SYLLABUS

MUSIC 201

(timings are tentative)

Fall 2020

FIRST PART: The demise of tonality (1900-1945)

Primacy of pitch

Get acquainted, organizational.
Recapitulation: The tonal system as a hierarchy.
Reading 1: The Tonal System due 8/26
Assignment 1 due 8/31
Common language chromatic chords.
Enharmonic chord resolutions and common tone chords

• Ambiguities in late romantic music due to Equal Temperament tuning.
  Reading 2: Impressionism and Expressionism due 9/2
  Assignment 2 due 9/9
  • overtones/partials series
  • non-Western tunings
    
Emerging atonality
Set Theory

Constructive devices
Assignment 3 due 9/21
Modes: scales and tunings
• ancient Greek tetrachords and scales
• Medieval "church" modes
• East-European and Middle Eastern Scales
• pentatonic and pre-pentatonic scales; Ison
• "artificial" (synthetic) scales
  • octatonic (symmetric, "whole-half diminished") scales
  • whole-tone scales
Parallel movement of chords (planning)
Fibonacci numbers and Golden Section

New rhythms
• Stravinsky
• the Europeans and jazz
• folklore influences
  • Additive/aksak/Bulgarian rhythms
Assignment 4 due 10/5
Retro - forward to the past
New chords
• polytonality
• quartal and quital harmonies

Timbre

Spectrum and timbre
• frequency (pitch) - periodic vibrations (sound) and noise
• strength of partials/overtones
• amplitude/intensity/loudness
• sound envelope (ADSR)
• spectral envelope
• orchestrations - the farben chord
• spechstimme
• Klangfarbenmelodie
• percussion's new role
Messiaen
• modes with limited transpositions
• nonretrogradable (palindrome) rhythms

Tone-row music Substitute to tonality
Tone-rows and set forms
• the tone-row as a constructive device; modulo operations
• matrix
• segmentation and (hexachordal) combinatoriality
Assignment 6 due 10/26
Towards total control - Webern; symmetries

SECOND PART: Integral Serialism, Indeterminacy, Mathematics and Technology (after 1945)

Integral (Total) Serialism
Reading 4: Boulez - "Schoenberg Is Dead" due 10/19
Control - "Mode de valeurs et d'intensitees"
Sound parameters list
• formula
Reading 5: Structuralism due 10/26
Assignment 7 due 11/04
Domains technique
• non-Western influences in "Le marteau sans maitre"
Stockhausen - "...how time passes..."

Indeterminacy
Chance music; the influence of Zen Buddhism and DADA
Creative assignment II due 11/13
Reading 6: Existentialism due 11/2
Aleatorism
• modules of form
• details
Open works and classes of compositions
• Textkomposition
• "Graphic" scores and "new" notation
  • extended techniques
Concept art/music

Other trends
Sound mass
Minimalism
• La Monte Young
Microtonal music
• quarter-tone scores
• just intonation
• other methods
Assignment 8 due 11/16

Music, Mathematics, Science and Technology
Electro-acoustic Music
• musique concrete
• electronische Muzik
  • equipment available
  Assignment 9 due 11/30

  THANKSGIVING BREAK

• synthesizers and MIDI
Digital sound synthesis `
• how do we hear ? sampling, ADC and DAC
• Nusic N
• LPC, subtractive, granular
• additive synthesis and Fourier analysis
SECOND LISTENING TEST 12/4
Mathematical tools in music
• controlled randomness and stochastic distributions
• logical operations, sets, sieves and groups
• random walks and arborescences
• computer-assisted (algorithmic) composition
Spectral music

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