Introduction to the Language of Music (Music 111)

This course is designed to enhance an understanding of how music works and to improve listening, reading, and general comprehension skills. While the focus is on fundamentals of Western music (notation, rhythm, melody, scales, chords, formal plans), listening examples will be drawn from a variety of genres, including jazz, pop, and music from around the world. In addition to three class meetings, students will be offered a music skills and keyboard lab.

Distribution: Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video

History of Western Music (Music 200)

The first half of a year-long comprehensive survey of Western music history, MUS 200 considers significant forms and styles of earlier eras, from the liturgical and vernacular repertories of the Middle Ages to the music of the mid-eighteenth century. The course offers a strong historical component, and also encourages the development of analytical skills. As we examine compositions in many genres, we will pursue numerous avenues of inquiry, including close readings of verbal texts, evaluation of formal structures, harmonic analysis, assessment of melodic and rhythmic features, and investigation of the broader circumstances that surround and inform musical creation.

Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Music 222/322)

From muse to diva, patron to composer, and abbess to courtesan, women have always been creators of musical culture around the world. Music, Gender, and Sexuality offers the tools with which to understand the roles women play in a wide variety of musical endeavors and considers them as creators of classical, folk, children’s, jazz, rock, electronic, film, and popular music. We will examine constructions of gender and ethnicity; queer theory; and several global musical traditions. Selected artists include Riot Grrrls, Rokia Traoré, Zap Mama, Norah Jones, Madonna, Lili Boulanger, Fanny Hensel, and Hildegard of Bingen. This course may be taken as either 222 or, with additional assignments, 322.

Opera: Its History, Music, and Drama (Music 230)

This course offers a comprehensive chronological survey of the history and evolution of opera, from 1600 to the present time. Lectures will examine historical background, the sub-genres of operatic literature (opera seria, opera buffa, music drama), and complete operas by major composers representing a number of periods and styles (including Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, and Alban Berg). We will also study librettos, relevant novels, and other source materials in order to establish connections between musical structure and dramatic expression. Two class meetings, with additional sessions required for viewing operas in their entirety.

Distribution: Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video

Das Lied: The Music and Poetry of the German Art Song (Music 223/323)

The German Lied dates back to the Middle Ages as one of the language's major cultural expressions. This course proposes to examine the development of the genre via analysis of the German poetry and the music that composers set to the texts, allowing students to enlarge their musical vocabulary. The musical expression heightens the meaning of the text and in many cases elucidates the action thereof. Material to be studied will include works by well-known German, as well as non-German artists working in the German tradition. No previous musical training or background is required.

Distribution: Arts or Language and Literature

Hildegard of Bingen (Music 224/Religion 224)

This interdisciplinary seminar will focus on the music, dramatic productions, vision literature, and theology of the renowned twelfth-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Attention will also be given to her scientific work on medicine, the manuscript illuminations of her visions, and the productions of her music popular today.

Distribution: Arts or Religion

Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute (Music 300)

This module offers a music historical analysis of two of Mozart’s best-known operas: Don Giovanni (K. 527), based on an Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and Die Zauberflöte (K. 620), based on a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Along with extensive libretto and score study, students will undertake brief weekly writing assignments using information gathered from reading, listening, viewing video productions, and class discussion.

Distribution: Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video

Treasures of Seicento Venice (Music 300)

In such public venues as the basilica of San Marco and the opera house of San Cassiano, the greate maritime republic of Venice regaled its inhabitants with splendid music-making during the seventeenth century. More intimate spaces in the city, such as the gatherings of Strozzi's Academy of the Incogniti or the Pieta orphanage, produced first-rate music on a smaller scale. This course will begin with the study and analysis of polychoral sacred works (Gabrieli's In ecclessis, Monteverdi's Vespers, Cavalli's Missa concertata), consider Cavalli's early operativ repertory, and conclude with the cantatas of Cavalli's students, singer-composers Barbara Strozzi and Antonia Bembo.

J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion (Music 300)

It is often a subject of some amazement that this epic composer was known in his day as a church organist rather than as the musical hero that we consider him today. His fame was only secured when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the Matthäuspassion in Berlin in 1829; it was his family's connections to Bach's heritage that enabled this revival. This seminar will focus on three topics: genesis of the passion; Mendelssohn-Bach connections; and the diversity of 20th-century recorded performances of the work.

The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach (Music 300)

Ravishingly beautiful in the way in which they showcase the voice and a variety of instruments as well as elicit strong emotion, the cantatas offer insights into J.S. Bach's craft at several stages of his career. This course examines works from each of those stages, including an early composition from Mühlhausen, a survey of the Weimar and Cöthen periods, and the three Leipzig Jahrgänge (yearly cycles), when the composer vigorously created and produced a weekly cantata for the entire liturgical year; Bach's secular cantatas will also be considered. We conclude with a study of the cantatas of BWV 248, collectively known as the Christmas Oratorio. The course addresses issues of dramatic structure, text setting, performance practice, and patronage.

Music by "F. Mendelssohn"--Fanny and Felix's Intertwined Careers (Music 300)

As their compositions and correspondence reveal, Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-47) and Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) experienced a profound musical relationship throughout their lives. Although the siblings received identical musical training, their ensuing careers diverged widely. Through a study of genres in which both sister and brother composed--instrumental (piano, chamber, and orchestral music)--as well as accompanying critical material, this seminar explores the gender, race, and class factors bringing about the obscurity of one composer and the renown of the other.

The World of Henry Purcell, 1659-95 (Music 300)

This course examines representative works from the main genres in which Purcell worked: vocal (song, catch, cantata), choral (ode, anthem, hymn, service), keyboard (harpsichord suite and organ voluntary), chamber (viol fantasia, sonata), plays with incidental music (Timon of Athens, Amphitryon, The Indian Queen) and the well known masques/operas (Dioclesian, Dido and Aeneas, King Arthur, The Fairy-Queen). When it was offered in Fall 1995, students in the seminar had the opportunity to participate in the staged production of Dido and Aeneas with the Wellesley College Collegium Musicum.

This page maintained by Claire Fontijn
Music Department
Last updated: July 4, 2008