Fall 2015 Music History course: Seminar in Twentieth-Century Music
Dr Christopher Smith. The study of music & culture in the "Long" 20th century.
MUHL4300-003 (16367)/5336-001 (20721)
Meets TR 9:30-10:50 M214
Open to undergrads and grad students from across the TTU campus. Permission of instructor required. Fulfills upper-level Music History requirement for music majors. Students from a range of disciplines (history, political science, music, mass communications, FADP) welcome & encouraged to enroll.
Requirements include mid-term and final essay exams, a research project, attendance, and participation.
The great American composer Frank Zappa said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, while the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was nearly arrested after the 1944 premiere of his highly dissonant rearrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In the 20th century, composers repeatedly did write about (and read about) other art forms, and court arrest—or worse—in an attempt to make sense of what they did and why they did it
This course will concentrate on music and musical life in the Euro-American concert tradition. We will start with the first roots of "modernist" thinking in the concert-music world--works of Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler--and continue through multiple world wars, social change, political and economic revolutions, to the "post-classical" world of the 1980s. Our theme will be the special problems and cultural issues that have confronted Euro-American composers in the past century.
More information & instructor permission: Dr Christopher J Smith (christopher.smith@ttu.edu)
