Description

Welcome to Music 1300/ Music: Its Language History/ and Culture. The course has a numberof interrelated objectives: 1. To introduce you to works representative of a variety of music traditions.These include the repertoires of Western Europe from the Middle Agesthrough the present; of the United States/ including art music/ jazz/ folk/ rock/ musical theater; and from at least two non-Western world areas (Africa/ Asia/ Latin America/ the Caribbean/ the Middle East/ Indian subcontinent). 2. To enable you to speak and write about the features of the music you study/employing vocabulary and concepts of melody/ rhythm/ harmony/ texture/ timbre/and form used by musicians. 3. To explore with you the historic/ social/ and cultural contexts and the role of class/ ethnicity/ and gender in the creation and performance of music/including practices of improvisation and the implications of oral andnotated transmission. 4. To acquaint you with the sources of musical sounds—instruments and voices fromdifferent cultures/ found sounds/ electronically generated sounds; basic principlesthat determine pitch and timbre. 5. To examine the influence of technology/ mass media/ globalization/ and transnationalcurrents on the music of today. The chapters in this reader contain definitions and explanations of musical terms and concepts/short essays on subjects related to music as a creative performing art/ biographical sketchesof major figures in music/ and historical and cultural background information on music fromdifferent periods and places.