GRMUS 671H — Music Across Media: From Orpheus to Nintendo

2 credits
Fall or Spring
Edgardo Salinas

This graduate course explores the history of Western music across different media, from early operatic adaptations of the Orpheus myth to contemporary remediations of symphonic music in films and videogames. The course is taught in a round-table format to discuss recent scholarly literature in musicology, media theory, and aural technologies. We start by examining the genealogy of modern notions of media and technology in relation to sound and music. To investigate their multilayered relationship, we examine a group of iconic musical works and their adaptations to opera, radio, film, television, videogames, and sound art installations. Case studies include Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni, Haydn’s The Creation, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Puccini’s La Bohème, Chopin’s Polonaises, Wagner’s Ring cycle, and Aucoin’s Eurydice. The class concludes by tackling pressing issues brought up by the use of AI in the performing arts and the music industry.