Music and Civic Culture: Ancient and Modern

Catalog description

This course examines the role of music theory and musical performance in the formation of community, actual and utopic. We will begin our study with the musical, mathematical, and mystical thought of Pythagoras and his followers in the short-lived utopian community of Croton: How is "the Music of the Spheres" a paradigm both for ethical action within the community and for the progress of the soul within the cosmos? From Croton, we will turn to debates about music and civic culture in fifth-century democratic Athens: What forms of music and poetry sustain and subvert citizens and states? Is there a particularly "democratic" form of music? (Readings from Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Plato.) From ancient Greece, we will then turn to the late-nineteenth century efforts of Wagner, partially inspired by Athenian tragedy, to create the "Total Work of Art" in his Ring cycle of music-dramas and in the festival at Bayreuth; we will also read the responses of Nietzsche, Adorno, and Mann (amongst others) to Wagner. Finally, we will listen to and discuss some twentieth-century experiments in music and art, especially those loosely associated with Fluxus and with New York City (e.g., John Cage, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Yoko Ono, The Velvet Underground), as well as the "free jazz" of of Cecil Taylor and the afro-futurism of Sun Ra.