36 courses with the subject MH, 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.
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Fall semester Baroque History covers Western European art music from c. 1600 to Handel, focusing on national styles, new genres, leading composers, and their representative works. The course also provides an overview of how music intersects with the arts, religious life, and politics.
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester Classical History covers Western European art music from early Galant styles through the music of Beethoven. The course also considers the role of music in social life, the changing careers of composers, and the influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Fall semester Romantic History covers Western European art music from Schubert to the early 20th century, considering the impact of literary Romanticism across all genres and styles. The course also looks at the role of nationalism and revolutionary politics.
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester A survey of primarily Western European art music from c. 1900 through today, this course presents the diversity of styles and techniques across European countries and the Americas. The content focuses especially on Modernist styles, the avant-garde, new genres, global influences, underrepresented artists, and Postmodernism. Student performances are an integral part of the course. 138 C ourse De scrip tions
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester An investigation of performance practices concentrating on Baroque, Classic, and early 19th-century repertoire. Students are required to perform as part of the class work.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester (This course is for non-native English speakers only.) Although the Baroque and Classical musical languages had radically different textures and forms there was a core question that pervaded musical discourse from the 1600s through the 1820s: can music have meaning? Rhetorical music–music that imitates the effects of persuasive oratory and sways listeners’ emotions–offers an answer to this question providing a conceptual throughline for music from the late Renaissance through Beethoven. This course will trace how Humanism contributed to the primacy of vocal music in the Baroque era and how Enlightenment-era composers Mozart and Beethoven challenged the social and political status quo through their music. We will explore how intense emotionality (Affect) or programmatic musical content satisfied 17th and 18th century audience’s demand for music that communicated ideas. We will also examine how Viennese Classical composers transformed the desire that music communicate meaning into phrasing that imitates spoken language. The course is meant to provide insight into the meaning of Baroque and Classical musical language to help students create more informed and vibrant performances of repertoire from these periods.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester (This course is for non-native English speakers only.) Throughout this course, we will trace the evolution of Classical music through the height of the Classical Period all the way to 20th Century modernist movements. We will begin with Ludwig van Beethoven and explore his tremendous influence on the composers of the Romantic period. 19th century composers highlighted in our course will include the pianist composers Chopin and Liszt, as well as great symphonists Schumann, Brahms. We will then see the great change toward nationalism, and see this movement in various countries. Finally, in our discussions of 20th century composers, we will explore through the great diversity of styles, and innovative compositional movements such as Atonality, Neoclassicism, Minimalism, and many others.
2 hrs weekly/2 credits/Spring semester See MH1040 under Music History Electives
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester See JC1400
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester See JC1402
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester A study of the history, style, and performance problems in selected instrumental and vocal works of J.S. Bach.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester A comprehensive study of the history of opera and operatic forms of the 19th and 20th centuries.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester A close examination of the music of Mozart, including early influences, Mozart's association with Haydn, and the interrelationships between vocal and instrumental music. Sources and editions are carefully considered. The course will include in-class performance projects. (Offered in alternate years)
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester A comprehensive chronological survey of chamber music from its origins in such early forms as the canzona and trio sonata through the year 1827, concluding with the death of Beethoven. The course has three objectives: first, to look at pieces and composers in historical perspective noting the prevailing social, political, and economic trends and understanding the progression of musical ideas as they manifest themselves in the chamber music repertoire; second, to explore interrelationships among composers and schools of compositions, as well as development of style and genres in specific composers; and, third, to examine the music itself both from an analytic viewpoint and from a performance practice perspective.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester ìWomen” and “Greatness” -throughout the course of all history, these two words have not been used in the same sentence too often. Certainly, in the case of Music History, it is as if there was a sort of mental programming to exclude women from the realm of great legacy and powerful contribution. Therefore, this course will provide a fascinating exploration into the lives and stories of women who enriched Music History in spite of many obstacles. Our journey will begin in the Middle Ages and conclude with the current times. 140 C ourse De scrip tions We will explore a great variety of musical carriers, placing our main emphasis on the study of the life and work of such great composers as Barbara Strozzi, Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, and Tania Leon. We will also celebrate the trail blazing women on the concert stage from the Primadonnas of Italian opera to the great female conductors on the world stage is today. The goal of the course is to shed light on the music composed over an entire millennium that may still be undiscovered, and to better understand the sociopolitical circumstances, which many of the women we discussed had to overcome and bring their gifts to the world.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester A comprehensive survey of the history of the symphony and symphonic forms from the 18th century until the present.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester A detailed study of the major works of Beethoven. Representative samples of his various styles are drawn from the symphonies, string quartets, piano sonatas, solo concertos, and choral works. (Offered in alternate years)
Online-asynchronous/3 credits/Spring semester This course covers the influence of German literary Romanticism on nineteenth-century works. Instead of treating all of the nineteenth century as uniformly “Romantic,” we will distinguish between works connected to the literary movement and those which are not. We will consider the sources of Romanticism, from Germanic myth and Shakespeare to contemporary stories and explore the new genres which emerged to innovate modes of storytelling with music. As a counterpoint to the core of the class, we will also consider the question of Romanticism in abstract instrumental music, which E.T.A. Hoffmann called the “most Romantic of all the arts” because of its ability to go beyond text.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester A survey of concertos, from the inception of the form in the early 17th century to present-day examples. Various works called “concerto” and “concertante” will be considered, and willbe subjected to stylistic and formal analysis.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester A comprehensive introduction to Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, in the context of his life and times, with reference to other Wagner works of the Ring period. The course will cover the musical, dramatic, poetic, historic, literary, and philosophic background to Wagner's monumental tetralogy. A term paper at the end of the semester is required.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester This course is a wide-ranging historical survey of Russian Music: from its origins in folk song and Orthodox religious chant, through to such contemporary figures as Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina. The course is not limited to composers who were “Russian” in solely the linguistic or ethnic sense, but rather, composers who lived in that part of the world, belonging to the Russian Empire or later to the USSR. Therefore, the course study will include C ourse De scrip tions 141
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester An introduction to the principles of ethnomusicology joined to a survey of the music of the following non-Western cultures: sub-Saharan Africa, Native America, the Islamic world, and the Indian subcontinent. The study of this music will be at once technical and cultural. The course is enriched by visits from guest artists who present the music in live performance. Emphasis will also be given to seeing how composers, world-wide, are currently making use of elements of the traditional music from these cultures.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester A survey of the traditional musical cultures of East Asia and the Pacific, including those of China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, Indonesia, New Guinea, Oceania, and Australia. As with MH 1841, the music will be considered both culturally and technically. Duringthe semester, guests proficient in these traditional musical cultures will demonstrate the music in live performance. Emphasis will also be given to exploring the creative use that contemporary composers are making of this music.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester The course will cover the general period of Gershwin’s life (1898-1937) with some references to events before and after those dates. In addition to its focus on the life and works of Gershwin, the works of other musicians and composers who either influenced, or were influenced by Gershwin are surveyed, including 142 C ourse De scrip tions a diverse range of artists from different disciplines and cultural backgrounds both in the United States and Europe. (A representative list would include Fred and Adele Astaire, Duke Ellington, Eubie Blake, James Reese Europe, Kay Swift, Dana Suesse, Ann Ronell, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud, and John Alden
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester This new course will survey the works of Benjamin Britten in the context of his life and musical activities, both as composer and performer, during the tumultuous era of the 20th century. Following the chronology of Britten's life from his formative years in London before World War II through his American adventure in the 1940's; from the triumphant premiere of Peter Grimes through the years of his subsequent success as the composer of opera and instrumental music of every variety; from his establishment of the English Opera Group through the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival, the Maltings Concert Hall and the Britten-Pears School we will investigate Britten's life and music within the framework of some prominent themes that can be observed throughout his career: the individual against society, the confrontation of innocence and experience, the importance of musical citizenship, pacifism in an age of war, and the conflict between the private/ public image. Although the list of Britten's operas will act as a template for the course, his other works for orchestra, chamber music, chorus, plus his vibrant career as a performer with Peter Pears and other great artists of his time will hardly be ignored. The course will include reading and listening assignments, exams, and a final project.
3 hrs weekly/2 credits/Fall semester A survey of the music of trumpeter-bandleader- composer Miles Davis (1926-1991), one of the major innovators in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis's music ranged from bebop of the1940s through hip-hop of the 1990s. Cross-listed with JC2030
to Classical 3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Fall semester An advanced study of the evolution of the orchestra and of primary genres of orchestral music during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
n to the Present 3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester A further investigation of the evolution of the orchestra and of orchestral music during the 19th and 20th Centuries.
3 hrs weekly/3 credits/Spring semester An investigation of the music of Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg, Debussy, Scriabin, and other composers active during the period 1890-1910. The course examines late German Romanticism as one of several styles leading to a new musical aesthetic in the 20th Century. (Offered in alternate years) C ourse De scrip tions 143
Source: Manhattan School of Music's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
