Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Includes theory (level of Music 150) as well as keyboard and ear training.

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.

Seeks to develop a greater understanding of music, musical analysis, and critical listening. We will study some of the organizing principles of musical works (from a range of styles) by means of composition projects, score analysis, and aural skills. While reading knowledge of simple musical notation is helpful, there will be at least one section for students with no previous experience.

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.

The Harvard Dance Project (HDP) cultivates invention. This faculty-led, student performance company gives students the opportunity to be original cast members and collaborators in two or more diverse dance works created by professional choreographers, including a new installation by Dance Director, Jill Johnson, in the fall term of 2014. The project focuses on performance research, collaboration, and choreographic composition, and links choreographic thinking to other fields. It is a studio based course which includes at least nine performances at major venues on campus. The HDP aims to cultivate invention, foster the courage of artistry, and expose students to top artists in the field today.

Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium

Harvard Glee Club

Radcliffe Choral Society

Course unfolds the foundations of tonal music, including line, harmony, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, and form. Includes regular practical exercises in model composition, analysis, ear-training, keyboard skills, and musicianship.

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.

Open to students wishing to pursue supervised study in an area not covered by the courses currently offered. Students must submit a study proposal to the faculty member with whom they wish to study and a signed proposal to the Head Tutor. May be counted for concentration only with the prior approval of the Department.

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.

A survey of Western classical music from the 18th to the 21st centuries, continuing from Music 97a. The course emphasizes listening, analysis, and historical context. Two semesters of Music 97 are required of all concentrators, preferably taken in the sophomore year, or earlier by permission.

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 junior 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.

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.

A comprehensive study of a William Forsythe work with one of his closest collaborators. Students will watch rare rehearsal and performance footage, and examine all aspects of the choreographic process from the first movement sketches to compositional modalities, lighting, music, and dramaturgical design. A unique, rigorous and interdisciplinary course of study which will include a collaborative process to create an original dance work for performance, and expose students to all aspects of a master work by a preeminent American dance innovator.

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.

This course will introduce the vocabulary and skills necessary for a conductor to communicate with an ensemble. Through repertoire of various eras, students will apply score reading and analysis skills, explore rehearsal methods, and consider the application of vocal pedagogy in ensemble singing. Students will conduct a professional vocal ensemble in the final project. Two 90-minute classes.

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.

Studies in basic conducting skills related to exercises in 17th- and 18th-century orchestration. Demonstration of stringed instruments.

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.

Explores chromatic harmony in 19th-century instrumental and vocal forms. Concepts are developed through 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.

Intensive survey of compositional styles and techniques of the last 100 years. Traditional pitch-centered analysis, including set theory, as well as approaches focusing on rhythm, timbre, gesture, and other elements.

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 representative styles and genres of 16th-century polyphony. Detailed analytic work will be combined with compositional exercises.

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.

Analysis of contemporary south Indian classical composition and improvisational forms. Students will learn to sing or play an instrument and may participate in a concert at the end of the semester.

Analyzing Performance. Analysis of pieces aimed at discovering and evaluating possibilities for execution and perception. Repertory includes fully notated music and music that has no tradition of notation. Questions addressed are those of perception, notation, and adequacy of conventional analytic categories.

Open to students prepared for individual work in composition. Incorporates readings and final performance of students' work.

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.

Composition and performance with analogue and digital electronic media. Projects realized using recording gear and computers; study of relevant aspects of acoustic and electronic theory; repertoire since 1948 of musique concrete, acousmatic, and live-electronic music; synthesis, sampling, digital recording, and live performance techniques. Hands-on work will culminate in a final performance of individual projects.

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.

Schubert. Course explores the poetry, music and life in Schubert's time. Performance and analysis of song cycles and chamber music. Course includes strong performance component.

Weekly master classes and intermittent private coachings.

In this course, you become an amateur musician in Renaissance England and learn to play the viola da gamba in a consort. Through this combination of research and hands-on learning, we investigate repertory, culture and musical life circa 1600.

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.

Our theme: learn how they did it, and then do it yourself. Through listening, transcription, analysis, and performance, we will guide you as you discover the unique skills and sounds of your favorite jazz musicians. Learn about melodic interpretation, ensemble interaction, rhythm, articulation, phrasing, and style. Section meeting is actually ensemble, where your small jazz ensemble will try to apply the concepts learned in lecture. Final performance project: a recording session at which you and your peers will perform and record your own arrangements or compositions.

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.

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. Note: This course is only offered for Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grade. The course listed above (Music 189r) may be taken for a letter grade. 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.

Haydn and Mozart. This course explores the lives and music of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amade Mozart, two composers who led powerfully contrasting but intertwined lives. We will study in depth the major genres of Enlightenment-era music in terms of style, structure, technique, and aesthetics. This course also covers the intellectual and social contexts in which Haydn and Mozart worked and the importance of their music within Enlightenment society.

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.

19th Century Opera. The nineteenth-century saw a revolution in the aesthetics and cultural politics of opera. We will look at a series of works from Rossini to Debussy, with attention to libretti and their relationship to literature, musical design, and orchestration. In addition, we'll be considering present-day stagings of classic nineteenth-century works, especially those of Verdi and Wagner, and stage directors' interpretive interventions.

Music, Identity, and Radical Poetics. This course will explore the radical poetics of meaning developed by twentieth-century composer/improvisers, with a focus on the AACM, Asian improv, queercore, and Radical Jewish Culture scenes. Drawing on jazz's performance practices, these artists developed provacative ways of conceptualizing heritage, memory and identity, while transforming the ostensibly "unmarked" sound world of experimental music. With attenion to the politcs of gender, race and authenticity, we will engage their work through close listening, small-group discussions, and readings in critical theory and ethnomusicology. Students will conduct research projects (historical or ethnographic), culminating in a paper or combined paper-performance.

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.

Shakespeare in Music. The music of Shakespeare's own patternings of text, and the Shakespearean aspects of musical composition. Codes for interpreting dramatic music, both in Shakespeare's time and in the ages of Purcell, Berlioz, Verdi and Britten. We begin by looking at the role of music in the Elizabethean and Jacobean world: then on even-numbered weeks we will study a Shakespeare play (The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream); on odd-numbered weeks we will study musical adaptations.

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.

Introduction to musicological scholarship drawing upon theoretical frameworks, and working methods of historical musicology. Includes aspects of the history of the discipline of musicology, as well as newer methodologies. Students will read relevant theoretical texts from other disciplines and consider the possibilities of interdisciplinary projects within musicology.

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.

An introduction to the theories and methods of ethnomusicological fieldwork, including changing conceptions of the research site, ethical concerns, interview techniques, the ethnography of musical performance, and data analysis and interpretation.

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.

Chant. Transcribing the Beneventan Chant. In preparation for a new edition, the seminar will consider the sources and the music of one of the earliest repertories of Western music, native to southern Italy.

Exploring Renaissance Music. This course introduces the study of Renaissance music from Josquin to Monteverdi through some of the major debates that have shaped the field. Issues to be addressed include Renaissance historiography, mode and imitation, musica ficta, problems in authentication, source studies, self-fashioning and subjectivity, intersections between nation, religion, and language, and performance practice. Musicological readings will be combined with in-class musical analyses covering the major genres of the period-the cyclic mass, motet, madrigal, Lied, and chanson. This course is intended to provide a thorough grounding in issues of sixteenth-century music as well as a foundation for those students who plan to take generals.

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.

Instruments and Instrumentality. This seminar will explore the history of musical instruments and the diverse ways in which we can think about what they are and what they do. We will touch on many topics including early organographies, notions of artisanal epistemology, the history of mediation, thing theory, and late eighteenth-century aesthetics. This seminar will draw on texts from a range of disciplines and will include a visit to the collection of musical instruments at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

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.

Music of the Last 10 Years. The seminar will focus on selected recent works (from the U.S. and Europe) reflecting a wide variety of aesthetic positions. We will explore Boston's dynamic new music scene, attending concerts and inviting visiting composers and performers to class.

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.).

Introduction to the theories and graphing techniques of Heinrich Schenker and his followers through the analysis of selected works.

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.

Sonic Style and the Auteur Director.This seminar examines the sonic style of directors whose films feature distinctive treatments of music, sound, and speech. Contemporary cinema will be a particular focus, including the role of new technologies in enabling directors to assert greater control over the soundtrack. The seminar will engage with recent scholarship and the films of several directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Bresson, the Coen brothers, Tom Tykwer, and Gus van Sant.

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.

The Craft of Teaching. Devoted to the craft of teaching, the course considers all major facets of academic teaching practices (lectures, tutorials, discussion, syllabi, advising, grading, etc.).

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

For second year and advanced 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

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.

For advanced musicians (graduate or undergraduate) prepared for work in improvisation and original composition.

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.

Experimental Music: Theory and Practice. This seminar will follow a (potential) correspondence between figures in the history of American music and French philosophy since the 1950's and composers of the Wandelweiser group, as a way of mapping a part of the topography of recent experimental music. It will involve readings (and hopefully, if the space is right) some in-class performance.

Critical Analysis.

Theorizing Improvisation.This research-oriented seminar surveys the newly emerging, interdisciplinary area of critical improvisation studies, in which recent scholarship in African diasporic music and aesthetics joins a larger conversation on improvisation across multiple research fields in the arts, the sciences, and the humanities. Through a range of published and unpublished readings, mostly from the last two decades, we examine improvisation as a central feature of individual and collective subjectivities.

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 on specific topics not included in the announced course offerings.

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