Music and (Almost) Everything All at Once

Catalog description

The goal of this course is to recapitulate an experience had by the instructor, having attended a visual-arts museum that had its collection displayed in an unusual fashion. Instead of grouping art in rooms according to genre, chronology, nationality, or particular artists, the art was arranged by intriguing concepts. A room might contain an O’Keeffe painting, a centuries-old Indigenous piece from Australia, a Rodin sculpture, and a poem that were, in some way, connected by a fascinating idea. Thus, in this course, every class will begin with some concept from mathematics, poetry, philosophy, astronomy, and more; then, we will gradually explore music that engages with that concept in some way. The musical examples each week will span centuries and cultures—one week might have an avant-garde piano sonata by Boulez, a 1980s art- rock song by Laurie Anderson, and a Kendrick Lamar album; the next week might have an ancient Sumerian song, a piece by Debussy, and a work from the Indian Carnatic tradition. Gradually, more and more connections between the seemingly disparate topics will be revealed. Per the course title, it is not everything exactly—and it is more like “across the semester” rather than “all at once”—but, by the end, students will know a whole lot more across a wide range of disciplines. And, most importantly, we will listen to a metric ton of fantastic music. May be counted as humanities credit as MUHS 2040 or music component as