For majors and non-majors. A study of issues in the history of music and sound. Topic will vary from class to class.

What does it mean to study music "globally"? This class explores the musical past through surviving physical materials: manuscripts and musical notation, papyrus fragments, instruments, ritual objects, and other material traces that provide evidence for music before the modern era. Rather than assuming we know what "early music" is or where to look for it, we will ask how the objects themselves—their formats, their material composition, their contexts of preservation—shape what we can know about premodern musical practice and meaning. We will pay particular attention to moments of cultural contact and exchange, asking how songs, instruments, ideas, and musical practices moved across regions and communities, and what happens when we follow these traces rather than organizing our study by geography or period alone.


Throughout the semester, we will work directly with materials held in UC Berkeley's library and museum collections, learning to interpret diverse forms of musical evidence. By studying actual objects—handling manuscripts, examining instrument construction, considering what survives and what doesn't—we develop skills in material analysis while also recognizing the fragmentary and contingent nature of historical knowledge about music.

Repeat Rules

Requirements class fulfills