HIMUS 613 — Baroque Music Theory

2 credits
Fall
Charles Weaver Jr.

This course meets twice a week—once as a historical theory class and once as an improvisation practicum. Using primary sources from Zarlino to Rameau, the theoretical portion of the course outlines the rudiments of a musical education in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: intervals, physical theories of consonance and dissonance, the gamut, the hexachords, the modes, tuning theory, counterpoint, figured bass, rhetoric, and the extraction of the fundamental bass, with an emphasis on the import of these topics for performers specializing in historical styles. The practicum combines the counterpoint pedagogy of Zarlino, Banchieri, and Morley with the division manuals of Ortiz, Bovicelli, and Simpson to explore improvisation within a contrapuntal texture and above a ground.