Bard College Catalogue 2009-2010
2009-2010

Music

http://music.bard.edu

Faculty

Overview

The Bard College Conservatory of Music (see page 229) offers a five-year program in which students pursue a simultaneous dual degree, a bachelor of music and a bachelor of arts in a field other than music. Music Program courses are open to Conservatory students, and the two programs may share some courses, workshops, faculty, and performances facilities.

Areas of Study

Bard’s Music Program is equipped for specialization in four major areas: jazz (and related African American traditions), European classical music (including its younger, American parallel), electronic music (starting with its early 20th-century experimental roots), and ethnomusicology. The music major explores the history and theory of one of these four areas through course work and also takes at least one music course in an area outside his or her specialization. The Music Program encourages diversity, provided the musician becomes sufficiently immersed in one tradition to experience the richness and complexity of a musical culture.

Requirements

All music majors are expected to successfully complete three semesters of music theory and three semesters of music history, including at least one course above the 200 level each. Additionally, program majors must take one class in composition or an equivalent course involving personal musical creativity; a performance class, accompanied by two semesters’ worth of private performance lessons (or an equivalent course involving regular public performance). About half of these requirements should be completed prior to Moderation. The Senior Project consists of two concerts from 30 to 60 minutes each; it may also take the form of an advanced research project in music history or theory. In the case of composers, one concert may be replaced by an orchestra work written for performance by the American Symphony Orchestra.

Recent Senior Projects in Music

• “A Melody So Strange and Sweet,” a pair of jazz concerts featuring newly arranged melodies, harmonies, and scat
• “From Patriot Song to Protest Song: Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’”
• “Something from Nothing: Cage’s 4'33" and the Proliferation of Noise”
• “Study and Performance of Solo and Accompanied Violoncello Works by Bach, Barber, Brahms, Debussy, and Kodály”

Courses

Bard College Orchestra
Music 104

Bard College Symphonic Chorus
Music 105

Bard College Community Chamber Music Program
Music 106

Ensemble
Music 107-108
Ensembles may be taken for one credit or no credit. If private lessons are taken in conjunction with an ensemble, one more credit may be added. Recent ensembles include Balinese Gamelan, Big Band, Chamber, Chamber Singers, Chinese Music, Electro-Acoustic, Jazz, Jazz Guitar, Jazz Vocal, Live Electronic Music, Percussion, Vocal, Wind, and Wind and Brass Chamber.

Introduction to Music Theory
Music 122
An introduction to tonal music for nonmusic majors and potential music majors who have had little or no exposure to reading music. It begins with the basics of musical notation and progresses to the identification of scales, triads, and seventh chords. The class has an ear-training component that allows for practical reinforcement of the aural concepts presented.

Popular Musics of the Non-Western World
Music 123
cross-listed: asian studies
What does it mean for a music to be popular, and how does it become that way? This course looks at various popular music genres in different geographical regions, particularly Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Discussions are based on a combination of selected readings, films/videos, and music recordings.

Topics in 19th-Century Chamber Music: Beethoven and Schubert
Music 130
This course explores the relationship between these two giants of the early 19th century through their rich contributions to the quartet repertoire. Many works are performed in their entirety during class meetings, re-creating the intimate, rarefied atmosphere of the initial premieres. Readings include Maynard Solomon’s biography of Beethoven, Christopher Gibbs’s biography of Schubert, and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Jazz Ear Training I and II
Music 137-138
A creative improviser strives for spontaneity of expression and emotional immediacy. In this course, students are introduced to a number of practice techniques while exploring a wide range of improvisational materials, including chords, intervals, and recorded jazz solos from composers such as Louis Armstrong and John Coltrane. Open to both singers and instrumentalists.

Introduction to World Music
Music 140
A survey of various folk and traditional musics of the non-Western world. Music cultures are discussed individually, while maintaining a cross-cultural perspective in order to discern common underlying themes and processes as well as points of divergence. Discussion also includes issues such as cultural ownership, appropriation, and commodification—issues that have arisen as the countries where the musics originate get more deeply implicated in the global economy.

Music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Music 141
The course focuses on music from the last decade of Mozart’s life (more or less coinciding with his move to Vienna), although important earlier works are also studied. The operas receive special attention. The course, which fulfills a music history requirement for unmoderated music majors, is intended for the general music lover.

Introduction to Western Music
Music 142
By presenting selected masterpieces in the Western tradition, this course demonstrates some of the ways in which music communicates with the listener. In the process, a number of basic concepts underlying musical form and structure are clarified. Students are encouraged to bring their own favorite works to class for general discussion.

String Quartets of Shostakovich and Bartók
Music 169
This course explores the string quartets of Dmitrii Shostakovich and Béla Bartók from the performer’s perspective. Students focus on the unique ways these composers reconciled their nationalistic and ethnocentric roots with an emerging modernist aesthetic. Readings help place the works in social and political context.

Jazz Harmony I and II
Music 171-172
This two-semester introduction to jazz harmony helps students identify and understand chords and chord progressions commonly used in jazz.

High/Low: “Popular” and “Serious” Music in Western Culture
Music 183
As far back as the early Renaissance, distinctions were made as to what constituted popular and serious music. In this course, key works in Western classical music from the 16th through the 21st centuries are studied along with the popular music of the day. Careful attention is paid to critical reaction to these works, along with an examination of the cultural climate and trends that might have contributed to high/low distinctions.

Music Theory I and II
Music 201-202
Basic musical notation is the starting point, after which the class moves to scales and recognition of triads and seventh chords, as well as rhythmic performance. By the end of the course, students should possess the ability to write a hymn, song, or brief movement of tonal music. At all times the course emphasizes analysis of real music, and an ear-training component reinforces the theoretical knowledge with practical experience.

Jazz in Literature I and II
Music 211-212
cross-listed: africana studies, american studies, sre
A two-semester course that explores jazz-themed short stories, novels, and plays, with the goal of scrutinizing the synergy of two great art forms—literature and jazz—in the 20th century. The reading list includes Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Donald Barthelme, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, and Ann Petry.

19th-Century Harmony
Music 219
This course explores the Romantic era in terms of its most colorful characteristic: harmony. Works by Chopin, Field, Mendelssohn, Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, and Scriabin are analyzed, as are excerpts of larger works by Berlioz, Wagner, Bruckner, and Mahler.

Music of China
Music 226
cross-listed: asian studies
An examination of various forms of Chinese music, with a particular focus on instrumental genres. The topical organization follows a more or less chronological order as attention is drawn to certain issues and prominent characteristics of music and musical life in China from the ancient times to the present. The course includes demonstrations by guest artists.

20th-Century Music of Conflict
Music 230
This course explores the origins of eclecticism in 20th-century musical expression. Through live performances by guest artists, the discussion focuses on the cause and effect of the disintegration of tonal harmony and traditional formal relationships for composers and their audiences. Works by Shostakovich, Bartók, Messiaen, and Crumb serve to illuminate the relationship of music to the artistic, literary, and social/political climate of their day.

20th-Century Masters: Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich
Music 232
Students consider major works by each of these composers, who together encapsulate much of the history, techniques, and aesthetics of 20th-century Western art music. Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) carried Wagnerian harmony to what he considered its logical conclusion, the destruction of tonality. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), a product of Russian imperial culture, assimilated everything from Tchaikovskian romanticism to serial technique. Dmitrii Shostakovich (1906–1975) tried to balance creative expression with the demands of the Stalinist government.

Evolution of the Sonata
Music 233
Sonata form, which began in the early 18th century, is the most important collective achievement in European music and it continues to influence the way much music is written today. This course starts with primitive binary forms of Kuhnau and Sammartini, and proceeds through works of C. P. E. Bach, Haydn, Clementi, Mozart, Dussek, Beethoven, Hummel, and Schubert.

Analyzing Beethoven
Music 234
Contrary to his public image, Beethoven wasn’t really more experimental than his predecessors; rather, he accepted his inherited forms, but vastly increased the range of drama and dynamic contrast. In so doing he arrived at a music so logical that it can sometimes be memorized after a reading or two, and he created archetypes for musical expression that continue to resonate today. This course follows the development of Beethoven’s formal ideas, leading up to a detailed examination of the astonishing late piano sonatas and string quartets. Prerequisites: Music 201-202 or the equivalent.

The Music of Claudio Monteverdi
Music 235
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) was the first great composer of the Baroque period. This course considers his career in historic and artistic contexts. Students examine his productions in various genres: madrigal, opera (e.g., L’Orfeo and L’incoronazione di Poppea), masque, and sacred music.

The History and Literature of Electronic and Computer Music
Music 238
Beginning with the history of such early electronic instruments as the theremin and the Ondes-Martenot, this course traces the development of electronic music from early musique concrète, elektronische musik, and tape music through the advent of live electronic music and computer music.

The History and Literature of Experimental Music
Music 241
The course begins with a brief survey of the earliest electronic instruments and postwar developments in France, Germany, and the United States. Also studied are computer music from early sound synthesis experiments at Bell Labs and elsewhere; live electronic music, from Cage and Tudor to current PC-based interactive “live” computer music; and multimedia works, from ’60s “classics” to the present.

German Romantic Chamber Music from Schubert through Brahms
Music 249
A survey of 19th-century German chamber music, beginning with Franz Schubert, continuing with Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann, and culminating with the enormous contributions to the genre by Johannes Brahms. Also explored are concurrent trends in art, philosophy, and literature in order to shed light on the musical world of German Romanticism.

Pronunciation and Diction for Singers
Music 254
This two-semester course offers an introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as well as to the practical aspects of performing or preparing Italian, French, German, and English vocal literature. The fall semester is devoted to the Italian and French languages, the spring to German, English, and Latin.

Analysis of the Classics of Modernism
Music 255
This course analyzes several works that changed the way composing is considered: the cinematographic intercutting of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps and the ironic Bach appropriations of his Symphony of Psalms; the textural overlayering of Ives’s Three Places in New England; the elegant mathematical proportioning of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta; the delicate symmetries of Webern’s Symphonie, Op. 21; the tonal organization of Stockhausen’s Gruppen; and the compelling, multitempo climaxes of Nancarrow’s Study No. 36.

Production/Reproduction
Music 257
This course focuses on the theory and practice of sound recording. Students learn the use of recording equipment, including digital tape recorders, mixing consoles, signal processing devices, and microphones. A/B listening tests are used to compare types of microphones, microphone placement, and recording techniques. ProTools software is available for digital editing and mastering to CD.

Musical Electronics: Analog Synthesis and Processing
Music 259
This course concentrates on the theory, design, and creative use of the basic components of analog electronic music systems. Students examine some of the original circuits used by Bode, Moog, Serge, Theremin, and others. Discussions cover voltage control techniques, synthesis, and processing. Class projects re-create some of the classic circuits and patches.

String Quartets of Beethoven
Music 260
This course examines the personal and creative life of Ludwig von Beethoven through the medium of his 16 string quartets. The composer’s relationship with writers and philosophers of the time, including Goethe, Kant, and Schiller, is also explored.

Literature and Language of Music
Music 264-265
A survey of selected works, ranging (in the first semester) from Gregorian chants in the Middle Ages to the early works of Beethoven (around 1800). The second semester surveys music from Beethoven to the present day. All works are placed in a broad historical context, with specific focus on stylistic and compositional traits. In addition, musical terminology, composers, and historical and theoretical methodology are described in relationship to the repertoire. As students use scores in class discussions, basic skills in music reading are expected.

Jazz Repertory: Bebop Masters
Music 266
cross-listed: africana studies, american studies
This performance-based course is a survey of the principal composers and performers of the bebop era, including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro, Bud Powell, and Max Roach. Prerequisite: Music 171-172 or permission of instructor.
Additional repertory subjects have included American Popular Song, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk.

The Art of Acoustic Recording
Music 267
Building on ProTools fundamentals, the class explores techniques for creating quality recordings of a wide variety of instruments and voices. Students develop an understanding of the sonic and musical properties that make each instrument unique; skills for working with live instrumentalists/vocalists in the studio; and advanced ProTools techniques.

Introduction to Opera
Music 276
A survey of opera from Monteverdi to the present day. The focus is on a limited number of operas, including treatments of the Orpheus myth by Peri, Monteverdi, Gluck, and Glass; Handel’s Giulio Cesare; Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas; Mozart’s Don Giovanni; Beethoven’s Fidelio; Wagner’s Die Walküre; Verdi’s La Traviata; Berg’s Wozzeck; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress; and Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. Classes also include video screenings and comparisons of different productions.

Populism versus Progress in 20th-Century Music
Music 282
The 20th century opened with a startling emancipation of sonic phenomena that had been carefully prohibited for centuries. For the next several decades, each move toward abstraction, structural rigor, and complexity was countered by another move toward populism, accessibility, and musical vernacular. This course looks at the century’s “classical” music from a political viewpoint, focusing on arguments made by Schoenberg, Cage, Babbitt, Cardew, and many other composer protagonists.

Introduction to Ethnomusicology
Music 285
cross-listed: anthropology
This course introduces students to the history, scope of subject matter, theory, and methodology of ethnomusicology, which is the study of music in relation to other aspects of culture (i.e., language, religion, politics, social organization). Also introduced are the main research methodologies, borrowed from anthropology, of ethnographic fieldwork and participant observation.

Musical Ethnography
Music 287
cross-listed: anthropology, sre
This course provides practical instruction in field research and analytical methods in ethnomusicology. Topics include research design; grantsmanship; fieldwork; writing of field notes, interviews, and oral histories; survey instruments; textual analysis; audiovisual methods; archiving; performance as methodology; historical research; and the poetics, ethics, and politics of cultural representation. Students conceive, design, and carry out a limited research project over the course of a semester.

Opera since 1900
Music 288
This course analyzes a number of key operas, including several in the standard repertory and others more rarely heard, and addresses general historical, cultural, and aesthetic issues relating to opera in the last 100 years.

Death Set to Music
Music 290
This course analyzes key musical works that use death and mourning as subject matter, including the requiems of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giuseppe Verdi, Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, and Paul Hindemith, as well as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Johannes-Passion and Ich habe genug (Cantata 82). Prerequisites: one semester of Music 264-265, Literature and Language of Music, or an equivalent music history course.

Advanced Analysis Seminar
Music 302
Students make a thorough analysis of a maximum of three works from the 19th and 20th centuries. The emphasis is not on harmonic analysis, but on how networks of motives are used to generate overall structure—that is, the essence of large-scale compositional thinking. Music analyzed in class may include Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, Morton Feldman’s “Turfan Fragments,” and Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto. Prerequisites: Music 255 or Harmony Workshop and permission of the instructor.

The Arithmetic of Listening
Music 304
This introduction to the overtone series and the history of tuning teaches how tuning shapes the course of a culture’s music; traces the parallel development of music and the number series back 6,000 years, to the teachings of Pythagoras; shows how to discriminate the pitch subtleties that differentiate Indian music, Balinese music, and even the blues from conventional European tuning; analyzes music by American avant-gardists; and sensitizes class members to aspects of listening that 20th-century Westerners have been trained to filter out.

Jazz: The Freedom Principle I, II, III
Music 331, 332, 335
cross-listed: africana studies, american studies, sre
This three-part course is a study of the cross-pollination between postbop in the late 1950s and free jazz. Employing a cultural approach, it examines the effects on music of the prevailing social climate from 1958 through the mid-1960s. The emphasis is on artists and composers such as Art Blakey, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Horace Silver, and Cecil Taylor.

World Music Seminar
Music 337
This course examines the classical music of India, Indonesia, China, Korea, and Japan, and the influence of that music on 20th-century Western music, including the California school of Cage, Cowell, and Harrison; minimalists Glass, Reich, Riley, and Young; and Europeans such as Ligeti, Messiaen, and Xenakis. Western-trained Asian composers who have reintroduced traditional Asian materials into their work (Tan Dun, Yuji Takahashi, Toru Takemitsu, Chou Wen-chung) are also studied, as are recent developments in intercultural hybridization.

Perspectives in 20th-Century Music
Music 339
This seminar examines an eclectic cross-section of works, under such rubrics as Music and Painting (Hindemith, Mathis der Maler); Music and Transcendentalism (Ives, Concord Sonata); Music and Sex (Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth); Music and Ideology (Brecht-Weill, Mahagonny); Music and Race (Gershwin, Porgy and Bess); Great Incomprehensibles (Carter, Double Concerto); Academic Composers (Babbitt, Philomel, and works by Bard composers); Songs by Bessie Smith and Cole Porter; and Great Flops (Stravinsky, Mavra).

Introduction to Experimental Music
Music 340
This course starts with Henry Cowell’s radical innovations early in the 20th century, but the primary focus is on the new forms developed in the ’60s and ’70s, including the text-based “event” pieces of the Fluxus movement; the music of Musica Elettronica Viva in Rome and Sonic Arts Union in New York; the minimalist works of La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass; and the improvisation-based techniques in the works of Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, and others.

Introductory Psychoacoustics
Music 345
This course is about perception and hearing. It begins with a description of the physiology and function of the ear and how auditory information is processed. The second half of the semester focuses on sound localization and the technologies used in spatialization and 3-D audio. Auditory localization cues, binaural recording, spatial audio synthesis, sound for virtual realities, and immersive environments are explored. Enrollment is limited.

Interactive Performance and Composition Using MAX/MSP
Music 346
An introduction to computer programming for algorithmic composition, sound installations, interactive performance, and live sound processing, using the musician-friendly MAX/MSP programming language. This is a hands-on course with several small assignments culminating in a final project of programming and composing and a presentation or performance. Prior experience with sequencers or MIDI software is helpful.

Electronic, Electroacoustic, and Computer Music Composition
Music 352
Taking VR (Virtual Reality 3D sonic imaging and graphics, telepresence, and cyberspace) as a point of departure, this workshop examines the possibilities of individualizing sonic architectures for listeners and spaces. Scenarios are proposed for future sonic worlds, and cross-sensory explorations are investigated. Readings include selected excerpts spanning musical theory, acoustics, neuroscience, and the literature of the imagination. Internet sources are used extensively to access new developments in interface and enhancement technologies.

Orchestration
Music 353
Students learn how to score for instrumental combinations, from small ensembles up to full orchestra. Live demonstrations of orchestral instruments; score study of orchestral literature; chord voicing and notation of bowings, breathing, articulations, and special orchestral effects; and the practice of basic conducting patterns and skills are covered. Prerequisite: Composition Workshop.

Arranging Techniques for Jazz
Music 356
This class focuses on the various techniques used in jazz ensemble writing, from quintet to big band ensembles. Classic “drop-two” voicings and tertiary approaches are covered, as are more contemporary cluster, quartal, and line part writings. Myriad approaches to textural issues that arise in each particular instrumentation are examined, along with various approaches to section writing. This is an advanced seminar open to moderated Upper College music majors who have successfully completed Music 367A and B, Jazz Composition I and II, or by permission of the instructor.

Music and Ritual in China and East Asia
Music 357
cross-listed: anthropology, asian studies, religion
Students in this course gain an understanding of the relationship between music and ritual in China and other Confucianized East Asian music cultures—for example, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam—historically as well as in the present.

Electroacoustic Composition and Interdisciplinarity
Music 358
cross-listed: sts
This course focuses on the work of student composers, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary forms. Readings supplement compositional exercises, but the course is primarily intended as an open format for the critique and exploration of ongoing student work. Also examined are works from the field, in the areas of video, animation, digital media, broadcasting, podcasting, and new forms of graphical/digital notation. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

20th-Century Innovations
Music 359
Led by Debussy and Schoenberg, composers in the first decade of the 20th century began to reshape the future of music. Harmonic symmetries commingled with traditional diatonic and chromatic practices to bring new colors, textures, form, and freedom, leading to the wide array of musical styles and aesthetics heard today. Students listen to and analyze selected seminal works, from Debussy to Messiaen and Ligeti, in their historical context.

John Cage and His World
Music 363
Long reviled as a charlatan and/or madman, John Cage has finally achieved recognition as one of the most influential composers and musical thinkers of the late 20th century. This course focuses primarily on an analysis of his music, encompassing such innovations as the prepared piano, chance, and indeterminacy. Also considered is the work of his teachers and influences, as well as his collaborators from the worlds of music, visual arts, dance, literature, politics, and religion. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

Music of Japan
Music 365
cross-listed: asian studies
The course begins with the ancient repertories of Buddhist chant (shomyo) and court music (gagaku), the Zen-inspired shakuhachi (end-blown bamboo flute) honkyoku and music for biwa (lute), shamisen, koto, and other traditional instruments. After exploring the impact of Western music on Japan, the class focuses on the combination of traditional Japanese instruments and forms with Western contemporary classical techniques, as exemplified by the work of Toru Takemitsu, Yuji Takahashi, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and others. Also explored are postwar experimental groups; key figures such as Yoko Ono and Takehisa Kosugi, and recent developments in “noise” music by Merzbow and Otomo Yoshihide.

Advanced Contemporary Jazz Techniques
Music 366
This course introduces methods for the jazz improviser to deconstruct and reorganize the basic harmonic and rhythmic elements for a composition. Issues addressed include reharmonization, remetering, metric modulation, and variations in phrasing, tempo, and dynamics; that is, the arrangement and reorganization of compositional elements. This is a performance-oriented class, and the repertoire includes jazz standards and compositions of the instructor. Open to moderated students who have successfully completed Music 171-172, Jazz Harmony I and II, and previous jazz repertory classes.

Applied Ethnomusicology
Music 368
This seminar addresses the theoretical, practical, and ethical issues that develop from community application as well as real-world applications of museum work, sound media production, ethnographic filmmaking, concert promotion and artist management, and cultural policy/brokering. A practical component involves a collaborative project through which students have an opportunity to put the things they learn into practice in connection with a neighborhood community.

Prokofiev and Shostakovich
Music 369
The works of Prokofiev and Shostakovich are mainstays of concert repertoire, and this course seeks to place them in the context of their time. Students examine Russian history from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to the 1970s, read excerpts from relevant literary works, and discuss key compositions—operas and symphonic and chamber works—by the two composers.

Last Operas
Music 371
This course explores the last operas of some of the greatest composers of musical theater, to see what commonalities might emerge from operas written in very different times and places. Works studied include Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (1642), Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791), Wagner’s Parsifal (1882), Verdi’s Falstaff (1893), Puccini’s Turandot (1924), Strauss’s Capriccio (1942), and Britten’s Death in Venice (1973).

The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach
Music 377
J. S. Bach is regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the Western art tradition. This survey examines his life and music in light of the most recent research. Special emphasis is placed on various traditions and questions of performance practice, with regular classroom performances.

Music, Spectacle, and Patronage in 17th-Century Italy
Music 378
cross-listed: art history, dance, italian studies, theater
This course examines musical patronage through historical documents, works of art and architecture, the decorative arts, and music. Various forms of spectacle are considered, including festivals, chivalric combat, and operas. A reading knowledge of Italian is desirable but not mandatory.

Music of Debussy and Ravel
Music 379
This course considers a broad selection of the composers’ works, including piano and chamber music as well as symphonic and stage works. Topics include innovation in the areas of harmony and timbre, and connections with literature and the visual arts.