Analytic approaches to music from the era of European "common-practice" harmony (from the 17th century to the present). In class, we will only be looking at a few pieces, each in great depth, from a variety of analytical perspectives. Part of the aim of this class is to explore how much can be learned by a close, exhaustive analysis of a single work. A central focus will be work on a term paper, consisting of an analysis of a piece that you choose (in consultation with me). This paper may serve as the source for a Doctoral essay. Class work also will include regular, weekly written assignments, in-class exercises, and classroom performances of the works we study. This class work is central to the course (there is no textbook); therefore, attendance will figure heavily in the grading.

MUS 507 - Macbeth: Verdi's first Shakespeare opera.
Professor Lawton
Mondays, 1-4pm
Staller 2318
Verdi's opera Macbeth was a real watershed work of his early career, and his first encounter with Shakespearean drama. The opera premiered in Florence in 1847, and was quite successful. Nearly twenty years later the composer revised it for a production in Paris, 1865. Although Verdi's initial plan for the revision involved primarily adapting his original score for the French stage, adding a ballet among other things, when he looked through the 1847 score before setting down to work, he was dissatisfied with much of it, and undertook a major revision of the score. Although Verdi considered the revised version as definitive, it was not successful in his lifetime. The work continued to have frequent performances in Italian theatres, but always in the original version of 1847. We will study the genesis of the work through Verdi's correspondence, and compare the Italian libretto with Shakespeare's play. We will also compare both versions of the opera using my new critical edition (University of Chicago Press/Casa Ricordi), and investigate issues of performance practice, drawing on research on the performance history of the original version that I did in preparation for the publication of the critical edition. Although a reading knowledge of Italian would be helpful, it is not required, since most of the readings and documents are available in English translation. The final paper for the course will be developed in two separate stages. Students will choose a piece from the original 1847 version that was revised or replaced in 1865 early in the semester. The first paper, due in the middle of the semester, will be a study of that piece in its original version. The final paper will expand the first paper to include a detailed account and assessment of the revision in comparison with the original.

MUS 507 - The Pierrot Tradition: Song in Twentieth-Century Chamber Music
Professor Steege
Tuesday, 1-4 pm NB: This is a date and time change
Staller 2314
Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 theater/chamber work Pierrot lunaire broke with a longstanding practice of setting the solo voice with piano or orchestra but rarely with small ensemble. In its very medium, then—synthesizing the lyricism of art song with the multifarious interaction of chamber music— Pierrot opened a wide range of new musical possibilities and has informed a large and surprisingly continuous repertory of compositions right up to the present. In studying this “ Pierrot tradition,” we will not only engage in intensive close-reading of its exemplars but also consider a background of broader interpretive questions: How, when, and why did this initially marginal or maverick musical medium come to constitute a mainstream practice? Might such a transformation reveal any thread of common values in the modernist “mainstream” these pieces appear to represent? What might we make of the insistent turn to melodrama and theatrics in this genre? How might the qualities of intimacy and even vulnerability in so much Pierrot-inspired composition speak to prevailing notions of musical modernism? In addition to Pierrot lunaire itself, repertory studied may include compositions by Anton Webern, Ruth Crawford, Luigi Dallapiccola, Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Elisabeth Lutyens, Harrison Birtwistle, George Crumb, Hans Werner Henze, Lukas Foss, Miriam Gideon, György Kurtág, and Chaya Czernowin.
One short analytical paper (5 pp.) will be due at mid-semester. A longer paper (10 pp.) will be due at the end of the semester. The longer paper may be of analytical or historical nature or both. At least one brief presentation, which may be based on one of the papers, is also required. Familiarity with common techniques of analyzing post-tonal music is helpful but not prerequisite.

MUS 517 - Computer Music
Professor Weymouth
Thurs 7-10pm
Staller 3361

MUS 517 is 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.
This is a graduate-level course. You should expect to spend a significant amount of time, much of it in the CMS (Computer Music Studio). There are lab assignments each week, to be done in the CMS, as well as reading and listening assignments, usually with a short précis or chart in response. There is also a final project, which may be a short piece, a program or a paper (or anything else that you and I think is interesting). Weekly, you should expect to spend 3-9 hours in the CMS, and 1-3 hours listening/reading in the library.
The course is open to and appropriate for all Music Department Graduate students (others with prior permission). For composers, you need to have taken 515 first. I do not assume extensive computer knowledge; I do assume basic computer literacy. I also assume at least some musical training and background. We usually get a lively mix of people with a broad range of expertise and interests: the more the merrier!
MUS 517 is counted as a non-studio Theory course for MM students —many performers have taken the course and have enjoyed it. It is not considered a course from which one can develop a DMA paper.

MUS 518
Projects in Computer Music
Professor Margaret Schedel

MUS 518 is a hands-on course in Max/MSP suitable for composers, theorists and performers wishing to understand and use this powerful
programming language used by many composers and artists to create interactive audio and video works. In this class performer/composer/theorist teams will work together to create pieces of interactive music. All students will be responsible for learning a basic level of programming, but each track will have a different are a specialization: performers will edit basic input and output, composers will program interactive works and theorsits/researchers will be able to
explain a complex patch and analyze the sonic result. In addition to learning Max/MSP there will be literature component to the course - we will listen to works of interactive music and discuss aesthetic and production techniques.

This is a graduate level course. You should expect to spend a significant amount of time on the computer, either in the CMS or on your own machine. There is no book required for the course, but you may want to purchase a 9-month student trial of Max/MSP/Jitter for 59.00. There will be lab assignments each week as well as reading and listening assignments with a short summary response due at the beginning of class. There will be a large final project which will take the form ofa piece which can be composed, performed or analyzed.

Weekly you should expect to spend 3-9 hours in the CMS and 1-3 hours listening/reading in the library or online.

This course is open to and appropriate for all Music Department Graduate Students (others with instructors permission).

Prerequisite:
Composers MUS 517 or permission of Instructor
Performers/Theorists : basic computer literacy

MUS 518 is counted as a non-studio Theory course for MM students. It should be enjoyable for all students who are looking to understand the
possibilities of interactive music. Students cannot develop a DMA paper from this course.

MUS 536 - Area Studies in Ethnomusicology--Cuba
Professor Moehn
Thursdays, 1-4pm
Music Library Seminar Room

With Fidel Castro ill and out of public sight, the future direction of Cuba remains a complete mystery. It is an opportune moment to examine the country's rich music cultures, and the variety of recent publications in English on the topic. This seminar begins with selected classic readings on Cuban music such as Alejo Carpentier's Music in Cuba and then moves on to monographs such as Robin Moore's Music and Revolution (2006) and Vincenzo Perna's Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis. Coursework includes substantial reading, listening, and regular writing. A final paper of about 17-20 pages is required.

MUSIC 541 (Spring 2008): MUSIC BETWEEN THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL
Professor Sugarman –
Wednesdays, 2-5pm
Music Library Seminar Room

place - identity - modernity - diaspora - locality - postcoloniality - migration - media - cosmopolitanism - transnational capital - time-space compression - global markets - deterritorialization - postmodernity - hybridity - globalization

This seminar will explore the range of musical genres that are emerging in the space between local communities and processes of global integration, together with the issues that surround such musics. We will be reading about and listening to a variety of recent musics, together with background readings in anthropology, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, and other fields that theorize aspects of modernity, diaspora, and globalization. A short response to the week’s readings will be due at each seminar meeting. In addition, you will be asked to write a well-researched and written final paper of 15-20 pages. Your paper may focus on any relevant type of art or popular music produced within or outside the West, or on a related topic such as the transnational music industry, digital technologies, or intellectual property issues.

MUS 555 - The Composer in the 21^st Century
Professor Lochhead
Mondays, 1-4
Music Library Seminar Room

In his now infamous “Who Cares if You Listen?” (aka “The Composer as Specialist”), Milton Babbitt staked out a new “research” role for the composer of concert music in the middle years of the twentieth century. Seeking to integrate compositional studies into the post-war research university in the United States, Babbitt modeled the work of the composer on that of the physicist: both did highly theoretical research that could be fully comprehended only by an elite few. In the last twenty years, a new model for the composer of concert music appears to be emerging. While not articulated as such, this new model positions the composer as a community leader who through music organizes local awareness of issues specific to that community. For instance, Judith Shatin composed her 1993 “folk” oratorio COAL (Chorus, Appalachian Instruments (Banjo, Fiddle, Guitar, Dulcimer, 2 Appalachian Singers), Synthesizer and Electronic Playback) for members of a coal community in western Virginia. And Anne LeBaron’s work from 2000, Traces of Mississippi (for orchestra, mixed chorus with soloists, 2 narrators, and 2 rap artists), brings together several groups in a small community in Mississippi, giving voice to issues of diversity and poverty in the deep south.
The seminar will consider in general the kind of roles that composers played and the kinds of music they composed in the middle years of the 20^th century. We will then look for signs of how those roles have changed and if and how the music created has been transformed in the last 20 years. Primary focus will be on composers of concert music but we will consider other genres (jazz and popular) as appropriate. We will necessarily look at how changing funding and educational models have shaped musical creation.
Seminar participants will be required to turn in weekly responses to writing and music.
A final seminar project (ca. 15 pages) will be due at the end of the term and each participant will make a seminar presentation on the project.

MUS 559 - Topics in Analysis - Analysis of Early Music
Professor Fuller
Tuesdays, 1-4 pm
Music Library Seminar Room

In this seminar, we will explore issues and practices pertaining to analysis of Western music from pre-tonal traditions, roughly from Gregorian chant to music of the later sixteenth century. Issues to be addressed include the status of historical theory as a guide to analysis, the use of present-day methodologies and perspectives, the explicit and implicit concerns of analysis viewed in itself and in relation to other objectives, interrelations between text and music. Students will read and assess scholarly literature pertaining to early music analysis and will analyze pieces from various repertories that pose diverse analytical issues. Repertories to be studied include Gregorian chant, late medieval song, isorhythmic motets, Josquin motets, late sixteenth-century vocal polyphony, keyboard variations. The range of repertory is intended to promote familiarity with a broad spectrum of medieval and renaissance music.








For more information, please contact:
Judith Lochhead, Graduate Program Coordinator
Music_Grad@notes.cc.sunysb.edu