40 courses with the subject MUSI, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
325 Milbank Hall McCoy MUSI BC1002 AN INTRODUCTION TO MUSIC II. 3.00 points. Spring 2026: MUSI BC1002 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
325 Milbank Hall McCoy MUSI UN1350 Introduction to Musicianship. 1.00 point. This course is designed for students who have little or no experience with playing, performing, reading, studying, composing, or improvising music. Students will be introduced to both skills and concepts that will enable them to participate in music making and deepen their appreciation of all types of music Fall 2025: MUSI UN1350 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
814 Dodge Building MUSI BC1501 VOICE INSTRUCTION. 2.00 points. Entrance by audition only. Call Barnard College, Department of Music during registration for time and place of audition (854-5096) Fall 2025: MUSI BC1501 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
MUSI BC1502 VOICE INSTRUCTION. 2.00 points. Entrance by audition only. Call Barnard College, Department of Music during registration for time and place of audition (854-5096) Spring 2026: MUSI BC1502 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
MUSI UN1594 BARNARD-COLUMBIA CHORUS II. 1.00 point. Barnard College, Department of Music (854-5096). Membership in the chorus is open to all men and women in the University community. The chorus gives several public concerts each season, both on and off campus, often with other performing organizations. Sight-singing sessions offered. The repertory includes works from all periods of music literature. Students who register for chorus will receive a maximum of 4 points for four or more semesters
19/25 405 Milbank Hall MUSI UN1596 BARNARD-COLUMBIA-CHAMBR SINGER. 1.00 point. (854-5096). Membership in the chorus is open to all men and women
405 Milbank Hall MUSI UN2026 THE SYMPHONY. 3.00 points. The purpose of this course is to survey the genre of the symphony throughout its history in Western music from about 1750 to the present. In class we will listen to and analyze selected examples, and Enrollment also discuss the relationship of the work and its composer to their historical time 9/14 Fall 2025: MUSI UN2026 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
320h Prentis Hall Morrison Spring 2026: MUSI UN2205 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
330 Uris Hall
404 Dodge Building MUSI UN2319 MUSIC THEORY II. 3.00 points. Elementary analysis and composition in a variety of tonal idioms. Fall 2025: MUSI UN2319 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
405 Dodge Building MUSI UN2320 Introduction to Music Cognition. 3.00 points. The aim of music cognition is to understand the musical mind. This course is an introduction to a variety of key topics in this field, including human development, evolution, neural processing, embodied knowledge, memory and anticipation, cross-cultural perspectives, and to emotions. The course explores recent research on these topics, as well as ways in which this research can be applied to music scholarship. Readings are drawn from fields as diverse as music theory, psychology, biology, anthropology, and neuroscience, and include general works in cognitive science, theoretical work focused on specific musical issues, and reports of empirical research Fall 2025: MUSI UN2320 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
622 Dodge Building PSYC GU4239 COG NEURO NARRATIVE FILM. 3.00 points. CC/GS: Partial Fulfillment of Science Requirement neuroscience or cognitive psychology This seminar will provide a broad survey of how narrative stories, films, and performances have been used as tools to study cognition in psychology and neuroscience Fall 2025: PSYC GU4239 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
405 Dodge Building Joviala 8/20 Spring 2026: MUSI UN2351 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
814 Dodge Building Spring 2026: MUSI UN2352 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollmen
814 Dodge Building
112 Dodge Building MUSI UN3023 LATE BEETHOVEN. 3.00 points. Beethoven’s visionary late style emerged during a period of devastating personal crises. His “heroic decade,” the era of Napoleon, was over. But Beethoven’s music had always included the visionary, the difficult, the personal. What made the late music different? In this course we will use a variety of approaches to Beethoven’s late works (especially the last three piano sonatas, the Ninth Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the Diabelli variations, and the last six string quartets) in order to consider issues of lateness and late style; irony, t humor, memory and melancholy; the roles of patronage, commerce, and performance; critical reception; and posthumous Beethoven MUSI UN3036 SCHUBERT'S ROMANTIC CYCLES. 3.00 points. MUSI UN3103 Afrofuturism and Society: Music, Media, and Race. 3.00 t points. An aesthetic, perspective, and practice, Afrofuturism places Afro- diasporic peoples at the center of science-fiction and speculative narratives, affording Black people narrative agency over their past, present, and future. Afrofuturism exists as an essential site for the interrogation and celebration of Black life, while also serving as a thoughtful critique of anti-Black sentiments and white supremacy. This course will familiarize students with the historical underpinnings, contexts, and both seminal and contemporary works that are a part of the movement and which situate Afrofuturism as part of a larger socio-cultural discourse on race, creativity, and activism. We will be discussing Afrofuturism’s historical and socio-cultural positionality, but will also ask: in the midst of global anti-Blackness, the post-Trump era, a pandemic, and the era of Black Lives Matter, where does Afrofuturism fit in the existing discourse? MUSI UN3127 BACH'S SACRED MUSIC. 3.00 points. Bach’s sacred music in its historical, theological, and social context
622 Dodge Building O'Rourke MUSI UN3129 History of Western Music: Classical Era to 20th Century. 3.00 points. with this course. Topics in western music from the Classical Era to the 20th Century, focusing on the development of musical style and thought, and on analysis of selected works. Pre-req: Music Theory II or permission of instructor MUSI UN3168 THE AMERICAN MUSICAL. 3.00 points. is required. Musical theater is one of Americas most vital and important art form. Several of its major creators studied at Columbia, including Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, John Kander, and Fred Ebb. This course will present a historical survey of American musical theater from its origins in late nineteenth-century; through the musicals of figures like Kern, Gershwin, and Rodgers - Hammerstein; through Sondheim and the megamusical of Lloyd Webber. Focus will be on selected shows, through which broader cultural and musical trends will be examined MUSI UN3171 PARIS FOR ROMANTICS. 3.00 points. instructor) is a pre-requisite for this course. of the instructor) is a pre-requisite for this course. This course explores Parisian musical life during the long nineteenth century, situating musical discourses, institutions, and forms within the broader landscapes of literary and artistic Romanticism. Topics to be considered include: the musical echoes of the Revolution; operatic genres and theaters; the music of the salons; cultures of consumerism and domestic performance; and issues of nationalism and historicism after 1870. Composers to be considered include: Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Massenet, and Debussy. Completion of Music Humanities (or the consent of the instructor) is a pre-requisite for this course. MUSI UN3210 Chopin, Pianos, Revolutions. 3.00 points. This seminar offers a survey of the music by Fryderyk Chopin, examining his output in historical, geopolitical, and cultural context. Organized by genre, the study will be accompanied by the discussion of music as performance, using legendary recordings, and live in-class demonstrations. Through guided listening, analysis of the written score, and reading assignments, students will obtain tools to discuss topics related to the piano (the development of which will be an integral part of the course), comparative performance, interpretation, and performance practice. Since student performances will be an important component of the course, members of the Music Performance Program receive registration priority MUSI UN3213 Bach Interpretation for Performers. 3.00 points. This course will explore the music of Johann Sebastian Bach from the perspective of performance. Attention will be given to Baroque dance forms and the social significance of dance in the 18th century, the art of rhetoric as a driving force for convincing delivery, an exploration of period instruments, and the study of elements of style such as articulation and ornamentation. The course consists of lectures, lment discussions, guided listening, score analysis, reading assignments, and performance projects. Aside from Bach’s scores, we will examine three key 17th- and 18th-century vocal and instrumental treatises, and a wide array of literature on rhetorical style and performance practice. Upon successful completion of the course, students will gain a deeper understanding of interpreting the music of J.S. Bach and Baroque music in general, both as listeners and as performers MUSI UN3239 Undergraduate Composition. 3.00 points. This course provides an immersive experience in music composition, focusing on both practical and theoretical aspects within a given instrumentation. Please refer to the topic for the instrumentation for this semester’s course. This class is open to students with no prior experience in composition. Students of varying music backgrounds are welcome. Permission of the instructor may be required for enrollment. The class will explore a variety of compositional approaches, including traditional, experimental, and interdisciplinary methods. During the semester, students will complete several creative and theoretical exercises ranging from short composition projects to analytical responses to diverse works. Students will also engage in individual and group feedback sessions as well as in-class readings of selected compositional projects by the performers. The final project will be an original work between 5 and 7 minutes, which will be workshopped, rehearsed, performed in a public concert, and recorded by professional musicians towards the end of the term Fall 2025: MUSI UN3239 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
405 Milbank Hall
225 Milbank Hall Bjorlin MUSI BC3145 WORLDMUSE ENSEMBLE. 3.00 points. Worldmuse Ensemble delves into compelling music from many genres such as world music, gospel, classical--old and new. We perform without a conductor, increasing awareness and interaction among ourselves and our audience. We collaboratively integrate music, dance, and theatre traditions (masks etc.). For experienced singers, and instrumentalists and dancers who sing Spring 2026: MUSI BC3145 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
325 Milbank Hall Bjorlin MUSI BC3990 SENIOR PROJ:RESEARCH FOR MUSIC. 3.00 points. Working with her advisor, a student will expand the research project initiated in the Fall Senior Seminar for Music Majors (BC3992x). In order to satisfy the requirement, the student will complete a fifty page research paper Fall 2025: MUSI BC3990 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
620 Dodge Building Kendall MUSI UN3241 ADVANCED COMPOSITION I. 3.00 points.
620 Dodge Building Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 497 MUSI UN3322 MUSIC THEORY IV. 3 points. Intermediate analysis and composition in a variety of tonal and extended tonal idioms. Fall 2025: MUSI UN3322 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
622 Dodge Building t MUSI UN3342 Beyond Boundaries: Radical Black Experimental Music. 3 points. This discussion seminar focuses on African American composer/ improvisers in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries whose work rejects and critiques simplistic compartmentalization in terms of improvisation, composition, genre, gender, race, and place. On the contrary, these musicians embody Duke Ellington’s famous dictum regarding great music being “beyond category.” Students will critically discuss some of the common threads in this network —musicians’ means of creating and performing their original music, its distribution in the marketplace and surrounding critical discourse, their engagement with issues of race, gender, and class within and outside of their communities, and interdisciplinary and community- based collaboration. Musical communities such encompassed in this course include the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Sun Ra’s Arkestra, and the Jazz Composers Guild and extends up to the current day to include contemporary artists such as Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts, and Tyshawn Sorey. The incredibly t rich multifarious pieces and performances that we will listen to and discuss reference and incorporate elements of improvisation, theatre, twelve-tone serialism, aleatoric composition, bebop, electro-acoustic and computer music,conduction, popular music, the voice, free jazz, Afrofuturism, the blues, orchestral music, opera, and graphic notation MUSI UN3343 Shades of Brown: Music in the South Asian Diaspora . 3 points. This course explores the musical world of the South Asian diaspora in Europe and North America. We will read ethnographic accounts of diasporic musics and experiences and develop methods for analysis and interpretation of such accounts, situating the songs of the South Asian diaspora within its broader social history. We will address the concepts of belonging and identity, nostalgia and affect, and the dismantling or upholding of dominant discourses such as gender, race, and caste. Our focus will be on the last half century, although deeper t histories will need to be considered. Students will learn to analyze instrumentation and lyrics in various genres and traditions of South Asian music, including both art, folkloric, and popular idioms, and to correlate these with aspects of the social context of diaspora. While the specific focus of the course is on a particular diasporic history, t the class will help students understand and think critically about the broader phenomenon of “diaspora” and its cultural dimensions, and through this to engage critically with important aspects of cultural globalization and migration. Students from all departments are welcome. Reading music not required.
622 Dodge Building MUSI UN3410 The Polycultural Roots of U.S. Popular Music. 3.00 points. This course will explore the rich hybrid development of U.S. popular music genres and vernacular music traditions. Focusing on the contributions of Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and African American musicians and musical traditions in addition to European American musicians and musical traditions, in genres as various as country music, hip hop, jazz, reggaeton, and rock, students will enlarge their sense of the multiracial and crosscultural makeup of the music that constitutes “American popular music.” MUSI UN3425 Music, Sound and the Law. 3.00 points. This course is a historical overview of the relationship between music and the law in which students will employ both critical listening skills and critical thinking to understand how sound came to be understood as property, how the law impacts creativity, identity and labor, and how music has been used as a tool for enforcing and challenging legislative and political processes. We will discuss the origins of copyright law in the Enlightenment, how music has been used as a tool of colonization through formation of archives, examples of Native American conceptions of cultural property and modes of repatriation, the birth of the music industry and its segregationist history, how the law impacts creativity through the study of sampling, infringement and extension of rights, the ways in which musicians and listeners subvert legal strictures, how music can influence policy as protest or as propaganda, musical bans, noise ordinances, the relationship between music and the First Amendment, alternatives to copyright law in the digital age, music piracy, and the recent changes in the music industry to focus on data gathering as the primary model for music distribution. Music is our point of departure, and students will learn ways in which sonic practices shaped and challenged legislative paradigms. Our focus is on American musics such as Native American music, blues, country, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, experimental music, hip hop, pop, as well as some European classical music, “world” music, and EDM. Students will read and analyze legal primary sources such as the Music Modernization Act, as well as landmark court cases, critical legal literature, and musicological texts. Students will learn debate skills, acquire practical knowledge of the law through concepts such as fair use, the public domain and mechanical and performance rights, and develop listening skills to understand legal concepts such as infringement. This course is open to students lment of all majors and will be of particular interest to musicians, students with plans to pursue a law degree in IP or technology law, as well as those interested in working in the music industry. There are no prerequisites and no previous knowledge of music, music theory, or the law is necessary. Masterpieces of Western Music or Asian Music lment
MUSI BC3991 SENIOR PROJ: MUSIC REPERTORY. 3.00 points. Working with her advisor, a student will develop a vocal or instrumental recital program with representative musical works from a variety of historical periods. In order to satisfy the requirement, the student will present an hour long public performance of the recital program. Students may also satisfy this requirement by composing original vocal or instrumental works Fall 2025: MUSI BC3991 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points
Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 489 MUSI BC3992 SENIOR SEM FOR MUSIC MAJORS. 4.00 points. The goals of this seminar are a) to introduce senior music majors to ethnographic, bibliographic, and archival research methods in music and b) to help the same students develop, focus, implement, draft, revise, and polish a substantive, original piece of research (25-30 pages) which will serve as the senior project. The course will begin with a survey of academic literature on key problems in musicological research and writing, and will progress to a workshop/discussion format in which each week a different student is responsible for assigning readings and leading the discussion on a topic which s/he has formulated and deemed to be of relevance to her own research Enrollment Fall 2025: MUSI BC3992 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment 6/10 Number Number MUSI 3992 001/00379 W 10:10am - 12:00pm Lauren 4.00 7/15 501 Diana Center Ninoshvili
320h Prentis Hall
701c Dodge Building MUSI GU4425 SOUNDING ISLAM. 3.00 points. The objective of this course is to explore the relationship between sound, music and Islam and, in doing so, to focus on a philosophy of listening (sama‘) which is deeply embedded in the experiential. The course aims to analyze how sound and music directly or indirectly associated with Islam are produced, circulated, and listened to by a wide variety of audiences in local and transnational settings; to explore the ways in which multiple sonic dimensions of Islam have affected the public sphere in different historical moments and contexts (particular in relation to ideas about nationalism, secularism and modernity); and to examine the effect of these sonic dimensions on Muslim and non- Muslim listeners in a local and a transnational perspective MUSI GU4450 Music and Global Women. 3.00 points. This course offers a comparative exploration of women music practitioners from cross-cultural perspectives, examining their music, oral histories, and lived experiences as well as the impact of these experiences on their music-making in a global context. By tracing the journeys and analyzing the music of specific selected women musicians from various regions, the course investigates their participation in art music, traditional music, popular music, and sacred music from women’s perspectives. Engaging primarily with their music and interviews, the course particularly examines the comparative roles of women as active creators, performers, sponsors, and consumers of music, highlighting how their lived experiences shape their musical contributions. Students will be introduced to critical concepts for analyzing representations of gender, class, ethnicity, nationalism, race, and globalization in music while exploring these women’s sounds, identities, and performances Fall 2025: MUSI GU4450 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
620 Dodge Building MUSI GU4500 JAZZ TRANSCRIPTION # ANALYSIS. 3 points. A progressive course in transcribing, proceeding from single lines to full scale sections and ensembles. Stylistic analysis based on new and previously published transcriptions. lment Fall 2025: MUSI GU4500 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
814 Dodge Building MUSI GU4505 JAZZ ARRANGING # COMPOSITION. 3.00 points. Course designed to train students to arrange and compose in a variety of historical jazz styles, including swing, bebop, hard bop, modal, fusion, Latin, and free jazz.
814 Dodge Building Milarsky MUSI GU4525 INSTRUMENTATION. 3.00 points. instrumentation, with directional emphasis on usage, ranges, playing techniques, tone colors, characteristics, interactions and tendencies, all derived from the classic orchestral repertoire. Topics will include theoretical writings on the classical repertory as well as 20th century instrumentation and its advancement. Additional sessions with live orchestral demonstrations are included as part of the course Fall 2025: MUSI GU4525 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrol
814 Dodge Building Milarsky MUSI GU4630 RECORDED SOUND. 3.00 points. As music moves into the 21st century, we find ourselves surrounded by an ever-evolving landscape of technological capability. The world of music, and the music industry itself, is changing rapidly, and with that change comes the opening – and closing – of doorways of possibility. What does this shift mean for today’s practicing artist or composer? With big label recording studios signing and nurturing fewer and fewer artists, it seems certain that, today, musicians who want to record and distribute their music need to be able to do much of the recording and production work on their own. But where does one go to learn how to do this – to learn not only the “how to” part of music production, but the historical underpinnings and the development of the music production industry as well? How does one develop a comprehensive framework within which they can place their own artistic efforts? How does one learn to understand what they hear, re-create what they like and develop their own style? This class, “Recorded Sound,” aims to be the answer. It’s goal is to teach artists how to listen critically to music from across history and genres in order to identify the production techniques that they hear, and reproduce those elements using modern technology so they can be incorporated into the artist’s own musical works Fall 2025: MUSI GU4630 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrol
317 Prentis Hall
320h Prentis Hall MUSI GU4998 SUPERVISED INDEPENDENT STUDY. 1.00-3.00 points. Fall 2025: MUSI GU4998 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
points. Not offered during 2024-2025 academic year. This course examines music and performance in various African contexts, focusing on the postcolonial period. It will explore the complex interactions between music, politics, nation, race, and mediation through case studies from Ghana, Nigeria, DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. In addition, discussions will involve what is meant to speak about "African music," and class will theorize about the conditions of musical production in the context of postcolonialism.
Source: Barnard College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
