Mar 29, 2024  
College Catalog 2019-2020 
    
College Catalog 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

MHMUS 452 — Music on the Edge Since 1900

3 credits
Spring
Martin Verdrager

Prerequisite: MHMUS 311 . This course explores the many musical genres and styles that have crossed paths in the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. More than at any previous time, the boundaries of traditional, popular, and classical aesthetics are now meeting and blending, forming new ways of composing and hearing. Students will examine how 20th-century music gradually adopted and altered the sounds and symbols of folk music, classic traditions, modernism, blues, world music, futurism, jazz, pop, rock, and the culture of “the other.” Music has been included in or adopted into the principles of related arts; shared forms such as cinema, performance art, kinetic sculpture, acoustics, and sound art have expanded the use and purpose of music. Students will be asked to read articles about the changes in aesthetics and conditions of music’s place in the modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern world, perform or find examples, and discuss music that exemplifies the historic and new aesthetics of our musical art. Two major oral projects are required, each with a written summary and bibliography.