Historical Keyboarding

Catalog description

Based on the holdings of the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, this course will be based on encounters with organs, clavichords, harpsichords, pianos, and synthesizers. In approaching them, we will treat the term keyboard as both a noun and a verb: like skateboard or snowboard, it can represent both an object and ways of interacting with it. Students will situate each instrument within geographical and historical ecologies that acknowledge the origins of its materials, the labor that brought it into being, the play that has animated it, the repertoire that has sustained it, and the people it has connected. Over the course of the semester, each student will define and pursue a substantial research project based on a single instrument.