A seminar for upper division music majors. Topics will change each semester but will always represent a fairly narrow focus on a single issue in the history, interpretation, or social meaning of music. The course provides students with an opportunity to go deeply into one subject, to discuss their ideas in a seminar setting, and to carry out a substantial independent research project.

Saints and sinners, monsters and monarchs, rhetoric and reason: these are all among the topics broached by motets from the late middle ages. These motets, which will be the focus of this course, thwart many preconceptions about what it means to study medieval music. They are often carefully constructed, fantastically complex, and unabashedly non-religious. Some of our activities will be particular to studying very old music: For instance, we will work with medieval manuscripts, both in facsimile and original, paying attention to how such books were made and how they shape the music they transmit. But this repertoire engages many issues that resonate beyond the middle ages: How do—or should—music and text relate? Can music communicate an idea? How does music theory relate to the practice of music making? What kind of a witness is musical notation? How prescriptive are generic conventions? What did it mean to be a composer or musician in the late middle ages? Students will be guided through a semester-long research project into their “own” motet.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills