Performers: The Singer ca. 800-1400

Catalog description

This course looks at the history of popular, vernacular, and art music in various time periods. Studying music from the ground up, we examine how performers have influenced music history. We engage critically with issues such as music in social life, collaborative creative processes, and vernacular music’s engagement with race and gender. Tracing the figure of the singer beginning in the court of Charlemagne to the papal outpost of Avignon in the late thirteenth century, this intermediate course fulfilling elective requirements for music majors considers the evolving roles of singers in the Middle Ages. From monastic cantors to virtuosic soloists, we will be concerned not only the cultural function of singers but also the repertoire they performed.