Prof. Sheila Silver

Tuesdays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Staller Room 2314 (Music Building)

Tonal Analysis, is a basic course in the techniques of tonal analysis. We will examine in great detail, several representative works from the repertoire, including at least one movement from a Beethoven string quartet or symphony. We will consider all aspects of a work, including harmony and voice leading, phrasing, gesture, orchestration, and of course, form. This course is designed to prepare history, theory, and composition students for their Comprehensive Exams, and is, as well, a possible starting point for developing a DMA essay.

MUS 504 Post-Tonal Analysis

Prof. Jamuna Samuel

Mondays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Staller Room 2314 (Music Building)

This course is aimed at the acquisition and application of analytical tools and techniques for the analysis of post-tonal music, specifically through the study of excerpts of texted works by a representative selection of composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course is divided into four units: the Second Viennese School, Stravinsky, the Italian avant-garde, and post-1950 America. We will be looking at music from the angle of text-music relationships, while bringing in a variety of tools and approaches drawn from twelve-tone theory, set-class theory, contour theory, and transformational theory. We will focus on the following pieces: Webern’s songs opp. 3, 14, and 25, Berg’s Four Songs, op. 2, Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and The Book of Hanging Gardens; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Oedipus Rex; Maderna’s Don Perlimplin, Nono’s Il canto sospeso, Dallapiccola’s Liriche greche, and Sciarrino's Aspern Suite; Babbitt’s Philomel, Cage’s Aria, Adams’ Nixon in China, Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, and Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children. Course requirements include two class presentations, two short papers (3-5 pages), one final presentation, and one longer final paper (10-15 pages). Attendance and regular participation are mandatory.

MUS 507 Topics in Music History: Music of Igor Stravinsky

Prof. Sarah Fuller

Mondays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Music Library Seminar Room (W1531)

With the Paris premiere of his Firebird ballet in 1910, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) began a career that was to establish him as one of the most original, renowned, and influential composers of the twentieth century. Stravinsky wrote for all the major theatrical genres and performance media of Western European art music: ballets, operas, songs, informal stage works, pieces for piano and for chamber ensembles, large works for chorus and for symphony orchestra. Drawing on an exotic “Russian idiom” in his early stage works, Stravinsky later adopted a neoclassic stance, then, in the 1950s, turned to serial techniques which he employed in an original manner.

This seminar will explore representative major works of Stravinsky and the scholarship (historical, analytical, critical, theoretical) that has accrued around his music. Works to be studied include ‘Petrushka,’ ‘Le Sacre du Printemps,’ ‘Symphonies of Wind Instruments,’ ‘Oedipus Rex,’ ‘Agon,’ and ‘Movements for Piano and Orchestra.’ Authors to be read include Boris Asaf’yev, Joseph Straus, Richard Taruskin, Stephen Walsh, and Stravinsky himself. Students will become familiar with varied analytical approaches to Stravinsky’s works and with diverse historical perspectives on particular pieces and phases of his compositional output.

MUS 507 Sec. 02 Topics in Music History: Tchaikovsky’s Pushkin operas Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades

Prof. David Lawton

Tuesdays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Staller Room 2318 (Music Building)

The topic of this course will be two of Tchaikovsky’s most celebrated operas: Eugene Onegin (1877-1878) and The Queen of Spades (1890). The librettos of both operas are by Tchkaikovsky’s brother Modest, and both are based upon works by one of Russia’s greatest poets, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837).

Eugene Onegin is the only one of Tchaikovsky’s operas that has entered the standard repertory outside Russia. The libretto is based on Alexander Pushkin’s famous “novel in verse” of the same title (1830). The Queen of Spades has long been a favorite in Russia, but until recently has been less well known in the West. The libretto of The Queen of Spades is based on Pushkin’s short story, completed in 1834.

We will study the librettos and compare them to the literary sources on which they are based, and also investigate the relationship between the formal construction of the libretto and the form and structure of the music. Since opera developed relatively late in Russia, we will first investigate operatic conventions as they were developed during the nineteenth century in Italian and French opera, as well as their influence on the formation of Russian operatic style. We shall consider aspects of prosody and text setting in Italian, French and Russian, as well as larger formal and structural characteristics.

Grading for the course will be based upon several short examinations on assigned reading and listening, and a substantial research paper to be written in two installments, the first due mid-semester and the second at the end of the semester.

Although some familiarity with the Russian language is desirable, it will not be a requirement for the course, since all of the assigned readings will be in English.

MUS 517 Intro to Computer Music

Prof. Margaret Schedel

Wednesdays, 6:00pm-9:00pm

Staller Room 3357 Computer Music Studio B

A hands-on introduction to the uses of computers in the creation and performance of music. Topics include hard-disk recording and mixing, computer manipulation of natural sound, MIDI, software synthesis, and computer-interactive music. In addition, there will be a "literature" component to the course — we will listen to important works of computer music, and discuss aesthetic issues and production techniques.

MUS 519 Composer’s Forum

Prof. Sheila Silver

Tuesdays, 5:20pm-6:30pm (special sessions may be longer)

Music Library Seminar Room (W1531)

The Composer’s Forum meets bi-weekly to listen to and discuss contemporary music. Students will get experience presenting their own music in a collegial environment. We will also have guest composers presenting their music. Topics of interest to the group may also be pursued -- such as listening to the music of a particular composer, or having a master class in how to compose for a particular instrument.

MUS 537 Research Methods in Ethnomusicology

Prof. Andrew Eisenberg

Thursdays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Staller Room 2314 (Music Building)

What is ethnomusicology? What do ethnomusicologists study? How does one do ethnomusicology? What is fieldwork? What is ethnography? How can one apply an ethnomusicological approach to the study of Western music? These are the questions explored in this course. We will cover both the philosophical and the practical concerns of ethnomusicological research—everything from theories of culture to microphone placement. The work will involve seminar-style reading and discussion as well as practical exercises in ethnographic fieldwork. This course should prove highly relevant for PhD students in musicology, even those who do not have a strong interest in the field of ethnomusicology.

MUS 547 Topics in Baroque music: Seventeenth-century Venetian opera from Monteverdi to Cavalli

Prof. Mauro Calcagno

Thursdays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Music Library Seminar Room (W1531)

The musical dramas of Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli are at the roots of modern operatic experience: patterns that still characterize today the genre of opera were first established in the Venice of the 1640s, such as the relationships between composers and librettists, between text and music, plots and their sources, theaters and audiences. In this seminar we will study selected operas by these two composers: Monteverdi's Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643); and Cavalli's Didone (1641), Gli Amori di Apollo e Dafne (1640), Ormindo (1644), Calisto (1652), Xerse (1655); Giasone (1649), Erismena (1656), and Eliogabalo (1667)--this last being the work that Stony Brook Opera will present in a full staging on April 9 and 11, 2010. Our discussions will revolve around issues concerning the surviving sources (both the printed librettos and the manuscript scores), patronage, dramaturgy, and performance, particularly as related to staging.

MUS 553 Topics: Wagner's Ring Cycle

Prof. Ryan Minor

Tuesdays, 1:00pm-4:00pm

Music Library Seminar Room (W1531)

Despite its canonic importance--and notoriety--most studies of Der Ring des Nibelungen have limited themselves either to leitmotivic detective games or simple polemics about Wagner himself. With a few notable exceptions (Adorno, Mann), it is only recently that serious scholarship has begun to examine the harmonic, intellectual, ideological, and dramaturgical underpinnings of the Ring cycle in any rigorous way.

This seminar aims to work through some of this scholarship as a means of both coming to terms with the work itself as well as doing justice to some of the broader issues it raises. Topics will include: the license and limits of leitmotivic and Lorenzian analysis; neo-Riemannian approaches to Wagner's harmonic language; the idea of the music drama; the location and degree of anti-Semitism; the ideologies of renunciation and rebirth; Marxist, feminist, and Lacanian critiques of the work's political and social dimensions; the aesthetics of spectatorship and monumentalism; and the cycle's pre- and post-history on and off the stage. The course will also dedicate special attention to how these critical issues have been refracted dramaturgically by examining some influential stagings.

Most readings will be in English, although other languages (and not just German) hover nearby. Participants will write a research paper, a "conference" version of which will be presented during the final weeks of class, and will also give at least one presentation on material unrelated to their paper topics.

Participants will also need to devote a substantial amount of time to viewing the work outside of class. We will be watching two different stagings of the entire cycle, as well as a production of Lohengrin. This comes to 9 separate screenings, each properly Wagnerian in length. You should not enroll for this seminar if you are not willing to commit to these screenings, which of course are in addition to the readings and score study.

MUS 557 Topics in Theory: Theorizing Musical Repetition

Prof. Benjamin Steege

Wednesdays, 2:00pm-5:00pm

Music Library Seminar Room (W1531)

For much of the twentieth century, the fundamental problem of how to evaluate musical repetition has preoccupied composers and theorists to a degree often surpassing the more explicit concerns of theoretical discourse (e.g., tonality/atonality, style, issues of order and unity, etc.). Arnold Schoenberg, for one, struggled to formulate laws of musical coherence rooted in repetition while denying the aesthetic value of literal restatement. Similarly (though, ironically, out of anti-Schoenberg sentiment), Heinrich Schenker graced the title page of Free Composition with his famous motto, Semper idem sed non eodem modo (“Always the same but not in the same manner”). Decades later, it would appear that this ambivalence about the aesthetic and cultural status of repetition has persisted or intensified, even (or especially) in the wake of minimalism and various repetitive dance musics. It is not surprising, then, that the rough outlines of an “unofficial” literature confronting musical repetition has begun to emerge from within “mainstream” music theory of the last half century.

This course will explore this theoretical literature through an ecumenical but focused series of case studies. Though clearly the topic might embrace an enormous variety of musics, for practical purposes, we will artificially limit the range of repertory for study to Western art music from the common practice and recent past, with some consideration of popular music. In addition to the loci classici of Schenker and Schoenberg, readings will include work of Mark Butler, Edward T. Cone, Robert Fink, Christopher Hasty, James Hepokoski, Peter Kivy, Susan McClary, Leonard Meyer, and Nicolas Ruwet. Of necessity, we will also address relevant literature from beyond North American music theory, including work of Adorno, Attali, Deleuze, Freud and others.

This is an advanced theory seminar. Readings and analytical assignments will be demanding and will assume substantial familiarity with common tonal and post-tonal theoretical perspectives. In addition to periodic analysis projects, a final presentation is required, as is a final research paper of theoretical character (15-20 pp.).