MUS 222 - Music History II: Topics in American Music after 1800

This course will study selected examples of art music cultivated in Western Europe and the United States from the mid-eighteenth century to the present. We’ll pay particular attention to the musical, philosophical, and social conditions that led to the emergence of a canon, as well as the ways canonicity has always been complicated and challenged by musicians, listeners, and scholars. Students will develop the listening, analytic, and critical skills necessary to formulate and engage music-historical questions relating to constructions of gender and race, cultural nationalisms, the impact of globalization, the ethics of borrowing and appropriation, and aesthetics.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Music 222 can be taken independently of Music 221.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).