Music, Mind, and Body

Catalog description

Music plays an essential role in identity formation, social experience, emotional regulation, interpersonal bonding, caregiving, and the creation of spiritual meaning across all human cultures. This course surveys the ways in which music interacts with our minds and bodies, focusing on core theoretical concepts such as pitch, timing, and expectation, but also on the cultural history of states such as trance or flow, and the implementation of musical joy and mimesis in cultural productions. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to music by combining approaches from musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory with sound studies, acoustics, and cognitive science. It is designed to be stylistically agnostic, and no prior experience with any particular form of music is required. (MUSIC-HC)