Course info

Opera House (Classical Music as Art, Pop, and Avant-Garde)

This class is a cultural history of Western classical music, roughly 1800 to the present. Though "classical" musical is the primary focus we also look at the numerous intersections with popular music (folk and commercial pop) and jazz, as well as other arts. Through musical extracts, video clips, guided listenings from the piano, group activities, discussion and debate we explore key works in the classical repertoire, cultural and social contextual issues, and the conceptual categories mentioned in the course title: Art, pop, and avant-garde.

 

Syllabus

Opus 1. Beethoven’s Long Shadow: The Ideology of Genius

Art and craft – Kant on fine art & genius – The rise of the artistic figure

Musical/video excerpts: Beethoven, East-West Divan Orchestra

 

Opus 2. Wagner: Art and Revolution

The avant-garde concept – Opera vs. music drama – The “total work of art” – Two opera houses: Garnier and Bayreuth

Musical/video excerpts: V for Vendetta, Rossini, Delibes, Wagner

Opus 3. Wagner: Art and Innovation

The Ring – The purpose of a Prelude – Social “innovation” (taming audiences) – Artistic “innovation” (keeping their attention for 18 hours)

Musical/video excerpts: Bizet, Wagner, The Metropolitan Opera of New York

 

Opus 4. It’s a Love-Hate Thing: Schoenberg, Art-for-Art, and the General Public

Forms of marginality: Bohemianism, Dandyism, Modernism – Gauthier, Baudelaire, Wilde – Art-for-art – Art as (aesthetic/social) critique – Norms? What norms?

Musical/video excerpts: Sex Pistols, Schoenberg

 

Opus 5. Man, Oh Man, Oh … Woman! Women in Art Music

The canon in question – Roles and contributions: the four Ps (plus one) – Three figures: Nadia Boulanger, Florence Price, Winnaretta Singer (the Princesse de Polignac)

Musical/video excerpts: Tár, Rebecca Clarke, Camille Pépin

 

Opus 6. The Search for American Classical Music

Popular” culture: Folk vs Mass – Spirituals & Blues – Three paths: Copland's Lincoln Portrait, Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Duke Ellington's It Don't Mean a Thing

Musical excerpts: Dvorak, Gershwin, Ellington, Copland, Billie Holiday

 

Opus 7. Modern Crisis, Postmodern “Solutions”

The experimental musical landscape – Leonard Bernstein's cry of despair – Odd couples – Postmodern music? – The Minimalist revolution

Musical excerpts: The Beatles, Boulez, Stockhausen, Glass, Einaudi, Satie, Cage, Hiromi Uehara

 

Opus 8 (and above). Debates, discussions, presentations.