Course Schedule

7.05.23 

Intro (Syllabus overview, music vocabulary, engaging with sources, instruments & Voices)

7.07.23 (assignment 1 due via Blackboard)

Assignment 1: Introduce yourself to me and your classmates on the Blackboard discussion board by writing 2-4 paragraphs about what sort of music you enjoy or find interesting. Describe a playlist that you have and write about some of the genres and artists, then pick one song to write a more detailed sonic analysis of, incorporating some of the ways of listening critically to/talking about music that we’ve talked about in class (and reference the vocabulary handout).

Hildegard von Bingen, German Benedictine abbess and polymath (1098-1179)

(and microgenre Bardcore)

Listen:

• “O Virtus Sapientiae” (Hildegard von Bingen)
• Symphonia et Ordo virtutum (Hildegard von Bingen)
• “Bad Romance” (Lady Gaga), “Bad Romance” (Hildegard von Blingin’), and “Lady Gaga Fugue” (arr. Larry Moore)

Hildegard:

Read:

Brief visual collection of musical marginalia

• Selected Hildegard Letters

7.12.23 (assignment 2 due via Blackboard)

De/constructing the Child Prodigy

The Mozart children

Listen:

Read:

Teresa Carreño

Listen and examine score: “Mi Teresita”/”Kleiner Walzer”/”Little Waltz” (1896)

Note: listen to all versions on playlist!

Here is Carreño’s performance of it on a piano roll!

Watch this short video for more about piano rolls:

Read:

7.14.23 (assignments 3 and 4 due via Blackboard)

Assignment 3: Compare at least two recordings of “Mi Teresita” and write about your observations.

Assignment 4: Use Carreño newsclippings and letters and/or Mozart newsclippings and letters to

7.19.23

Ethel Smyth, U.S., and British Suffrage music

Listen and examine scores:

• March of the Women (1911)

• 3 Songs (1913)

Read:

Music of the Harlem Renaissance and Chicago Black Renaissance: Ma Rainey, Gladys Bentley, Nora Holt, and Florence Price

Listen:

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey: “Prove it On Me Blues”

Gladys Bentley

Nora Holt: Negro Dance

Florence Price

Read:

7.21.23  (assignment 5 due via Blackboard)

7.26.23

Musical Theatre & Theatre Music

Listen:

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/supra/catalog/ms935qj0194

Read:

7.28.23 (assignment 6 due via Blackboard)

Assignment 6: Write a plot synopsis with accompanying songs for your own jukebox musical, and submit an accompanying playlist of your own creation. See the Mamma Mia! Wikipedia page and other pages for musicals for examples of how to format the plot and musical numbers together.