HIMUS 623 — Performance Practice Seminar

2 credits
Fall
Peter Sykes

This semester-long course for second year students will ground an approach to performance practice in a study of classical logic, grammar, and rhetoric: the Trivium, upon which Western artistic creation and study was based until the modern era. There will be three modules; first, a study of basic principles applicable to both language and music; second, a treatise survey and study of cultural norms giving rise to musical habits; third, bringing together the framework of the trivium with the materials and results of research to ground contemporary performance in both historical information and contemporary expression. One paramount aspect will be heavy emphasis on improvisation as a means for understanding written music, and as an end in itself in expanding musical imagination and thought processes. Using the model of the five branches of rhetoric, a method for amassing, storing, and retrieving information in improvisation will be outlined and practiced.