Sounding the Apocalypse: Ecomusicology from the Enlightenment to the Anthropocene

Catalog description

We will read groundbreaking scholarly and public-facing texts in the relatively new field of Ecomusicology, a sub-discipline that considers musical practices and ideologies in relation to their environments. The course challenges long-held claims for music as an autonomous enterprise distinct from nature and investigates the status of music as an evocation of landscape, weather, birdsong, and as a mode of nostalgia, alienation and resistance. Systems of production (music printing and dissemination, instrument fabrication, modes of recorded sound and delivery) will be considered along with other technological and moral aspects of music making and consumption. What are the possible purposes of sonic creativity in an age of environmental apocalypse? Locally oriented research projects and artistic collaborations will be fostered.