which sonic elements can we encounter in navigating historical and contemporary maps? Which methods of research and practices exist in the act of mapping with sound? How can we generate sound maps? From a transdisciplinary approach, the course reflects the city‘s cultural, social, and political dimensions through analyzing and creating maps by listening. It aims to allow students to explore auditory territories, gain strength, and develop knowledge and individual perspective on cultural studies and urban studies. The mapping methods are practice-based on field recordings, soundwalk, and sound diagramming exercises. The academic readings and discussions introduce the student to the field of sound studies.

This course provides an introduction to programming creative audio applications. The focus is on developing competencies in professional level tools and practices. Students learn to code in C++ within the JUCE environment, a helpful framework for producing standalone audio applications for different devices and operating systems, and for producing VST plugins, audio units, and related technologies.

This seminar explores Turkish/Ottoman classical music, Anatolian folk music, Arabesk, Anatolian pop/rock, Turkish pop, jazz, and Sufi (Mevlevi) music, Kurdish music, Alevi music, Armenian music, and Western classical music from Turkey. The course focuses on ethnic identities and class hierarchies reflected in these genres, the issues of orientalism and occidentalism, and the influence of globalization on the music of Turkey while expanding our knowledge of the repertoire.

Lectures in this course survey and discuss important performing artists, composers along with significant readings and recordings. Weekly topics include regional overviews addressing geographic, cultural, religious, and linguistic issues, alongside a broad general historical and political exploration.

This course examines Black (Afro-diasporic) music and its impact on society in America and Europe. It reveals how Black Music functions as a form of cultural politics, a philosophy, and a way of building identity and community. It shows how Afro-diasporic musical production has been a central force in political movements and social transformations from interwar anti-colonial activism to Civil Rights campaigns, which has continued in the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement. This course engages with genres of music such as blues and spirituals, jazz, gospel, afro-futurist pop, and hip-hop. This course situates these genres in their historical context, listens to and performs them, and shows how the music – both individual pieces and whole genres - makes political and philosophical claims. This treatment of music serves as a form of critical thinking and engagement with scholarly traditions that give primacy to textual work. The course combines readings, historical case studies and biography, and music listening and making. It therefore enacts and models radically interdisciplinary approaches that connect text-based and embodied learning.