Introduction to Western Music

MUCO 110 004 48186

HMC 101
T Th 9:40-10:55am

Dr. Ryan McCormack
rmccorm5@utk.edu (please put course number in the subject line of all emails)
office location: HMC 233
office hours: by appointment (to make an appointment, please visit
https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=11288693)

GAs: Elizabeth Cooper (ecoope12@utk.edu); Brian Gee (bgee@vols.utk.edu); Moira Church
(mchurch3@utk.edu)

Course Description:

A course for non-music majors designed to give students a general understanding of music and
to increase their enjoyment of music through musical participation and the development of
listening skills. Students will consider the various basic applications and manifestations of
harmony, melody, time, timbre, texture, genre, and form. They will refine their skill of aural
perception in order to enhance the ability to sharply focus and sustain concentration in listening.
They will retain a general chronology of composers, works, and styles in the Western art music
tradition from the Middle Ages to present day. Students will develop an understanding of
musical style by examining works representative of the main musical style periods.

In addition, students will also be asked to consider the nature and practice of listening to music
throughout the history of Western music. As such, they will be assigned readings that document
and emphasize contextualized ways of understanding music in social life, facilitating an
understanding of the political, social, economic, and cultural conditions that went into the
production and consumption of works now thought of as timeless and classical.

Course Objectives:

1. Demonstrate a general working knowledge, as appropriate to their concentration, of aural
and visual analysis and knowledge of musicology and repertoire.

2. Demonstrate the ability to communicate clearly and effectively about the art of music.

Course Requirements (Grading Distribution):

Writing Assignments (20 points each, 80 points total) Students will be required to submit
FOUR reading summaries of between 250 and 300 words. These summaries are to be submitted
to the Assignments page in Blackboard. Summaries will be graded based on adherence to the
word count requirements (5pts), demonstration that the student has adequately read the material
(5pts), a minimum of formatting and spelling errors (5pts), and overall writings style and
intellectual coherence (5pts). Summaries must be uploaded by the due date any submission
after the deadline will only be counted for half credit. In addition, students may complete a
FIFTH summary for 15 points of extra credit. This will be the only extra credit opportunity
offered in this course.

DUE DATES FOR WRITING ASSIGNMENTS:

#1 SEPTEMBER 19
#2 OCTOBER 10
#3 NOVEMBER 7
#4 DECEMBER 2
EC BETWEEN LAST WRITING ASSIGNMENT AND FINAL EXAM DATE

Listening Assignments (10 points each, 80 points total) Each student is required to complete
EIGHT short listening logs outside of class, uploaded to the Assignments/Listening Logs folder
on Blackboard. Please include all of the information listed in the example below. You are free to
draw from any recordings that you choose so long as they: 1) have not been covered in class, and
2) are generally thought of to fall under the general purview of classical or Western Art
music as outlined in the course. YouTube clips are acceptable so long as you can trace the upload
back to the original recording that it comes from (no live performances). It is highly
recommended that you choose an example from the general time period we are discussing.

SAMPLE:

Title: Etudes pour Piano (Premier Livre): I. Dsrdre
Composer: Gygy Ligeti
Recording: Ligeti: Etudes, Musica Ricercata
Year: 1996
Genre/Style Period: piano etude, twentieth century
Instrumentation: Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Comments (min. 30 words): atonal; through-composed; rhythmically consistent, reminicient
of West African polyrhythm; left and right hands move further apart as piece continues;
modal harmonies in the left hand toward the end of the piece

Resources to consult: CD holdings in the Music Library; the Alexander Street Press Classical
Music Library online (UTK Libraries site, scroll down to "Classical Music Library")

LISTENING LOG DATES:

#1 SEPTEMBER 5
#2 SEPTEMBER 12
#3 SEPTEMBER 26
#4 OCTOBER 3
#5 OCTOBER 24
#6 OCTOBER 31
#7 NOVEMBER 14
#8 NOVEMBER 21

Attendance Listening Sheets Class attendance is mandatory, especially if a music class at the
college level is new to you. Since enrollment in this course is quite large, attendance will be
counted in a unique fashion. Each class will feature recorded examples that will be discussed in
tandem with the lecture materials. Each week, you will be required to give brief write-ups of
TWO examples heard in class, limited to one per class period. At the end of class, bring your
sheet of paper either to me or the GA sitting in the back of class. Please include the following
information on your sheet (if applicable):

Composer
Title
Instrumentation
Genre/Style Period
Comments

These do not need to be written in full sentences, as long as all of the pertinent information is
included.

Please note that on weeks that we have only two or one meetings (these weeks will be marked in
the syllabus), you will only be required to turn in ONE listening sheet. There should be
TWENTY sheets total that you will turn in throughout the semester, which will give you full
credit for attendance. Sheets will worth THREE points each.


Exams (100 points each, 200 points total) There will be two in-semester exams for this
course. A study guide for each exam will be posted to Blackboard one week before the test. The
format for all exams will be a combination of multiple-choice, matching, and questions based on
listening examples. Answer sheets will be provided and instructions for filling them out given at
the beginning of the exam. Questions will be drawn from a combination of class lectures and
movies and documentaries shown during class.

EXAM DATES:

#1 OCTOBER 14
#2 DECEMBER 9 (8:00-10:00am)

If you must miss an exam day for any of the aforementioned reasons, it is your responsibility to
inform the instructor ASAP so other arrangements can be made. No makeup exams will be
given to students who miss an exam without prior consent of the instructor.

Writing Assignments 80 (95 w/ extra credit)
Exams 200
Listening Assignments 80
Attendance Listening Sheets 60
____________________________
440

Final letter grades will be computed according to the following percentage:
A = 93+ A- = 90-92 B+ = 87-89
B = 83-86 B- = 80-82 C+ = 77-79
C = 73-76 C- = 70-72 D+ = 67-69
D = 63-66 D- = 60-62 F = 59 or lower

Course Materials:

There will be no textbook assigned for this class. All readings and listening examples will be
accessible via Blackboard. All listening examples for each unit will be posted ONE WEEK prior
to the start of a unit.
.
Schedule of Lecture Topics:

Thursday, August 21 Review of syllabus

Week 1: (August 26 28)

Topics: Introduction: What does it mean to appreciate music?; Musical Thought in Antiquity

Major Figures: Earl of Shaftsbury, Immanuel Kant, Plato, Aristotle

Read: Aristotle [on Music], Politics, Book VIII, chap. 5-7.

Week 2: (September 2 4)

Topics: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages; Early Polyphony

Major Figures: Guido of Arezzo, Lonin, Protin

Read: John D. White, The Musical World of Hildegard of Bingen, College Music Symposium
38, 1998.

Week 3: (September 9 11)

Topics: 14
th
century: Music of France and Italy; 15
th
century: Music of England and Burgundy

Major Figures: Phillipe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, Francesco Landini, John Dunstable,
Gilles Binchois, Guillaume Dufay

Week 4: (September 16 18)

Topics: Renaissance Music in the Low Countries; New Currents in the 16
th
Century

Major Figures: Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, Adrian Willaert, Carlo Gesualdo

Week 5: (September 23 25)

Topics: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation; Music of the Early Baroque
Period

Major Figures: Martin Luther, John Calvin, Toms Luis de Victoria, Palestrina, Jacopo Peri,
Claudio Monteverdi

Read: Klaus Theweleit, Monteverdis LOrfeo: The Technology of Reconstruction, In Opera
Through Others Eyes,

Week 6: (September 30 October 2)

Topics: Music of the Late 17
th
century; Music of the early 18
th
Century

Major Figures: Jean-Baptiste Lully, Henry Purcell, Arcangelo Corelli, Jean-Phillipe Rameau,
Antonio Vivaldi, Dietrich Buxtehude

Read: Rebecca Herissone, Playford, Purcell, and the Functions of Music Publishing in
Restoration England, Journal of the American Musicological Society 63 (2), 2010.

Week 7: (October 7 9)

Topics: Bach and Handel; The Early Classical Period (early to mid 18
th
century)

Major Figures: Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Fridric Handel, Christoph Gluck, C.P.E. Bach,
Johann Stamitz

Read: Charles Rosen, Keyboard Music of Bach and Handel. Critical Entertainments: Old and
New, 2001.


Week 8: (October 21 23)

Topics: Haydn and Mozart; Beethoven

Major Figures: Joseph Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven

Read: Richard A. Carleton, Changes in Status and Role-Play: The Musician at the End of the
Eighteenth Century, IRSAM 37 (1), 2006.


Week 9: (October 28 30)

Topics: 19
th
century: Romanticism and the Symphony; 19
th
century: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal
Music

Major Figures: Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Robert
Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Frederic Chopin, Clara Wieck Schumann, Fanny
Mendelssohn Hensel

Read: Andrew DellAntonio, Florestan and Butt-head: A Glimpse into Postmodern Musical
Criticism. American Music 17 (1), 1999.


Week 10: (November 4 6)

Topics: 19
th
century: Opera and Musical Drama; Nationalism and Music: 1848 1914

Major Figures: Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Gaetano Donzetti, Vincenzo Bellini, Gioachino Rossini,
Giuseppe Verdi, Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Wagner, Johann Gottried Herder, The Russian
Five, Edvard Grieg, Jean Sibelius, Anton Dvorak

Read: James H. Johnson, Opera as Social Duty. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History, 1996.

Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, Wagner and Nietzsche: The Beginning and End of their
Friendship. The Musical Quarterly 4 (3), 1918.

Week 11: (November 11 18)

Topics: The European Mainstream, late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries; Atonality and Serialism

Major Figures: Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Dimitri
Shostakovich, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Darmstadt School, Karlheinz
Stockhausen


Week 12: (November 20 25)

Topics: 20
th
century American Composers; Minimalism

Major Figures: Charles Ives, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, Ruth Crawford, Aaron Copeland,
Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, Philip Glass, John Adams, Steve Reich

Read: Elizabeth Crist, Aaron Copeland and the Popular Front Journal of the American
Musicological Society 56 (2), 2003.

Week 13: (December 2)

Topics: musique concrete and NWDR/Princeton-Columbia; Art Music in Eastern Europe

Major Figures: Halim El-Dabh, John Cage, Pierre Schaffer, Milton Babbitt, Bela Bartok, Gyorgy
Ligeti, Pancho Vladigerov

Read: Katie Trumpener, Bla Bartk and the Rise of Comparative Ethnomusicology:
Nationalism, Race Purity, and the Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Music and the
Racial Imagination, ed. Ron Radano and Philip Bohlman, 2001.

Georgiana Born, Music: Uncertainty, the Canon, and Dissident Musics. Rationalizing
Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde, 1995.


Services for Students with Disabilities:

Please inform me of any special accommodations privately outside of class, and contact the
Office of Disability Services in Hoskins Library at (865) 974-6087 as soon as possible at the start
of the semester.

Professional Conduct:

Laptop or tablet use in class is permitted, but only for taking lecture notes. During lecture the
wireless capability of your laptop/tablet must be disabled. Cell phone use and texting is not
permitted, and devices must be placed in silent mode for the duration of the lecture. Leaving
class for restroom use is permitted provided you do so as quickly and quietly as possible. If you
must leave class early for another an engagement, you must inform the instructor prior to class.