|
I have the pleasure of teaching a wide variety of musical topics and skills to a broad range of students. From applied music teaching (flute lessons, chamber coaching) for all ages, to college-level courses on music history and appreciation, I delight in adapting my courses and methods to fit the needs of my students. Please see below for a list of courses that I have designed. |
COURSE OFFERINGS
Music Appreciation (with a focus on the Western canon) This course can be adapted to function as the Music History sequence for music majors: In this class we learn to listen to Western art music, recognizing in it the values, assumptions, and thought processes of the societies in which it was made. Beginning with music in the present day, this course moves backwards through history exploring the social, cultural, and political context of Western art music. We engage with primary and secondary sources, recordings, and live performances, investigating the role of class, nationality, and gender in the creation and performance of music.
Music Appreciation (with a focus on non-Western music): In 1977 NASA launched the Voyager space probes. Recognizing that music is a defining characteristic of our species, the probe contained a record with 90 minutes of music and 30 minutes of sounds from Earth. In this course we use the Voyager Golden Record’s playlist as our touchstone as we explore the gamut of terrestrial sounds, learning to listen with an open mind to unfamiliar musics, recognizing in them the values, assumptions, and thought processes of the societies in which they were made.
My primary objective when teaching when teaching any iteration of Music Appreciation/Intro to Music History is helping students learn to speak and write about a wide variety of musics, employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre, and form used by musicians. In these courses, students learn to be active, informed, critical listeners, able to identify the geographic/temporal origins and socio-cultural context of a given piece of music.
Music and the Museum: In this class we study both the figurative and the literal museumification of music. We investigate the work concept’s power to ossify certain musical monuments, and how shifting reception histories and issues of performance practice can shape that process. We consider new ideas in critical organology dealing with the agency of musical instruments and the complex networks of which they are a part. Touching on museum ethics, we discuss the opportunities and challenges that curators face when dealing with musical instruments as museum-objects (e.g. How should they be displayed, and what story does it tell? To play or not to play?). The concept of “authenticity” serves as a through-line in this course, continuously bringing our discussions back to the question of what it means for something (a piece of music, an instrument) to be an “original.”
Music and Gender in Jane Austen’s England: This course examines music-making as a significant site of gender performativity during the Georgian era (1714-1832), the period in which Jane Austen lived, and a critical period for gender construction in England. Her novels are full of musical scenes that offer fascinating commentary on the gendering power of music-making, however, the coded language and dated references often make these scenes difficult for the modern reader to parse. In order to situate ourselves in Austen’s gendered musical world, we will read from a variety of primary and secondary sources on music, gender and sexuality, as well as current scholarship on musical instruments and repertoire during the period. In the second half of the course we will turn to Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, to observe the ways in which the Georgian construction of gender played out in literature, particularly through representations of domestic music-making.
Romanticism: New notions of individuality, heroism, narrative, and the autonomy of art developed during the Romantic era; in this class we explore the many varied ways we see these themes deployed in literature and music of the long 19th century. We trace the development of Romantic aesthetic values from their origins in the late 18th century German literary movement of Sturm und Drang, through their proliferation across Europe and North America, to their apex in the Gesamtkunstwerk of Wagner, and eventual dissolution in the Modernist movement of the early 20th century. Focusing on the two most significant artistic genres to emerge from this period, the novel and the symphony, we chart their parallel development and observe their shared characteristics in terms of form, content, reception, and cultural status.
Bach’s Passions Then and Now: This course examines the reception history and performance practices of BWV 244 and BWV 245, focusing particular attention on: the liturgical and cultural origins of the Passion plays, the longstanding (and ongoing) controversy surrounding performance practices of the Passions, and the complex reception history of these works, which have been accused (the St. John Passion in particular) of perpetuating anti-Semitic rhetoric. We consider the ways in which the modern notion of “universality” in Bach’s music, and the historical performance movement have influenced recent productions of these works, and investigate their perceived secular value in the modern concert hall.
Music Appreciation (with a focus on the Western canon) This course can be adapted to function as the Music History sequence for music majors: In this class we learn to listen to Western art music, recognizing in it the values, assumptions, and thought processes of the societies in which it was made. Beginning with music in the present day, this course moves backwards through history exploring the social, cultural, and political context of Western art music. We engage with primary and secondary sources, recordings, and live performances, investigating the role of class, nationality, and gender in the creation and performance of music.
Music Appreciation (with a focus on non-Western music): In 1977 NASA launched the Voyager space probes. Recognizing that music is a defining characteristic of our species, the probe contained a record with 90 minutes of music and 30 minutes of sounds from Earth. In this course we use the Voyager Golden Record’s playlist as our touchstone as we explore the gamut of terrestrial sounds, learning to listen with an open mind to unfamiliar musics, recognizing in them the values, assumptions, and thought processes of the societies in which they were made.
My primary objective when teaching when teaching any iteration of Music Appreciation/Intro to Music History is helping students learn to speak and write about a wide variety of musics, employing vocabulary and concepts of melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, timbre, and form used by musicians. In these courses, students learn to be active, informed, critical listeners, able to identify the geographic/temporal origins and socio-cultural context of a given piece of music.
Music and the Museum: In this class we study both the figurative and the literal museumification of music. We investigate the work concept’s power to ossify certain musical monuments, and how shifting reception histories and issues of performance practice can shape that process. We consider new ideas in critical organology dealing with the agency of musical instruments and the complex networks of which they are a part. Touching on museum ethics, we discuss the opportunities and challenges that curators face when dealing with musical instruments as museum-objects (e.g. How should they be displayed, and what story does it tell? To play or not to play?). The concept of “authenticity” serves as a through-line in this course, continuously bringing our discussions back to the question of what it means for something (a piece of music, an instrument) to be an “original.”
Music and Gender in Jane Austen’s England: This course examines music-making as a significant site of gender performativity during the Georgian era (1714-1832), the period in which Jane Austen lived, and a critical period for gender construction in England. Her novels are full of musical scenes that offer fascinating commentary on the gendering power of music-making, however, the coded language and dated references often make these scenes difficult for the modern reader to parse. In order to situate ourselves in Austen’s gendered musical world, we will read from a variety of primary and secondary sources on music, gender and sexuality, as well as current scholarship on musical instruments and repertoire during the period. In the second half of the course we will turn to Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, to observe the ways in which the Georgian construction of gender played out in literature, particularly through representations of domestic music-making.
Romanticism: New notions of individuality, heroism, narrative, and the autonomy of art developed during the Romantic era; in this class we explore the many varied ways we see these themes deployed in literature and music of the long 19th century. We trace the development of Romantic aesthetic values from their origins in the late 18th century German literary movement of Sturm und Drang, through their proliferation across Europe and North America, to their apex in the Gesamtkunstwerk of Wagner, and eventual dissolution in the Modernist movement of the early 20th century. Focusing on the two most significant artistic genres to emerge from this period, the novel and the symphony, we chart their parallel development and observe their shared characteristics in terms of form, content, reception, and cultural status.
Bach’s Passions Then and Now: This course examines the reception history and performance practices of BWV 244 and BWV 245, focusing particular attention on: the liturgical and cultural origins of the Passion plays, the longstanding (and ongoing) controversy surrounding performance practices of the Passions, and the complex reception history of these works, which have been accused (the St. John Passion in particular) of perpetuating anti-Semitic rhetoric. We consider the ways in which the modern notion of “universality” in Bach’s music, and the historical performance movement have influenced recent productions of these works, and investigate their perceived secular value in the modern concert hall.
