Music

This course explores the topic of music and culture in Baroque Italy. The topic of this course thus offers extremely fertile material for the exploration of rich networks of cultural, aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual experiences in early modern Europe. Lecture topics include Florence and the birth of Opera; Madrigal, Early Baroque opera, Peri and Monteverdi; Venice and the rise of public musical institutions; Italian sacred music of the mid-17th century, Monteverdi and Carissimi; Rome and the Catholic Counter-Reformation; academy, opera houses, conservatories, and Ospedali; early Baroque Milan and urban identity; Naples and the development of Opera Seria and Opera Buffa; and Italian sacred music of the Late Baroque era. Assessment: listening quizzes, discussion session preparation.

The course examines the relationship between the historical, aesthetic, and social dimensions of the Latin American popular music in the 20th century and its impact on Chile today. Topics include: african roots; european heritage; authorial trends.

This course examines various aspects of the relation between music and the mind and emotions, including how humans came to be musical; how people listen to, understand, and perform music; why we listen to and make music.

This course introduces the field of ethnomusicology. In order to do this, it explores major concepts that have shaped the core of ethnomusicological studies. The course examines issues such as music and identity (ethnic, gender, racial), music and politics, music and ritual, musical roots, change and preservation, globalization, field research, transcription and musical instrument classification. In the course, students think, talk, and write about how and why people make music, as well as how and how ethnomusicologists go about their work. Students undertake a group fieldwork projects that contribute to a class-wide fieldwork project.