Faculty of Arts & Sciences

This course aims to introduce you to a variety of music, and a range of ways of thinking, talking and writing about music. The majority of music dealt with will be drawn from the so-called "Classical" repertory, from the medieval period to the present day, including Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Schoenberg. Class will explore the technical workings of music and together we will build a vocabulary for analyzing music and articulating a response to it; we will explore music as a cultural phenomenon. By the end of class, students will be equipped to embark on a lifetime of informed listening.

Open to students with little or no prior experience in composition. Explores ways of thinking about and organizing basic compositional elements such as melody, harmony, rhythm and instrumental color, as well as developing skills of score preparation and analytical listening. The primary focus of the course is a series of short compositional exercises, culminating in a somewhat longer final project. Workshop performances of students' music take place throughout the term.

This is an experiential learning course. The ensemble gives several concerts each year, sometimes joining with the chorus to perform large-scale works. Students are required to attend all rehearsals and certain special Saturday "retreats" announced in advance. Students are expected to practice the music outside the rehearsal time. Grades are based on attendance and participation.

Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium

Radcliffe Choral Society

Continuation of the principles in Music 51a. Course engages advanced topics in harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre and form. Includes regular practical exercises in model composition, analysis, ear-training, keyboard skills and musicianship.

An intensive survey of Western music from the middle ages to ca. 1750, providing methods of further study of music in historical and cultural contexts as well as knowledge of repertory.

An introduction to selected world music repertories (in this case, traditions from Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia), as well as research methods and interpretive issues in the field of ethnomusicology.

Open to senior candidates for honors in Music who have written permission to enroll from the instructor with whom they wish to work, and also from the Head Tutor in Music. May be counted toward concentration credit only by honors candidates.

Students will investigate fundamental skills of improvisation and composition. The course will employ a series of specific physical tasks and systems, taught through intensive exercises and guided improvisations which generate and modify movement and link the mind and body to innovation.

American Choral Music During World War II. In the America of the 1940s, concert music attained an unprecedented cultural relevance and ubiquity that is hard to imagine today. During the Second World War, choral music in particular was called upon to fulfill a cultural desire for fervent public expressions of patriotism and national chauvinism. Music was politicized and harnessed for numerous war-related tasks, including propaganda, cultural diplomacy, therapeutic recuperation, and social uplift. One could argue that American musical identity itself was forged during this time of crisis. This course will trace the historical currents and themes of American choral music from 1940-1950 through the study of representative choral works. Using various archives at Harvard, students will also examine the choral scene at the University during World War II, including the repertoire, activities, and the membership profile of the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, and the University Choir. An extensive background in music theory and choral music repertoire is not required, but a familiarity with Western music notation will be assumed.

The course focuses on parallel development of the symphonic and quartet style in Beethoven. Conductors will learn the basic technique and rehearsal skills while conducting the works with two pianos and a string group. String players will perform the selected Beethoven quartets and also serve as a string group for the conductors. A moderate amount of analysis and historical background of the pieces will be discussed.

Continues the work of Music 51. The fall term focuses on the Classical style (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and their contemporaries). Topics include harmony, phrase structure, and musical forms. Concepts are developed through written & aural analysis, model composition, keyboard harmony and ear-training exercises.

Intensive study of tonal theory and methods of analysis through a detailed examination of music from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Students are introduced to the history of music theory, as well as numerous modern theoretical and analytical techniques.

Learn both the theory and the practice of the wonderful world of Jazz Harmony. By closely listening to and analyzing selected compositions from the Jazz tradition (Ellington, Monk, Jobim, Wayne Shorter, etc.) and from outside the Jazz tradition (Ravel, Debussy, Stevie Wonder, etc.), you will learn how Jazz harmony is used to add emotion, meaning, and richness to music. Then, compose your own music! Midterm and final projects are original compositions by you, performed and recorded live in class by professional jazz musicians of the highest caliber.

Study of counterpoint: the rules and methods for combining voices and creating certain polyphonic forms (notably canon and fugue). By examining and performing music by past masters, and completing composition assignments, students gain expertise in the contrapuntal foundations of Western tonal music. The course focuses on repertories by Corelli (trio sonatas), Handel and Mozart (operatic duets), and Haydn (fugues), and it thematizes the wider significance of trio textures. As well as building skills in composition, analysis, and musicianship, lectures tell a history of the music and technique studied.

Advanced course in musical composition. Focus on the string quartet, including contemporary repertoire survey, short exercises, and a final project of modest dimensions Consists of a mixture of one-on-one and group meetings.

This course is an intensive, research-oriented workshop environment for advanced improviser-composers. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students. Through critical listening, readings, term papers, and collaborative musical projects, students will engage with a range of contemporary musical perspectives and practices. Graduate students are welcome.

Weekly master classes and intermittent private coachings.

Course will identify the contexts and theoretical concepts of 18th and early 19th century improvisation in vocal and instrumental music. Authentic written-out embellishments and cadenzas by composers and their contemporaries will be studied and used as a basis for both written and improvised work, to include decoration, cadenzas, preludes, modulating preludes, and free fantasies.

Through auditions, students will be divided into chamber music ensembles by the Parker Quartet and have weekly coachings with members of the Parker Quartet and Heng-Jin Park of the Boston Trio. Students will be expected to rehearse between each coaching and to participate in chamber music studio classes throughout the semester, which will be led by the Parker Quartet. Auditions will be held in the first week of the semester, either in conjunction with HRO auditions or on a separate non-HRO audition day. Students who do not meet the requirements below may take the course for SAT/UNSAT credit. Pre-formed ensembles are encouraged and will be accommodated as much as possible.Note: This course is only offered for a letter grade when students are involved in one or more of the following: music concentrator, enrolled in a music department course in the same semester, a member of a faculty-led ensemble. Students intending to enroll in both the HRO and Music 189, auditions are held Sunday, August 31 and Monday, September 1 and Wednesday, September 3. Students interested in enrolling only in Music 189, auditions will be held Tuesday, September 2, 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm.

This course focuses on the arts of sound practiced by Muslims in India, Pakistan, and Iran, and on procedures of recitation that grow from pre-Islamic roots among Arabic-speaking peoples. The purposes are two-fold: one is to understand from a musically informed perspective a set of interrlated musical practices that cut across South and West Asia. The second is to understand how different ideologies, philosophies and texts - associated with Islam locally, nationally, and internationally - shape local understandings and constructions of sound.

Gregorian Chant. From the time of Charlemagne until the 21st Century, the music called Gregorian chant has been in uninterrupted use in the West. This course will consider the music, the styles, the genres, and the sources of this music. Singing will be encouraged.

Blackface Minstrelsy in 19th Century America. A theatrical genre that traded in racist caricature, blackface minstrelsy was one of the most popular entertainments of the 19th century U.S., with a legacy that has continued into American popular music and culture today. This course explores the historical development and intense paradoxes of blackface performance by drawing upon materials in the Harvard Theatre Collection, which houses one of the largest minstrelsy archives in the world. The class will culminate in curating an exhibit. Core aspects of the course include grappling with complex questions of racial stereotyping and exploring the banjo in sound and image. Guest experts include a banjo virtuoso, a performer in an African American string band, and a minstrelsy scholar.

California in the 60s. This seminar examines American youth culture in the "long" 1960s through the lens of music in California. Both "popular" and "art" music will be considered, including the early minimalists, L.A. and the Laurel Canyon crowd, and San Francisco psychedelia. In addition to understanding musical forms, performance styles, and the effects of technology (radio, recording, electric instruments), the class will delve into the politics of race, gender, and the draft.

Global Pop Music. Exploration of current trends and issues in popular music production from around the world, including fusion, sampling and local and global scenes, through consideration of a broad range of contemporary examples.

Focuses on introduction to scholarly study of music with emphasis on the history and methodologies of ethnomusicology. Theories of music in culture, field methods, analytical and notational strategies, and critical tools for scholarship.

Creative Ethnographic Writing. Students will read, listen to and watch experimental creations on music and musical culture, and create their own written or multimedia works. The emphasis in this class is not on ethnographic research itself but on creative ways of communicating the results of ethnographic or historical research. As such, students should come to this class having already acquired considerable experience with at least one musical tradition.

Words & Music in the Renaissance. Text-music relations from Josquin to Monteverdi. Motets, madrigals and chansons read through against cultural paradigms defining the age. Will also problematize the "words & music" analytical approach, questioning its overwhelming importance in the historiography of Renaissance music.

Music and Empire. Considers the dynamic relationship between music and various manifestations of empire from the 17th century to the present through engagement with critical theory and a variety of musical works.

Film Sound/Film Music: Aesthetics and Technology. This seminar explores film music and film sound in American and European cinema, from the transition to sound in the late 1920s, to a period in the 1960s when film music reached its first developmental endpoint. Topics include sound technology, differing approaches to the relation between music and image, the affinity between operatic aesthetics and film music aesthetics. Readings cover a range: from contemporary source documents, to modern film theory (Chion, Elsaesser, etc.).

Neo-Riemannian Analysis. Explores the new body of transformational analytical techniques usually grouped as "Neo-Riemannian Theory." Analysis of pertinent musical passages, discussion of key texts (Riemann, Lewin, Hyer, Cohn, Kopp), context and limits of these ideas.

Music and Language In this course we will explore commonalities and divergences of music and language and work toward productive ways of understanding sign/symbol, concepts and categories, meaning, discourse, rhetoric, and narrative through theories of music and language, old and new. We will consider "textless" and texted music, poetry and prose (including musicological writing) and relation of notation and performance in both music and language.

For first and second year graduate students prepared for work in original composition.

Intimate Sound Installations. The course is designed for Music and VES students to explore sound installations as intimate and private listening experiences. Students will build and compose their works and change the Sert Gallery Cafe at the Carpenter Center into an acoustic search-space.

Live Electronics. This course will explore different technologies for the live interactionbetween instruments and electronics, mainly using Max/MSP. Students will developshort musical studies and larger compositional project for presentation at the Hydra concert.

New Music Analysis. In this course we will engage a variety of music from ca. 1970 to the present. "New" in the course's title applies also to "Analysis". We will work toward developing new ways of hearing, conceptualizing, and talking/writing about music that might respond to the challenges that the new or "now" affords. Our repertory will comprise many pieces (not all "high" and "western"); a small selection will be subject to intense hearing and discussion.

Critical Analysis.

California in the '60s This seminar will design and prep an undergraduate course for non-concentrators on music in California during the "long" sixties, from 1964-71. Principal themes will include youth, culture and the counter-culture politics of black power, women's liberation, and psychedelia; music includes surf rock, folk rock, acid rock, and singer-songwriters; artists include the Beach Boys, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Sly Stone, The Byrds and Joni Mitchell.

Individual work in preparation for the General Examination for the PhD degree.