Studying Music as Performance

Catalog description

We commonly acknowledge that music is one of the performing arts. Yet when we talk about music, we usually refer to it as a thing rather than an activity, as something that is rather than something one does. In this course, we will discover what we can learn about music (and ourselves as musicians) when we put performance at the center of our musicological inquiry. While our focus will be on the Western classical tradition, we will also have ample opportunity to consider popular music, non-Western music, and many other musical performance situations that take place outside of the concert hall and opera house. Topics to be addressed include: the expression of identity and persona in musical performance; analysis and performance; performer?s writings; embodiment; interactivity; live vs. mediatized performance; musical instruments; historical performance; the ethnography of performance; case studies of individual performers.